What does it mean to fully trust in God?

As a very young girl, my daughter was very afraid of the deeper water to say petrified would be an understatement. She was just fine playing in the shallows, near the safety of the beach. As a dad, I wanted her to overcome her fear of the deeper water. So, with a life vest securely strapped on, I hold her by the hand, slowly venturing out. As she gets about waist deep, she begins to become a little fearful, having not been here before. Soon she’s climbing up my leg, wanting me to carry her. I gently pick her up and continue to walk into the deeper waters. With each step away from the shore, the tighter she clings. We soon get to a point where I can dip down, placing her deeper into the water. She screams in protest, desperately wanting to return to the safety of the shore. I ignore her protesting and continue to hold her tightly with the water at her shoulders. We bob up and down, spin in circles, I’m teaching her to be more comfortable in the deeper water. As we continue, I slowly loosen my grip, allowing the life vest to keep her buoyant. It’s not long now that she’s bobbing up and down on her own fully trusting the life vest.

Many years later, my daughter and I are now SCUBA certified, we’ve been SCUBA diving to depths of 100 feet on many occasions. We have seen God’s creation from a completely different perspective, a perspective that not many people get to see. My daughter had learned to trust that her father loved her and would not do anything to harm her. Once she overcame her fears by being dragged out into the deep, she was able to experience not only the joys of swimming but SCUBA diving as well.

James 1:3-4

"Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

God deals with us in a similar way. He is building our faith and trust in Him. Every step into the deeper waters; he has a purpose. Every heartache: He has a purpose. Every difficulty: He has a purpose. Every failure: He has a purpose. We cry, we kick, we scream in protest; we desperately want to return to the safety of the shore. We cling tightly to our Father, begging Him to take us out of the waters. But He doesn’t, He takes us deeper still and we ask, “Why?” Sometimes He answers why, sometimes He doesn’t, but He has us securely in His hand and nothing can separate us from Him.

C.H. Spurgeon describes it this way “The love of Christ in its sweetness, its fullness, its greatness, its faithfulness passes all human comprehension. Where can we find the words to describe His matchless, His unparalleled love toward the children of men? It is so vast and boundless that, as the swallow simply skims the water without diving into its depths, so all descriptive words merely touch the surface, while immeasurable depths lie below. Well might the poet say, O love, thou fathomless abyss!”

Will you dawdle on the shores of life, or will you be the SCUBA diver, experiencing the immeasurable depths of God’s love?