Bucket List Practice # 5 - Trusting

Throughout the month of January I am creating a Bucket List in which I will suggest one New Year’s Practice each day that will give you a taste of living an integrated life for 2011.  (By integrated, I mean one in which your faith, your character, your relationships, your responsibilities--all elements of your life--are in agreement.)  Each one is meant to be exercised in one day. Please feel free to share about your experience in the comments section below.  We will move through four different themes of living an integrated life.  The first week January we'll explore practices related to our relationship with God.

Today's practice is trusting.  Many think that success is a combination of hard work or good luck  And we worry whether we've done enough or whether we're going to catch a break.  And when we fail, we either feel inadquate or absurd. There is definitely a hard work side. We have to give our best efforts to our responsibilities. And yes, we all know that there are a lot of factors that are beyond the control of hard work. 

But let's drop this idea of luck because there is a personal God who has purposes for the world and a calling for you.  So I think St. Augustine nailed it when he said, "Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you."  Things are not left entirely up to chance, nor are they entirely dependent on you. It's you and God. But God takes the lead and the burden, as well as your inadequacy and your absurdity.  The main question is, do you trust in God to accomplish your goals?

A proverb from the Bible says, "Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed."  That word commit used in this verse literally means to roll something away. Basically, we are encouraged to let go of our plans and turn them over to God. So essentially you no longer hold on to your goals; you entrust them to God.  Trust is critical to an integrated life because those who trust in God will not only achieve, but will experience satisfaction.  Plus it helps with our humility, which is essential to integrity.

So today, take your greatest goals for 2011, and roll them over to God.  And then work your butt off to accomplish them. Does that make sense? If not, no worries. It will work. Trust me.