In2theRiver

Good morning from Managua, Nicaragua!

I am currently in Nicaragua, which I will write about in an upcoming post, but it did make me think about something: what does it look like to choose to sit down in the chair? If that question seems strange, check out my last post, The Trust Process. In that post, I looked at the process of assessing whether or not to trust someone or something through the lens of sitting in a chair. At the end of the post, I mentioned one critical step of the trust process: you must eventually sit down. Assessing the trustworthiness of a chair is wise, but if you never sit you are never actually trusting.

The same could be said for trusting a person, or more importantly, the God who created us. Going through a trust assessment process is critical but you do eventually have to choose where to place your trust. Ultimately, I have found that only God can be trusted with our self-worth and the outcomes of our life. Only He, through a relationship with Jesus, provides the foundation we need to experience the life for which we were created.

So why did traveling to Nicaragua make me think about what it looks like to actually place your trust in God? As you may know, in 2011, I felt a prompt to move to Nicaragua for three years. I share the story in detail in my book, Hope Realized, but to cut to the chase, I ended up living in Nicaragua from 2012 to 2015. It was an incredible time and a big step of trust for me. My life will never be the same because I was willing to trust that God had my best interest in mind when He placed a calling in my heart to live and work in Nicaragua. It would be easy to turn that step of trust into a formula. In other words, truly trusting God looks like moving to a faraway land. Fortunately, and unfortunately, that is not the case.

Have you ever seen someone who appears to be living the life you desire and thought, “I just need to be exactly like them”? Whether consciously or unconsciously, we begin to model our lives after this person. I have done this a number of times in my life. I begin to try to do what they do, act how they act, and more or less idolize them and the life they live. There is just one problem: I am not them. As much as I try to be them, it never quite seems to produce the life I desire. Why? Well, because it is probably not the life for which you were created.

Does this mean it is never good to learn from the lives of others? Of course not! I would highly recommend incorporating practices and habits from the lives of people who seem to be living lives of significance. This starts with learning from the life of Jesus. My life is so much richer because of what I have learned from others, beginning with Jesus. The problem begins when we move from learning from others to trying to be someone we were never created to be.

For example, you could think, “James moved to Nicaragua and it changed his life, so I just need to do the same thing.” Is this true? It’s hard to say. Yes, there is a possibility that moving to Nicaragua would be the right step for you, but it wouldn’t be only because it was right for me. In many ways, taking this step only because I did is more trusting a formula than trusting God.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn from my step of trust. Instead of assuming you need to do exactly what I did, you could learn that living a life of trust means living with open hands. It means being willing to follow God wherever He leads, whether it is moving to Nicaragua or serving someone in your neighborhood. Is this messier than just following the formula of doing exactly what I did? In many ways yes, but it will actually produce the life for which you desire.

You see, I believe God created you on purpose and with a purpose. There are many principles that we all can learn from and incorporate in our lives. They will help us live better lives. But this does not negate the fact that you are unique creation of God who is uniquely equipped to live the life for which you were created. Trusting God looks like learning from others and then asking God what it looks like to apply it to your life. It is in taking this step of trust in God that you will experience the life for which you were created.

This has been the case for me. May 2026 be the year that you take a step of trust into the life God uniquely created you to live!

James Belt

Click here​ for more resources to help you bring hope to others, including more information about my book, Hope Realized!