” For this reason I tell you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven—for she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Luke 7:47. Tree of Life (TLV) Translation of the Bible. Copyright © 2015 by The Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society, sourced from Bible Gateway.com

When I worked on the last post introducing the concept of trust, I was struck by the idea of “comfort” being at its root. On the surface, “trust” seemed to be all about hope, confidence, reliance and care. Comfort, at first glance, didn’t really appear to fit.

However, we can easily see that we are more comfortable when we “trust” someone and less “comfortable” when we don’t. As a gauge, comfort can be defined as something that soothes, reassures or brings relief. Dictionary.com/comfort. Those are good things to consider as we evaluate how much we are trusting something or someone. One can even see how “strengthening aid or assistance” could help in building one’s trust in another. Id.

But how about in the terms of building faith? How does comfort build trust in God when the circumstances at hand are wildly beyond our control and fraught with great uncertainty? So many times we pray for specific answers, and leave little room for what is best. The question “comfort” begs us to ask this: How inherent is it in us to trust God?

Pondering this further, I was taken on a trip down memory lane. It was about nine years ago, on sunny summer afternoon, that a disturbing phone call came. A call that set off a great storm of fear within me. While brief in duration, I was told that during my dad’s endoscope the doctor had discovered a tumor. It was bloody, ulcerated and distinct. Those words alone took my breath away. Pathology was being done, and it would be a few days to a week before they knew what it was. Truth be told, deep down I understood that it was most likely cancer.

For five or six years, I had been walking more strongly with God. He had nudged my heart to start an organization that was about building faith–in ways that encouraged myself and others, those around us and those who were struggling with the trials life so often brings to trust God more. Over those years, we had been approached repeatedly with the hopes that we would say prayers on behalf of someone going through a health crisis. In part, due to those experiences with prayer, I found myself heading to my knees after I hung up the phone.

I knew exactly what I wanted to pray for. As my knees hit the floor, and I fought back tears, I began to pray. But it quickly felt more like wrestling. My prayers–rather I should say my desires and hopes–for my father’s healing felt like they were bouncing off a closed door. “A brick wall” is what I often call that experience. A quietness grew over me for it wasn’t the first time I had come face-to-face with that wall during prayer. I knew all too well what it meant: what I was praying for wasn’t truly needed.

In the past, the wall would usually stop my prayer progression and lead me into a pause that would prompt me to reconsider what I was praying for. In that instance, and because I loved my dad so, I stood up, flustered and stormed off, unwilling to ask that question. The sad thing was I couldn’t trust God at that moment, and my storm of fear didn’t end. It continued to swirl, gaining strength and whipping around a series of what-ifs that truly never came to be.

Later that night, after I put my son to bed, I cried out, “God, what is going on?” I opened to Luke 7:36-50, read it, and promptly slammed it shut. In frustration from the painful and fear driven thoughts inside my heart and head, I declared that it was too much to think about. I didn’t have time to try to understand; for heaven’s sake, I just wanted a simple answer–was my dad going to be alright!?!

The next day, I kept myself in check by focusing on things that needed to be done. I was out pulling weeds when I was again overcome with the need to pray. I dropped to my knees and started to pray for his healing. And again, the brick wall appeared handing my prayers back to me. This time, the wrestling stopped and I surrendered. I told God that I understood that I was not being asked to pray for my dad’s healing. It was so hard to speak those words, but I knew–from experience–that physical healing wasn’t the path that this journey was going to take. I had come across that same hedge, same wall for a few others and knew my prayers were needed for something else.

But I didn’t ask. I just simply said, “Okay, I get it. That’s not what is needed, and it is more of what I desire.” But in the moments that followed, I spoke with a deeper honesty that I had been reluctant to share when I was demanding that he be healed: “God, um, if I have to let go of my dad much earlier in my life than I want and live the remainder without him, I can. I don’t want to, but I know I’ll be okay. What I can’t do–well, really, what I don’t feel like I can do–is spend eternity apart from him. I don’t know where he stands with You and I am afraid. So, please know I can let go of him in this life, but please let it not be so in heaven.”

You see, sometimes with faith, we think we need the “right” answers. The easy ones. The least painful or the ones with the best projected outcome. There was no easy, less painful or stopping of what was coming. God knew that. I knew that when I hit the wall. I didn’t need my answer; what I needed was comfort, and frankly, I didn’t even know that at the time. I was trying to be strong, trying to do right. Trying hard to be positive in the face of a fear that I feared the most: losing someone that I loved dearly and losing someone who loved me dearly.

So after handing God what I feared the most–never seeing my dad in the eternity of His grace–I stood up, dusted off my knees and went back to work. And for the first time, the storm started to ease. Later that night, feeling anxious as evening descended and another day went without answers, I opened His Word again. As only He can direct, it was right back to Luke 7 and the story that spoke about debts owed and what forgiveness of those debts should bring when experienced in this life. Though tired, largely from the mental energy spent on worry, I knew I was supposed to dig into it further.

I laid there reading it all and wondering what was God trying to teach me? As I read it a second time, the words “loves much” jumped right off the page at me, so I asked myself, “Who do I know that loves much in this life?” Instantaneously, my dad popped into my mind. The Scripture stated that those who have loved much have been forgiven much. I thought of just how loving my dad had always been. While he wasn’t perfect, most felt an incredible sense of loving kindness in his presence. With complete strangers, with family and even with those who had done him so much wrong in his life.

And I understood what God was saying to me at that moment. He was answering my fears, despite their storm and my willingness to listen to them more than my willingness to listen to Him as this trial arose. God knew I already understood that life starts and stops. He had already walked me down the road with others who needed a helping hand as their lives were coming to an end. He knew that I knew I would survive without my dad, but He also knew that my greatest fear was not knowing where my dad stood with Him.

My dad didn’t talk about faith very much. To be quite frank, he had spent much of his adulthood politely putting up with those who had altered Jesus into a sword that allowed them to painfully wield judgment on those who didn’t “live” by the ideals that they claimed were needed in order to “know” God. I spent much of my younger years hearing how we were all going to hell because we didn’t go to church regularly (now, that kind of makes me chuckle to think that attendance at a building with a steeple was the best measurement for faith). Those same folks only showed up when it worked for them (which was like never or rarely), or when an emergency arose granting them access to come and try to “save” his and/or our souls. My dad had longed been conditioned not to share his thoughts about God; to not let others in through mere talk. In a way, and rightfully so, he had long learned not to trust their intentions in those matters for they were more self-motivated about saving another soul for their own count than about living and showing the love of God.

What I saw in “loves much” was my dad’s life. His words, though few, had not shallowly displayed his faith nor focused on it, but rather, and as it should be, it was in his walk through life that you could see and feel steady and consistent love. His kindness, his willingness to share, his warmth, his smiles, his laughter, his welcoming embrace were tangibly available to almost all. Love was his response in times of need, and he came to help without begrudging the effort nor demanding for repayment of some sort. There was no debt attached to his willingness to care. As I reflected on God’s words, I could see the compare and contrast. So many of those who spoke so loudly and so harshly about knowing God better than everyone else…they would have looked at my dad and asked Jesus, “How can he possibly be Yours?”

I took comfort in those words of truth that my dad had loved many. I could see from His story the many who would scoff at my dad’s life because his life didn’t contain the “words”, the “ideals”, they thought they should hear. Those same ones were the ones who had failed to see the fruit of his life and the worth of the love that he had for the many that they, themselves, wouldn’t help, visit, care for, or be near. I laid there, in that moment, and started to cry. It was all that I needed to know. He had been forgiven much and the result was that he loved more than most. I understood that God was comforting me in my pain–a pain that was destined to grow. But that comfort grew my capacity to trust Him in, and with, some of the hardest moments of my life that were coming. I understood that those words were a gift that strengthened my soul for the daunting and painful journey ahead.

It was about eight years ago, about 14 months past that revelation, that my dad’s life was drawing to a close. His strength, health and stamina were waning. The truth was coming. Another phone call came, and this time it was a different loved one fighting, in a way, to take control of the situation that was on the horizon. Through intermittent tears and a frantic conveyance of concern, I was implored to sit down with my father and “lead” him to Christ: “Please Michelle, you must have this conversation with him. He’ll listen to you. We need to do this to make sure he gets to heaven.”

My heart wrenched in pain, but not because of the fear that my dad didn’t know God. It was because I knew that soul did not have any comfort for where this was headed; without realizing it, they weren’t trusting God that He was bigger than what they feared. Instead, they were still wrestling with God about whether to trust Him in the face of death. I listened and I tried to console as best as I could, but in the end, I said, “I can’t. That is not our job, and I am not afraid of where he is going.” I shared what God had shown me at the beginning, and gently expressed that I was going to keep my trust, there, in that truth.

And I finished it with this thought–my dad deeply loved us–those who knew him well knew that. He loved us so much that I understood that if I sat down with him and let fear run all over the place, he would politely tell us what he thought we needed to hear to bring us some comfort in that great pain he knew we were experiencing. But that was not, and is not, what faith is about. Understand that we cannot see into the heart of anyone. The mere production of words doesn’t mean the heart has accepted them, nor do the presence of words mean they are really being lived out. What that soul wanted was more for their own peace of mind, and not truly what was best for his. For only God and him could traverse that road of authentic faith in his heart and soul; we couldn’t make that happen for him. As much as we might want to do that for someone, we do not hold that power nor should we.

If our faith is going to be grown, it has to be stretched, challenged, and tried in that growth process. You better believe that will be uncomfortable. It will be painful, frightening at times, and uncontrollable. To expect that we will have confidence, hope, or the ability to rely, right off the bat in a struggle, will ill-prepare us for the answer that will likely be needed. Rather, let us seek first comfort from God IN those moments when we are not sure what to expect, what to pray and hope for, what to be confident about, or what we can rely on. Let us get to the roots of trust when we are struggling. Let us seek God by allowing His comfort in. Remember that comfort can be about cheering up at times, but His comfort came directed right at my fear that I was afraid to face. God brought my fear a soothing balm that eventually led to strengthening me to endure, which developed into the confidence to know where my dad was going (and now is) so that I could fully and faithfully put my hope and trust in the truth that someday I will see him again. Through His comfort, my trust and faith grew in ways I didn’t even know I needed.

In this journey of faith, look for God’s comfort. It won’t always be in the form of the answers you want. So let comfort be a part of the foundation that builds your trust. Allow your faith to develop through the comfort He is trying to bring you in the moments that cause you to fear. They exist more than you may even realize. Comfort comes, often, before we are even ready to receive it!

Build your trust by letting Him comfort you in the way He knows is best.

“He replied, ‘My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s Word and put it into practice.'”

Luke 8:21. NIV Life Application Study Bible, Zondervan, 2011, pg. 1683.