Trust in God

"If you're going to love with the emotionally closeness which alone can fulfill you, you must be able to share your self with your partner."


There is truth in this belief.  But it is not the whole truth, and there is at least one great deception in it, too.

It has at its core a lack of trust in God to provide what we need most - in fact, assumes that our fulfillment can only lie along a particular path - and simultaneously elevates our own needs and actions to too lofty a throne in our lives.

For a young person making a decision about the sort of marriage relationship to enter into, it is probably sound advice, except for the nugget that there is only one path to our emotional fulfillment.  For an older person who has already established and who nurtures that relationship according to the gifts and limitations and expressed preferences of each partner, it can become an insidious poison.

I think we are usually more fulfilled in simply laying down our needs before God and trusting God to provide for them than we are by allowing our lives to be being driven by them.

When we do that, we will generally see which of them we are to do something about directly, and how.  The Holy Spirit will keep us in mind of our most fundamental need to act in accordance with the basic Truth of our lives, and that we are to choose rather to do what is clearly right and trust in God to provide for us through it rather than do what is wrong and expect things to turn out well.