Trust and obey, What does that mean to you?

I love the song, Trust and Obey, it is one of my favorites and has been for as long as I can remember.  I think it is probably a favorite of many a person.  I wonder how many of us listen to the words as we sing them from our hearts and souls.  What is trust? and do we obey?  I know that in my life when I have had hardships I have gone to the Lord, but then so do a lot of people, even those who don't really believe do that.  Hardships tends to bring out the "belief" in God more than anything else.  I worked at the sheriff's office for many years, and I can't count the amount of men in jail, and some of the ones we dealt with were federal prisoners going away for a long time to a federal prison, not a nice place; who had found the Lord.  They found the Lord, read their bibles and talked to the Preachers that would come along to study with them.  I had an opportunity to speak with one of the Preachers once, his name was Frank Williams, and he was the most faithful Preacher I dealt with when I as at the sheriff's office.  He never missed a Sunday, he came rain or shine, other Preachers came and went, some came for their members but Preacher Frank came because God had called him to minister to the prisoners and he was fulfilling his obligation to the Lord.  I asked him how many of the men he spoke with were really interested in the Lord for real, he said he had been ministering for years, much longer than I had been at the jail, and he said if he found one in a hundred that continued their faith in God, after they left the jail or prison, he felt he had done his job.  So praying to the Lord in times of need and distress is something many a soul will do but how many trust and obey the Lord on a daily basis.  Do you trust the Lord when you are having great and fortune filled times in you life?  The bible says "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" in Mark 1:25 and again in Matthew 19:24.  Does that mean that the prosperous person thinks they have no need for the Lord and they can do it on their own?  Does it mean they forgot to praise the Lord for their good and prosperous lives?  Do they believe? Do they trust? or is it so hard for them to obey?

I know in my life I have had hills and valley on the path of my belief. The young person in me wavered between believing, and doing as the Lord ask, and being rebellious and doing it only with the Lord somewhere in the back of my mind. I believed in my authority and not the Lords.  I have heard it said that the older a person gets the more they feel the need to seek out the Lord.  How sad that so many only seek his love in their waning years.  Is that the fear of God and death speaking to them?  I have always had a love relationship for the Lord, I have never once questioned that he is, that he is my Lord and I love him, but I have sinned many at time in my life and fallen short of obeying him.  I have trusted him without failing, but to obey is much harder for me.  The song says to trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.  I, as an aging person, am no different than so many before me, I seek out the Lord more fervently.  I am finding such joy in the Lord, and in the process, that I did not or could not find in my youth.  I have read my bible many times, not as much as I should, but many a time in my life, but the reading was never as joyous as it is now. I didn't find the I wonderousness of the Lord I sought then, as I do know.  I used to have problems and would open the book willy nilly knowing the Lord would lead me to the words he wanted me to hear, and the solutions I sought, but did I hear the words the way he intended me to hear them?  Did I believe the way he wanted me too?  Did I obey the way he wanted me too?  I don't have answers for those questions and maybe, or mostly likely, it doesn't matter, the past we can not change, the present is where we decide what we are to do next and the future is in God's hands. 

I have learned so much in the last year, God has worked so many blessings into my life.  I have learned that it matters not what others think of you, what others say of or about you,  what they do to you or what society in general does, matters not.  We are to live on this earth but we don't have to be of it.  We have only to answer to God, trust and obey, and his Grace will fill our lives.  I have been blessed with so much this year, and to the unaware, it is of naught, but to me it is so much. Blessings are of the soul and don't have anything to do with material things, because in the end can anyone, ever, past or present, take anything that isn't of the soul with them..... tomorrow.