“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  How many times have I heard this, said this, and even believed this throughout my life?  Because of disappointments early on, I developed a habit of lowering my expectations as a way of protecting myself from getting hurt or let down.  If something great came across my path, I hesitated to embrace it; if it didn’t come the hard way, I thought I didn’t deserve for it to come.  Then, once something good DID happen, I would expect it to fall apart.

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, as they say.

The option of praying and seeking God in my situations rarely crossed my mind.

The longer I walk with God, the more he has debunked this warped negative thinking.  A healthy relationship with my Creator means TRUSTING Him and EXPECTING Him to show up with answers when I need Him.  Jesus, who’s not too good to be true, rather, who IS TRUTH, sets before me a path for success.  According to Matthew 7, when we seek, we will find.  If we ask for bread, God will not give us a stone.  He gives good gifts to his children.  He doesn’t put forth pie in the sky, pipe dreams or people in order to tease us or to set us up for failure.

I’m not suggesting we act on every whim or that we use poor judgement and then expect God to bail us out when we get into trouble.  What I AM suggesting is that when we are walking closely with the Lord and praying for him to act in certain areas, we shouldn’t hesitate to trust him when he comes through with a solution.  No matter what it is.  Sometimes he comes with an answer quickly, and other times we have to wait patiently.  Often, his answer requires obedience in a difficult area or it may have consequences we do not like, but we can ALWAYS trust him.

The key to knowing whether what is before us is from God or not is learning SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT. 1 Cor 2:14 says, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”