Trusting God Is Like Riding A Bike by Casey Michelson

[5] Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
   and do not lean on your own understanding.
[6] In all your ways acknowledge him,
  and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6


Who is God? He is so, SO big, and He knows all about all of us! How can we even
imagine Him? How do we start to know and love and trust Him?

Well... trusting God is kind of like riding a bike. Life makes it feel like sometimes
we’re riding uphill and into the wind (when it’s hard), and other times like we’re racing 
downhill without even having to pedal (when it’s easy). Just like when we’re first learning 
to ride a bike, we lose our balance, fall over, and make mistakes a lot while learning to 
trust God. But He doesn’t ask us to be perfect. Actually, He knows there will be times we 
fall, so that’s why He’s always there to catch us. When we fall, God brings us closer to 
Him. All He wants is for us to get back on the bike: He wants us to keep going and keep 
learning to trust Him more and more. Until, one day, we finally do it!! As we put our trust 
in Jesus, the Holy Spirit fills us with the same excitement we get when we ride without 
our training wheels for the first time!

But, even after we’ve learned how to ride, the path to following Jesus isn’t always
an easy one. There are broken spots in the road sometimes that are there to try to throw 
us off the bike. Jesus guides us in the right direction through the brokenness if we let 
Him help us steer. Some of those bumps in the road can look like the temptation to sin. 
Maybe that’s saying something mean to our brother or sister or not listening to our mom 
and dad or taking things that aren’t ours. When we do those things, we feel bad about 
it–we get hurt by sin just like we get hurt by falling off a bike. This is hard, but it’s also 
helpful in seeing that we can’t steer through our lives as well as God can. He knows the 
path better than we do, so we should always be learning how to lean on Him for 
directions and not ourselves.

For this, I pray: “God, we want to know You. We want to trust You. We want to love
You. Thank You for Your grace and forgiveness as we learn to do these things like You 
perfectly do. Please guide us through the parts of life that are hard to pedal through, and
help us to be closer to You in all that we do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”