Summary
Do you believe that the Lord is trustworthy? We so often lack a deep and abiding sense of trust in God’s goodness and that can really hinder your healing journey. Danielle Bean helps bring this truth from your head to your heart by sharing reflections on the words of Scripture and Catholic tradition.
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Reflective Study Guide Questions
“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope”
Jeremiah 29:11
1. How do you feel praying the words of the Our Father “Thy will be done”? Can you say it wholeheartedly? What is holding you back?
2. Can you think of a time where your will and God’s will did not line up? Do you see how it worked together for your good?
3. Danielle shared several quotes in her talk. Which stood out to you the most? What do you think the Lord wants to tell you through these words?
- “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
- “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
- “Jesus I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.” (The Surrender Novena)
4. What did you think about this form of praying with Scripture? What will you take away from this talk into your daily life?
Text: He Has a Plan, The Lord is Trustworthy
Hi, I’m Danielle Bean. Welcome to this session where we’re going to be talking about the fact that the Lord is trustworthy. That’s the title of this talk. The Lord is Trustworthy. And so if you’re hearing that and your first response is to think a little bit, is He? Because you’re going through something hard in your life right now, welcome to humanity. We all struggle with this and we’re going to talk about it here. Let’s get started with a prayer.
Opening Prayer
In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord, we give you thanks for this time together. We ask you to inspire each of us with the message that you want us to hear about the fact that you’re trustworthy. Help us to trust in your goodness Lord, to see your goodness, the ways that you provide for us each and every day. Help us to be encouraged by the past Lord, and give us the grace we need to heal from our wounds and move forward in a beautiful and loving relationship with you. Help us to model our trust after Our Lady and follow all of the saints on our path toward heaven. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Trusting the Lord
Okay, today we are talking about this idea that the Lord is trustworthy. And if you struggle with that, that’s a very common thing. Sometimes we struggle with trusting God. This is sort of a lifelong project for every one of us, God calls us to trust in Him. And yet time and time again we fail in that trust. We struggle in that trust, we get discouraged. We feel abandoned. If you’re going through something difficult right now or if you’re recovering from something difficult, if you are here to heal and you’re wondering if you can trust in the goodness of God to give you the grace that you need to heal, I want to encourage you in that here today. So it’s hard because we can read words like the Lord is trustworthy. We can read beautiful words of scripture and we can know that they’re true, like we know it on an intellectual level, like up here in our heads, we know that’s true. I know the Lord is trustworthy. I know He’s good. I know He wants good things for me. And yet the challenge is to have that truth travel from up here in your head all the way down into your heart, where you fully embrace that truth, where it becomes part of your identity to know the goodness of God, to trust in His providence.
The saints have been great examples to us in this, especially our Mother Mary. We can model our lives after her. But I like to reflect on the fact that when His disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, our Lord taught them the Our Father and the killer line in the our Father right is thy will be done. Such a simple prayer. Such a simple prayer. And yet so many of us struggle to pray that prayer and actually mean those words when we pray them. But I like to take inspiration and encouragement from the fact that our Lord gives us this beautiful example in the night before, his passion and his death when he knew He was going to suffer terribly and He knew He was going to die, we see this beautiful example of Him, Him praying in the garden and He gives us two parts in that prayer. There are two parts in that prayer.
Lord, Take This Cup From Me
And the first part is, Lord, take this cup from me. And how many of us can understand that can relate to that? That might be where you are in your prayer life right now for something that’s hard for you, something you are suffering from and maybe have been suffering from for a long time. You’re saying, Lord, take this away. I don’t want it. And that’s a very human thing. And Jesus was fully human. He’s fully God, but He’s also fully human. And we see that there that night in the garden where He prays that prayer, take this cup from me. We don’t want it, suffering is evil. God doesn’t want it for you. And yet he can bring such beautiful and good things out of our suffering. And that’s the next part of the prayer where Jesus then doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t say, take this cup from me, and that’s it. And it’s okay though if that’s where you are in your prayer life right now.
But he prays the second part of the prayer, which is not my will be done, but thy will be done. There were those tricky words. Again, thy will be done. We’re all struggling to trust. We’re all in different places on our path toward heaven, struggling to believe in the goodness of God. And it’s easy to say you believe in the goodness of God when everything’s going well in your life, but it’s those times when we struggle, when we feel challenged, when something you would never choose for yourself happens and you suffer great loss or great pain or you feel disillusioned and things don’t work out the way that you plan them during those times, it’s especially challenging to trust in the goodness of God to wonder. It’s normal to wonder what is God’s plan here? Is He good? Does He want good things for me? Is He trustworthy? Well, I like to look at a couple of different scripture passages when we’re talking about trusting in the Lord. I’m going to read them here for you.
Jeremiah 29:11
The first one is from Jeremiah Twenty Nine, Eleven. This might be one that you’re familiar with. “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.” This is one of those beautiful promises that God gives us in scripture. Plans to prosper you, not to harm you. And at the most basic level, sometimes when we’re struggling to trust in God, that’s where we are. We’re wondering, does God have plans for me to prosper or plans to harm me? He knows this, and this is such a beautiful and clearly stated promise in scripture. I know the plans that I have for you. And it’s so hard for us because we don’t know the plans and all of our lives in every moment of our lives, God is calling us to grow and trusting Him, calling on us to turn to Him and believe in his goodness even when we’re going through something very difficult. And this promise is such a beautiful promise. If this is something that’s speaking to you right now, I want to encourage you, go and look this up. It’s Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, verse eleven.
Maybe you want to write it out, put it on a sticky note, put it on your bathroom mirror or put it somewhere that you’re going to see it in your kitchen or some other part of your home to remind you of this beautiful promise of God because we need that reminder because you’re very vulnerable when you’re going through something difficult, the evil one knows that. And he knows that you are very vulnerable to believing that God doesn’t want good things for you. Just like he tempted eve in the garden to believe that God didn’t want good things for her, tempted her to choose otherwise, tempted her to distrust in the goodness of the Lord. He tempts us to, he’s working in the world today, even when we don’t see him, he’s very present. And you are vulnerable when you’re suffering something, when you feel discouraged or disillusioned, when you’re wondering what is the plan here, you can’t see the plan. You are vulnerable to that temptation, to distrust in the goodness of God. So remind yourself especially of this clear and beautiful promise that we have in scripture that can remind you that God is good and He has a plan, a plan for you to prosper, not for your harm.
Proverbs 3:5-6
All right, the next passage from scripture that I want to share with regard to trusting in the Lord is Proverbs three verses five through six. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways, submit to Him and He will make your path straight.” I love that too. Such a beautiful instruction for us. “Lean not on your own understanding.” That’s the part that really stands out to me. Leaning not on our own understanding is a very difficult thing to do because this is how we live. This is how we know what what’s true in the world is we experience it through our senses. You see something, you hear something, you touch something and you know it’s true. You know it’s real. And yet God is calling on us to lean not on our own understanding, but believe in Him, trust in Him, trust in His goodness that He’s going to provide good things for us.
So that’s another passage that you might want to consider writing down or spending some time just reading slowly and carefully and praying with it, especially if you are struggling, especially if you are trying to heal and not feeling like you’re making progress there, not feeling like you’re able to move past, whether it’s physical healing you need and emotional healing or spiritual healing. We’re focused on healing in this retreat here. And I think that’s such a beautiful thing because it’s something that every human being needs. Sometimes we talk about healing and things might be going pretty well in your life. And so you might be tempted to think, I don’t need any healing. And yet we all do. We’ve all suffered in some ways. We’re all broken and wounded in some ways. And not that we need to focus on the brokenness and the woundedness, but we need to focus on Jesus who brings us the healing that we need, who makes us whole.
The Surrender Novena
Alright, next I want to talk about the surrender novena. Are you familiar with this beautiful prayer? Because this is something that has made a huge difference in my life with regard to trusting in Jesus, trusting that God wants good things for me, and really just going deeper in that personal connection with the Lord and knowing that he wants good for me and continually healing from past things, from current things that are hurting me, but also just hearing the words of Jesus. So let me just tell you a little bit in case you’re not familiar with it, uh, about the surrender novena. It is, it’s written down by Dondolindo Ruotolo who was, he was a spiritual advisor to Padre Pio. And he is a servant of God, he’s not a saint, but there are different stages and steps on the path to sainthood and servant of God, I believe is the first one. And so he’s recognized as a good and holy person and he had these private revelations from Jesus. And in these revelations, our Lord revealed to him the words of this novena. Each day the novena is structured like this.
A novena, as you probably know, is nine days of prayer. And usually it’s for a particular intention. But what I love about this novena is that it really is just kind of teaching us to grow and trusting God. So whatever it is that you are bringing to, to the Lord that you want to ask for, whatever you need healing from, he already knows about it. And what he’s calling us to do is bring it to him and trust that he’s going to take care of it. And those are some of the words in the novena. So in the novena each day it’s very short. There’s just a, a couple of paragraphs which is the words that Dondolindo Ruotolo wrote down that Jesus revealed to him. And so it’s words from Jesus. And then the second part is just repeating ten times, “Jesus, I surrender myself to you take care of everything.”
That simple. And now I don’t know about you, but when I first was introduced to this novena and I was looking at the words of it and looking especially at those words, take care of everything, telling our Lord to take care of everything, I kind of hesitated a little bit because there was a part of me that was like, well, wait a minute, don’t I? Don’t, I need to do some stuff. Like we rely on our own understanding. We rely on our own work and God is calling us to not do that. He’s calling on us to rely on Him and Him only, not other people, not our own skills and abilities, not our money or our social status or our work or our family.
A Call for Trust
He’s calling on us to trust in Him first and foremost. And so many of these other things, these are good things that He gives us in our life, but they sometimes we we’re tempted to put them in the place of God. We trust in them instead of God, maybe you trust in your husband and or wife and that’s a beautiful thing, but are you putting your trust in them first before you’re trust in God? Are they where you are seeking all consolation? Are they, you’re the person you’re turning to meet all of your needs because we need to be turning to God with everything that we need. And so the words of this novena are a little bit challenging. They’re a little bit challenging for me. And I’ve made a practice of praying it, not just when I have a specific intention, but I try to make a practice of praying it continually. So pray through nine days and just start again because I find I continually need that reminder to grow and trust in God. And I love that.
So this is private revelation, so you don’t have to believe that these are the words of Jesus, but I do believe it. And I think these are beautiful words that are a beautiful reminder to us of the ways that He’s continually and in a loving and gentle way, calling us closer to Him, reminding us of His goodness.
A Challenge From the Lord
So I’m going to share just, two different passages from the surrender, Novena, just to point out exactly how personal and beautiful this is. So the first one, “Jesus says, surrender to me does not mean to fret to be upset or to lose hope, nor does it mean offering to me a worried prayer, asking me to follow you and change your worry into prayer. It is against the surrender deeply against it to worry, to be nervous and to desire to think about the consequences of anything. It is like the confusion that children feel when they ask their mother to see to their needs and then try to take care of those needs for themselves so that their childlike efforts get in their mother’s way.”
Isn’t that just beautiful and so personal? And I don’t know about you, but I see myself in some of what he’s saying here to, it’s against this surrender. He’s saying, this surrender that he’s calling us to, it’s against this surrender to be nervous, to fret, to worry, to think about the consequences of anything. Isn’t that challenging? Because of course we think about the consequences of things. Of course we worry about the consequences of things.
So this is a very challenging thing to read. And yet there’s just this loving gentleness that’s inherent in these words coming from our Lord where He’s inviting us and helping us to see that we get in our own way, that He wants good things for us. But we’re getting in our own way, like children who ask their mother to see their, to their needs and then go about trying to see to those needs themselves. Isn’t that what so many of us do? I don’t know about you, but I do, I definitely do. I’ll pray about something and then I’ll act as if it’s all on me and I’ve got to figure it out and I will push and I will push and ultimately I end up in a place that’s not what God wants for me. I know I did this in a, in a very specific way, several years ago now when my husband was looking for a job and I found what I decided was the perfect one for him. And I spent weeks, months maybe just praying over this, praying that he, in a very specific way, he would get this specific job. And I pushed him to apply for it. He got the job and I was like, you know, praise God, my an my answer to my prayer. It’s right here.
And that situation, that job situation went on to blow up in our faces. It was a terrible place for him. There were terrible people there that did terrible things, he did not last there long. And it was ultimately a really discouraging experience. And I remember afterwards just looking at it and thinking, feeling almost, you know, kicked in the teeth by God saying why? Like, I prayed for this and you gave us this. And then it all blew up in our faces. And I remember, you know, it took me a long time, but coming to realize that my praying very specifically was almost like, not like a real prayer, it was like bullying God with my own will, trying to tell Him, you know, make this my will into your will. We get in our own way like that.
So that experience was a real lesson for me in learning. Not that we can’t pray for specific things, but we need to pray for them in a way that is detached in a way from specific outcomes. So like He’s telling us here, don’t worry about the consequences of anything. Well, we do worry about the consequences of many things and we are very attached to specific outcomes sometimes.
So the challenge here is our Lord is inviting us, encouraging us to see that he’s going to take care of everything. He wants us to let go of that sense of control, the way that we think we need to lean on our own understanding the way that we feel like we need to orchestrate everything so that it works out the way that we want it to. And He’s inviting us to let go of that. And He’s inviting us to let go of that not because he wants to do bad things for us, because he wants to give us good things. He says like children are turning to their mother for what they need. A mother provides what her children need. She wants to do that. Our Lord. How much more so does our Lord want to provide for our needs? He loves us so much and he can do all things. So it really is very freeing in the end to turn to our Lord with this very simple and childlike prayer of I surrender to you, take care of everything I find I do need to repeat that. So it’s a beautiful part of the, the surrender novena that we do repeat that ten times on each day of the novena.
God Wants to Give Us Good Things
Alright, there’s just one more passage from the Novena that I want to share with you. And in this section of the novena, Jesus says this, “Close your eyes and let yourself be carried away on the flowing current of my grace. Close your eyes and do not think of the present turning your thoughts away from the future, just as you would from temptation repose in me, believing in my goodness. And I promise you by my love, that if you say you take care of it, I will take care of it all. I will console you, liberate you, and guide you.”
What beautiful hope filled words we see here. God wants to give us good things. And the line that stands out to me, and when I prayed I’m challenged by is this idea of turning away from thoughts of the future as you would turn away from temptation. So I’ve been working on, and this, this novena helps me to do that. Working on seeing those, that temptation to worry, that temptation to think about or focus on the future trying to, you know, control how it’s going to all turn out. Seeing that as the temptation that it is, because it’s a temptation to not trust in the goodness of God. And it’s a temptation to rely on our own understanding. It pulls us away from this beautiful act of surrender that our Lord is calling us to let yourself be carried away on the flowing current of my grace. What a beautiful thing that is. We can find peace and we can find healing in that kind of surrender to the Lord.
And ultimately, we’re all works in progress. If you’re not there yet, neither am I. This is something we need to work on. And I’m so encouraged by the fact that we can, we can come together and we can remind ourselves of these truths. And if you have people in your life that share your faith that you can talk with about these things, I want to encourage you to do that because it’s so helpful to remind yourself, but also to be that instrument that God can use to remind others that He is good and He wants good things for us. He just wants us to surrender to Him first.
And let’s remember those two parts of Jesus’s prayer in the garden because it’s very human. And this is a very simple way that we can imitate him and try to model our prayer after His make it our own, where it’s take this cup from me completely, okay to ask God to take away things that are hurting you.But then the second part of the prayer, not my will, but thy will be done fully recognizing that we don’t know all things we don’t understand, but that God does and He wants very good things for us. So I’m going to be praying for you as you’re going through this retreat. I’m going to be praying for your peace and your healing, and I’ll be praying that you can grow in trust even if you’re not perfect at it. Yet Jesus is inviting you to grow in trusting Him more and more perfectly.
About Danielle Bean
Danielle Bean is creator and host of Girlfriends, an award-winning podcast that supports and encourages Catholic women from all walks of life. She is author of ten books, including You Are Enough, and Giving thanks and Letting Go, and Whisper: Finding God in the Everyday. Danielle has a special heart for families and she encourages others to find humor in daily challenges and the joy God intends for every one of us. It is in her primary vocation to marriage and motherhood that Danielle finds the inspiration for all of her work. Subscribe to her Substack and learn more at DanielleBean.com.