Trusting God
In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers’ daily devotional on May 31 says, “Put your trust in the Lord for he will surely deliver you. Therefore trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. Do you believe him? He is faithful to His Word. He will direct the path of those who put their trust in him.” In trusting in the Lord, we will understand that which he has entrusted to us: His gift of Holy Spirit that we may be equiped to accomplish His purpose in this life and the next.
The things of this world are uncertain and untrustworthy. In this world there are competing factions, competing interests, and competing sources of information. Trusting in the Lord means to place our confidence in something beyond the powers of this world. The only source on which our hopes are founded is the one who is faithful and true: The Lord God Jehovah.
The devotional book, Come Away my Beloved says, “how often has God called us to put our trust and confidence in Him? We can’t know if we are truly trusting in Him until we have been tested and tried. In the midst of panic and pandemic where nothing is under our control, we will find that God is faithful to His Word. In times of crisis when we trust in Him, committing ourselves into His holy hands, then we can rest assured that He will keep us in His own intensive care.”
According to Chambers, “it’s much easier to do something, to busy ourselves working for God instead of trusting and believing in Him.” When the centurion came to Jesus and pleaded, “Lord, please heal my servant who is at home sick with palsy and in terrible agony,” Jesus said, “I’ll come and heal him.” Then the centurion said with a heart of humility, “I’m not worthy that you should come under my roof. I’m a man in authority like you. I know what it means to speak with authority for others to act. Just speak the word and my servant will be healed. Just say it and it shall be done.” Jesus marveled and said, “I have not seen such faith, no not in Israel.”
Salvation itself is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. God sent His word through his prophets, priests, and scribes to bring a remnant of Israel to the point of believing-faith. God worked patiently with Israel for one purpose: your redemption and mine. Mary a descendant of David’s lineage heard the angel Gabriel’s message that she would give birth to the Messiah. She believed the word of God and declared in faith, “Be it unto me according to Thy word.”
In John 2:24-25 Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. However, he did not commit himself to the people because he knew what was in the heart of man. He understood the sinful nature everyone inherited from Adam. Yet Jesus was not bitter because he put his trust not in man, but in the faithful word of his Heavenly Father.
The Bible says that all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Because of our sinful nature, Jesus said, there is none righteous, no not one. Men trust their feelings instead of the truth of the Word of God. The lies of this world have indoctrinated men of this world to be suspicious, cautious, wary, and untrusting.
However, our need is obedience to God according to His word. He alone is worthy. He alone is trustworthy. The things of this world and the men of this world will let you down. However, God is faithful to his word. God said through his Prophet in Isaiah 55, “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in that thing where unto I sent it.”
According to Chambers’ devotional, Jesus said to his disciples before his ascension, tarry ye here in Jerusalem until you are clothed with power from on high not many days hence. Since this prophecy was fulfilled at the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the power of the Holy Spirit has empowered Christ followers to serve Him. When God’s needs are met in Christians’ service to Him, then His purpose will be fulfilled through His believers.
His trust is that he has given us his son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Our purpose is that His life would be manifest in our mortal flesh. According to Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
God calls a minister to pastor his church when the Man of God is ready for the challenge of ministry. A minister is one who “runs to serve the Lord.” When a man spends time in His word, God will work in him, with him, and through him to will and to do fo His good pleasure.
An excerpt from “Faith in the World,” a devotion from the Puritan prayer book The Valley of Vision says:
“The world is artful to entrap. It approaches in fascinating guise, extends many a guilded bait, presents many a charming face. Let my faith scan every painted bauble, and escape every bewitching snare in a victory that overcomes all things.
In my duties give me firmness, energy, zeal, devotion to thy cause, courage in thy name, love as a working grace, and all commensurate with my trust.
Let faith stride forth in giant power, and love respond with energy in every act.
Thy Word is full of promises, ….fruit of refreshing flavor when culled by faith.
May I be made rich in its riches, be strong in its power, be happy in its joy…
Lord increase my faith…..”
That we may trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not unto our own understanding,
That we may be to the praise of the glory of His grace,
Your brother in Christ,
Michael
