Trust Him in Times of Trouble

"No I don't need your sacrifices. What I want from you is your true thanks; I want your promises fulfilled. I want you to trust me in your times of trouble so I can rescue you and you can give me glory." Psalms 50: 13-15(TLB)
Even though difficult, I believe I can almost handle the first two...giving true thanks to God and keeping my promises. However, without a doubt, to trust God in times of trouble is a little like jumping off a cliff with no assurance of what the jump will bring. What exactly is a "time of trouble?" I believe that it is a time of testing.
As a classroom teacher, I use testing to assess if any learning has taken place. I may spend a week on a topic in math and then I will announce the dreaded test that we will be having in a few days. There will be several different responses. There are always a few kids that do not dread the test at all. They have had lots of positive successes in the past with math. They always ace the math test so they do not fear a test. They may fear a science test but never math.
There are other students who become sick with fear. They have mostly failed their math tests and do not expect that this time will be any different. They may know much of what is on the test but they freeze up on test day and cannot perform.
Then there is the response of the majority of the class. They simply do not care. They hope they do well but it is not the end of the world if they don't. I love all the different responses and like to think about the reason behind their thinking. I love teaching 8th grade so much, in case I have not mentioned this!
There are many different responses to a time of testing in our life. It depends on the nature of the test and how comfortable the material is to us. If Mark and I faced a time of financial testing, it would not bother us as much as it might someone else. We do not value material things and have lived with much less than we have now. We are more comfortable with a financial test than a test involving our children. When God allows my children to be tested, I want to fear and not trust God with the outcome. I want to control the outcome and not allow God to receive the glory. I have to fight past the fear and take captive every thought that comes into my mind from Satan that would cause me to doubt the ability of God to handle the situation.
An interesting thing to realize is that God brings the test into our lives that we need the most help with. He is the perfect teacher because he understands my strengths and my weaknesses. He wants me to trust that he is good all the time and will allow times of trouble in my life because he is interested my holiness and not my happiness.
I remember this event as if it was yesterday. I was so in love with Mark in college and I was not sure where our relationship was heading. He asked another girl to homecoming, instead of me and I cried for two days. Then I had a light come on in my head. I realized that I wanted to trust God with the outcome of this relationship. I wanted to trust him BEFORE the outcome was known. I wanted to be thankful and allow him to decide, not me. It was the beginning of a lifetime of trusting God in the "unseen and not the seen." I have been through some times of trouble that are too personal to share on a blog. Let me assure you that I struggled with this request of God to "trust him in times of trouble so he could get the glory." I wanted to handle it myself. I am glad that he keeps testing me and helping me to learn how trustworthy he is.
I wanted to go back and talk about the group that do not care if a test is being given. Many Christians are not interested in the test, in being tested, in passing a test, etc. They blame God if they fail, they ignore God if they pass. If you find yourself in this category, give me a call. You are missing the point. It is a paradox. The Abrahams of this world who pass the biggest tests are the ones who gain the whole world.