Learning to trust in Jesus…

Trust in Jesus!

As Christians, we are instructed in the Bible to walk by faith, and not by sight!

Whereas children seem to do this by nature, and thus Jesus said that unless we become as children, ourselves, in this respect, then we won’t experience, and nor will we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18:3).

The truth is, it seems the older we get, the less resilient we are to change; and the more we have been beat up by life, and have suffered because of it, the less likely we are to trust others… and this all too often even includes God.

What Oswald Chambers is saying here, about letting go of our perceived rights and trust God to make a decision for us, reminds me of the story of the man who was mountain climbing, using only his hands, and as he had scaled up the side of this precipice, and was many 100’s of feet up in the air, he lost his grip and slipped.

Fortunate enough, he was able to reach out and grab a hold of a branch that was protruding from the side of the rock; or else if he hadn’t, he would have fallen to certain death!

Not being a religious man, and not having developed a relationship with God yet, like many of us, before we we were saved, he only prayed when he got into trouble.

These being one of those times, with him now literally hanging between life and death, and with no one else is around… in his desperation, he cries out to God for help!

He says God, “Are you there?“

And God says, “Yes, I am here.“

He then yells, “God can you help me?“

To which God says, “Yes, I can help you.“

“What must I do?“, said the man.

God said…. “Let go!“

To which the man responded… “Is there anyone else up there?“

Sometimes, this is the case with many of us, where we find ourselves in positions where we don’t know what to do or where to turn; and God is telling us also to “Let go, and let God!“

There is no easy way to do this, other than to just let go, and trust God to keep His word.

We are told in 1 John 5:14: “This is the confidence we have: that if we ask anything according to his will, then we know that he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—in whatever we ask—then we know that we have what we have asked of him.”

We first need to base our faith upon some promise in God’s Word, and then we have to trust Him to bring it to pass.

As long as we continue to sit on the fence of indecision, we are then double-minded, and James says let not that man think that he will receive anything from God. Selah

Sufficient to say, this faith walk is easier said than done… and so it pays for us to learn to faithe (or to trust God) in the smaller trials, before we are faced with something more serious… that sometimes can mean the difference between life and death!

As Andrae’ Crouch put it: “Through it All, I learned to Trust in Jesus!” Selah

Shalom,

Skip Barland