074: Do You Know, Like, & Trust God?

Summary

Do you have a know, like, and trust relationship with God? Or are you struggling to trust Him because you don’t know Him intimately?

In this episode Sasha shares about relationship with God. She shares a testimony about the transition from her living from a backwards space of works without faith, works striving to please God, works to please man, and placing her faith in things of this world… to God’s gentle hand guiding her to knowing Him for who He says He is in His word & Spirit, liking Him (because He first loved us), and trusting Him.

Need some encouragement in knowing, liking, & trusting God? Join us in the Uncomplicated Faith Workshop coming up July 19th. Learn more here: https://intentionalabundance.life/uncomplicatedfaith

Transcription

0:55
Jingle

1:08
Hello sisters and welcome back to another episode of the Intentional Abundant Life podcast. I’m your host Sasha Star Robertson, and today is a little bit of an unconventional podcast episode if you will. I am just hanging out here in my living room. My son is still sleeping. My husband’s at work, the puppy dog is sitting next to me, and I have been enjoying my quiet time and preparing for the upcoming uncomplicated faith workshop. And in this, I just felt like this message was supposed to be shared more than just in the workshop, more than just in the Serenity for Your Soul Challenge that I prepared along with God a few years ago, more than just something that I deliver to my clients because I think it’s something that’s really important for all of us.

2:01
And if you’re a woman in business, which a lot of my clients, perhaps even some of my listeners are, you might be familiar with a marketing term, know like, and trust. It’s very popular terminology and a way of growing and relationship with your audience, with your ideal client, with the people in your circle, right? Well, I guess in marketing, you want them to know you. You want them to like you, and you want them to trust you. So then they will be willing and able to purchase from you. And I think this goes far beyond the relationship with your customers or your ideal client, right? It goes to that of your family as well. Obviously, your family is very close to you, they’re people that you do know quite well or at least you hope that you do. And you would hope that you liked them as well. You know, some of our family I think can be a little bit more difficult to like, and then you would hope that especially in a tight family unit, that you would trust one another.

3:21
I think that’s God’s ideal for our family anyway, although we are human, we are sinful. We can do horrible, horrendous things to each other, which can cause a lack of trust. But this also extends to friendships, right? This applies to business, it applies to friendships as well. But I feel like God really gave me this picture about how it pertains to Him as well And I think back several years ago, actually, where I was in this position in life where I just felt like so many things, so many circumstances, were just not really working out. Long story short, I was going on my second mission trip. I was actually leading the mission trip and it seemed kind of like everything was going wrong. Everyone was fighting against it. I was trying to lead the team in the manner in which the mission organization asked us to prepare, but many of the people on the team, including people who were older than me, and who were leaders at my church at the time, had been on this mission trip with the same organization, to the same community, to the same sister church for several years. And so a lot of them felt like they were exempt from going through the training and following the steps.

5:03
But if you’re somebody who maybe is fairly new to the faith or remembers the time when you were new to the faith, you remember having this childlike faith, or even another way I can put this analogy is sometimes in a working environment, people would rather hire somebody fresh off the street who has no experience in the industry, because if they hire somebody who does have industry experience, they’re having to help them unlearn everything that they had already learned, in order to do it the way that this particular company or wherever else wants to train.

5:43
And so I was facing this a lot. And it ended up resulting in a lot of just hurtful things being said hurtful actions and behaviors. And it caused a major lack of peace in my life. And I remember at this time praying and praying and praying that God would bring me peace about this mission trip. I knew that it wasn’t going to be without stepping out of my comfort zone, not without struggle and without sacrifice. But the very fact that the people I was to be going on this mission trip with were some of the culprits for creating such a lack of peace in my life was where my struggle really was. And the more difficult part about this is these were people that I consider family. I didn’t have a lot of close family nearby and have a lot of close friendships outside of the very people in this community. To make matters worse on top of that they were some of my biggest clients at the time. And my workplace in a sense. So this church community was my family, they were my home, they were my workplace, they were my spiritual community as well, and so I was very deeply connected in this space, but also, it was the place that was causing me such a lack of peace at the time.

7:18
To make matters worse, my husband came home one day during this season, to share some pretty unsettling news in terms of a female coworker of his and her approach towards him. And to make matters worse, I was struggling emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in multiple different ways at this time. The good thing I will say about it is through all of that I was left in a position to just put my head down and seek the Lord. And I remember, I was in His Word, I was kind of going through this almost midlife crisis at the time. And I gathered every Bible study that I had ever done leading up to that point in my walk with Him. And I read every single word that I had ever written down about any Bible study I’d ever done, all the answers to questions, all of the notes that I had taken in notebooks and different spiritual courses or whatever else, and I just really sat down and was like, God, what is going on in my life? Like, please be near to me.

8:37
And I was reading a book at the time. And I remember reading this book, and I believe it was. I Don’t Wait Anymore by Emily Townsend. Sorry if that’s incorrect, kind of winging this episode here. But I remember reading in that book how she was talking about, she would always hold back and live in this almost reserved stance just waiting for some circumstance to happen or some external thing to go on for her to be able to step forward in faith and take action on something. And so hence the title of the book, I Don’t Wait Anymore. She realized that she was almost living in this backward stance. She wasn’t living from a heart posture of faith.

9:26
And I just love how the Book of Romans talks about Abraham. And it was his faith that considered him righteous. This was even before the law was given. Abraham was considered righteous on account of his faith, and I look back and I think of Abraham and I think of his closeness to God. He knew God and he trusted God. And he liked God. Even when God asked him to do some really, really tough stuff that I honestly could not even imagine doing in my life. Abraham trusted the promise that God gave him. And I especially love this section in Romans, it’s actually Romans… Flipping to it bear with me.

10:27
Romans 4 starting at verse 19, he did not weaken in the faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. But he grew strong in his faith, as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. See friends He knew God enough to trust God in all things, in all circumstances. He never weakened in his faith and he never wavered. He actually grew stronger in his faith concerning the promise of God. And that only further developed his relationship with God in His likeness of God and liking God, that even later when he was asked to do the unthinkable, and take his son up and sacrifice him, after having received what he thought was this promise, he was able to do so. Because he knew God and he liked God and he trusted God.

11:54
And so going back to wrap up this testimony that I was sharing earlier, I was going through this difficult, very difficult season where I felt like my family and my church body and my work took place and my relationship with my husband and my relationship with the Lord and everything was just struggling. And I shared about how I was reading that book. And when I was reading that book, I said, Okay, God, I can see where my living is backward now, right? Where I was kind of like in this state of perpetual fear of being afraid to take any steps or any action. I was afraid to do any real work On account of what I felt like was resting in my relationship with the Lord. But I was spending a lot of time doing a lot of works to please man in place of my faith and relationship with the Lord. And I realized that a lot of this was that I didn’t know God and I didn’t trust Him. And I couldn’t trust Him without and knowing Him and so I committed that I was going to do that.

13:15
And friends, when I committed to do that, I then did not follow through. I continued going on with this people-pleasing, kind of workspace without faith type relationship but never actually taking any action in who I was being and knowing God and trusting God and liking gods. And this whole situation ended up kind of getting worse. And it came to a point where I actually stepped down from that mission trip. Later I ended up leaving working for the church and went back to my career working for the state. My husband and I had a little bit of a rocky season. But, you know, if you’ve been around here, you know, we’re doing fabulous now. But I can tell you one day, I truly had this like heart like Jonah. And I just wanted to run away from it all. I was so heartbroken and just so confused and struggling with my head down.

14:25
And I went out to my brother’s house who, who lives near the Knik River in Alaska, if you’ve been here, if you’re from here, you know what I’m talking about. But it was springtime. I remember it was March and the snow was melting. And it was like some of those just really sweet nice days where you can go outside with like just a sweater on and you’re finally not freezing for the first time in eight months. And I went out to my brother’s house and they were going to take the truck out towards the glacier and go, you know, off-roading.

14:58
And so I said, okay, yeah, I’ll go with you guys. And I remember him looking at me and saying, last time you did this was like four years ago, and you told me you were never coming out here to do this with me again. And I remember saying to him, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Y’all, I was struggling. My mindset was not found on anything foundational at the time. And we went out, and we decided to stop and hang out for a little bit. Somebody got there side by side stuck and it was almost like sinking in the river. And so there was a group of dozens I’m telling you dozens of people out there and they’re kind of just walking around on the river, which was very, very shallow. It was only like a couple of inches deep in most of the spots. There were women and children and men and, and whatever, there were four-wheelers and side-by-sides and trucks and all these people just walking around out there. And I’m walking around out there too, you know, and just this little area, and I was moving my foot around and I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right foot.

16:10
And in that instance, my right foot was sucked into a hole. And I’m telling you, it was the perfect sized circular hole, same exact size as my thigh, and I fell in thigh-deep one, only one leg into this hole, my boot was filled with water. And even still to this day on my job, there were people like I swear, running around in this area right before I was standing there. There were tons of people just within a few feet of me. And there was no ground where one of my feet was standing on. And this was I realized I was standing on ice, not the ground. And it just must have created this perfect circular vortex. I’m sure there’s some kind of physics and logical laws to explain this. Immediately when my foot and my leg were sucked into that hole. It was at that moment that I realized I had been putting my faith and my trust in all of these things of the world. Not God. And it was in that moment I realized no, you cannot put your faith in your spouse or your relationship with your spouse. You cannot put it in your intellectual abilities. You cannot put it in your church congregation you cannot put it in anything else other than God.

17:44
And I remember, leg still in the hole, of course, I had this freakout moment I tried to stand out again there’s no ground like my foot was just floating around in the circular area and finally pulled myself out. I tried to keep my boot in there. So I had to like pull my leg out of my boot, then yank my boot out of this hole soaking wet in this freezing cold like glacier runoff water in March, I just looked up at the sky and laughed and I said, Okay God,. Because it was in that instance, He reminded me of how I proclaimed that I was going to know Him, so that I could like Him, so that I can trust Him, and live in this intimate relationship with Him. And I wasn’t doing that. And He was just holding me to my own convictions holding me to do what I said I would do because He wants nothing more than a relationship for me. He doesn’t want me to serve on a mission trip or serve people in my church congregation or serve in any of these other capacities if it’s not coming from a place of knowing Him and liking Him and trusting Him and serving for His glory for His kingdom for his purposes and the ones that he has called me to. And sisters. It is no different for you.

19:13
And sisters, I’m going to be talking a little bit more about this in the Uncomplicated Faith Workshop coming up. I believe this is a very, very important part in our walk and uncomplicating our faith, truly is to know God and who God is to you. I think God is God. He is unchangeable His Word and His Spirit tell us everything we need to know about his character and who He is.

19:52
But the bottom line is, when circumstances come, that doesn’t change who God is. When people treat us differently or maybe unfavorably, that doesn’t change who God is. And we have to remember the stories in scripture we have to seek God for who He is so that we can know who He is. But know it for ourselves on a very, very intimate level. And so I invite you, ladies, to join us in this Uncomplicated Faith Workshop because this is something I did not plan on doing when I set out to become a coach was sitting in, I guess you could say other people’s faith if that makes sense. But having moms come to me in an overwhelmed state and realizing that a big part of their overwhelm stems from these faithful foundations, stems from this place of them sitting in a very complicated faith where it makes their relationship with Christ very difficult and very complicated, right?

21:13
So, in saying all of that I just think it’s really really beautiful the way that God has shown up and transformed this coaching system to so heavily involve these faithful foundations in the very beginning. And so some of these faithful foundations, I walk my clients through in the IAM is what I am giving you in this Uncomplicated Faith Workshop. And I shared a little bit of my testimony today to let you know that even in those really tough circumstances, even when it might be the very people that are supposed to be helpers in your faith or that you would think would be helpers in your faith are helping to make it complicated. There’s a place that we can go, there’s a foundation that we can stand on, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. So please join us for the uncomplicated workshop coming up this Tuesday. If you’re listening in real-time, the link is in the show notes and I cannot wait to see you there.

More about your Podcast Host

Sasha Star Robertson is an Intentional Living & Biblical Mindset Coach for busy Christian moms, wife of 13 years to her best friend, boy mom (blessed by adoption), travel addict, and Jesus freak. She is the founder of The Intentional Abundance Co., curator of the Life & Goals Planner, & host of the Intentional Abundant Life Podcast.

Would you benefit from having a coach helping you live Productively Peaceful days digging into Faithful Foundations, Purposeful Priorities, Mindset Mastery, & Simple Selfcare? This question is rhetorical, everyone would! Schedule a consult with Sasha to learn more about the IAM Coaching Program and to see if you’d be a good it. https://calendly.com/intentionalabundanceco/iamconsult

Desiring Community?

You’re invited to join us in the Productively Peaceful Moms Club over on facebook! It’s a safe space where we can show up vulnerably and encourage each other, where ere share the mission of being the best mommas we can be through the grace and strength of Jesus Christ, where we encourage consistency and are able to hold each other accountable. We share scripture and talk about podcast episodes and pray for each other and set goals and so much more! You’re more than welcome here, you’re wanted here! https://www.facebook.com/groups/IntentionalAbundance