Tweets, Tozer, and Trust

[featured_image]I’ve been tweeting off and on for awhile now. I don’t have a big following so far – about 800 or so people. And I’m approaching about 2,000 tweets now.

I’m still trying to figure out how useful it is to share my thoughts, blog posts, activities, hopes, dreams, etc. on twitter. Of course, I hope whatever I choose to tweet will have some level of impact.

The simplest way for me to measure impact is to consider which tweets are favorited or retweeted by others. As I look at my list of favorites, I possibly find about one tweet a month that I choose to favorite. In terms of retweets, I probably retweet something about once each week.

Recently I retweeted tweets from my friends Deb Beddoe and Bob Logan.

Today, my colleague Ben Morrell favorited, tweeted and blogged about one of my tweets. I’d love to reveal to you that he did this because I was so profound – but that’s not true. He was impacted by a quote from A.W. Tozer that I had read and tweeted.

I love what Tozer said –
“Whom God would use greatly He will hurt deeply.”

I wish that this wasn’t true, but I’ve seen it again and again in many people’s lives. Take for example Ben Morrell as he struggles with the reality of cancer. You can read his thoughts about this on his blog…

I am reaching a really strange place (it seems to me) where I am becoming OK with having cancer. (It’s not a fight I’ll stop, mind you) I prayed, and asked fervently for healing in the past five years and honestly I wonder if I should have been praying for complete trust in God instead. It’s like getting put on a roller coaster. You will get jerked around, go up, go down, maybe even do a barrel roll, but when you’re praying for it to be over, it’s not like the ride is just going to stop and let you off. There is a course. You have to have faith that the designer of the ride went to school, got an engineering degree, did all the right math, etc etc and that the ride, despite being scary as all-get-out is going to bring you to the end in one piece. (This analogy isn’t perfect, don’t take it too far…) The point here is that I’m on a course that God has set me on. Do I like it? Would I choose it again? Would I give it to anyone else? Does it matter what I think? I told God many times, in many places, “Send me. I’ll do what you want me to do. I’ll obey you.” This is God saying, “Ok. Here’s a lesson in trust.” 

I want to thank Ben for his openness in sharing his thoughts with me – with us. I’ve got a lot to learn in this area of trust in my life. Am I willing to accept the challenges of life as an opportunity to grow in my trust of God?