Thursday, February 07, 2013

In Whom Can One Trust?




          Isaiah 26:4 "Trust in the LORD forever, for in YAH, the LORD, is everlasting strength."


Here in America, our coins have an inscription that reads: "In God We Trust". It does not say "In the Government We Trust", for a specific reason. Governments are run by fallible men; whereas as Christians, we put our hope and trust in a Sovereign God. As the above verse says: "Trust in the LORD forever, for in YAH,....is everlasting strength". When we rely on Christ for our every need, He supplies our hearts and minds with strength to keep going. Psalm 26:14 points out that "...He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD". In most cases, I believe, waiting and trusting go hand in hand. To wait, one must trust that the outcomes will be for God's glory. And to trust in Someone, we must sometimes wait for an outcome.

2 Corinthians 3:4-5 says: "And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,...". We can not master our tasks on our own strength. We can not rely on our own wisdom to help us get through a test. We can not guarantee that we will wake in the morning. Only by the grace of God, can we get through life without worrying what is behind every bend or what lies before us over the next hill. Valleys will always be the lowest spots in our lives, but sometimes, the most valuable lessons can be learned by walking through them. The beauty in the tragedy of walking through it though, is that we do not walk alone. We have Someone who will walk with us if we only trust Him. As a familiar verse says in Psalm 23:4 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." Clinging to Christ while we're either in the midst of trouble or when life is going very well, is a constant need. It's something that we must constantly do in order that we don't slip and fall on the way.

The reason that I chose this picture of the winding river for this blog post was as an illustration. You might even remember the song "As the Deer" lyrics which are the following:

"As the deer panteth for the water
    So my soul longeth after You
You alone are my heart's desire
    And I long to worship You"


Just as the deer longs for the cool water to quench its physical thirst, so we lean on God to quench our Spiritual thirst. By trusting that He knows best for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11-13), can we fully be at peace about our jobs, our family problems, school, and other issues. Proverbs 3:5-6 can sum everything in this blog post: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths". When we acknowledge that we can not simply breathe or wake in the morning without God's hand of blessing, He will direct our next steps. When we cry out to Him for direction in our lives, He will come to our aid. If you "Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." (Psalm 37:5), God's saying that when we make our first desire to serve Him whatever the situation and to commit our beings to His care, He will be there with a road map. God gives us His word; our road map. When we have hundreds of choices to make and ask for guidance, He promises to give us an answer. He never promises that he'll always say "Yes!", as He can see ahead; we can't. This is why we put our trust in Him and not in our own understanding. He's had the answers since the beginning of time.  

I'd like to sum up my thoughts with this thought: The world tries to make it easy for us to believe in our own strength and talents, but we must work extra hard to put our trust in God as to resist that lie.

Psalm 84:12 "O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You!"

God bless,
Julianna