Trust God!

"The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes. He trusts something that can't help him at all. Yet he cannot bring himself to ask, 'Is this idol that I'm holding in my right hand a lie?' " Isaiah 44:20

In my first days as a believer, I was deeply blessed to have a pastor who not only preached His word, but lived a life that embodied it as well. As a young believer, I was encountering a completely different lifestyle than what He had delivered me from. He was doing a work of transformation from the inside out. That meant I had to unlearn almost everything I had believed to be truth. I had to be, as Oswald Chambers put it, undeceived concerning most everything I had believed led to a "successful" life. I was learning to live by faith, and not by sight. By His leading and word, and not my own impulses and sense. By His Spirit, and not by my emotions. This was completely unknown territory for me, and it was also completely frightening. I was called to trust a God I was still learning about. I was to walk by faith and not by sight, and I had no idea how to do that. In all of it, I remember my pastor saying over and over, with deep conviction that came from a lifetime of doing what he encouraged, "Trust God!"

The bottom line in a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ, is those are the two words that need to be burned into our hearts and minds; Trust God. Trust who He is. Trust what He has said. Trust in what He is saying now. Trust Him in the light, and trust Him in the dark. Trust Him on the mountaintops, and trust Him in the valley of death. Trust Him. In all things, especially in the deep unknown, trust Him.

To trust Him is a choice, a decision. He gives us the grace to make that decision, and the grace to sustain us in following through. The decision will be challenged, not just once, but many times. The enemy will whisper in our ear that we erred in that decision whenever our days grow dark and fear is at our heart door. Circumstances will put it to the test. The Father Himself will test us in it. Will we, when there is no visible reason to do so, trust Him anyway? Will we? Will you?

We're living in days of chaos and upheaval. Change is happening faster than any of us have ever experienced. Isaiah 44:20 is confronting us daily. We have learned to trust in many things that aren't Him. Indeed, in many ways, we have trusted everything but Him. We've held lies in our right hand, thinking they were our savior and deliverer. We're being shown that they are not. Have we been shown enough that we will now, while there is still time, trust Him? Trust Him with our families, children, marriages, livelihoods, ministries, lives.....souls? Have you come to the place of letting go of the lies you've believed and depended upon, in order to lay hold of the One who is truth and life?

James Robison said that he was once in the midst of a struggle to trust His God in a matter precious to His heart. He said the Father whispered into His spirit, "If you won't place this in my hands, then in whose hands will you place it?" In whose hands will we trust? Ours, an organization, a church, the government.....or His? The time to decide and then live out the decision is now. Will we trust Him? If not, who, and in what will we trust?

Blessings,
Pastor O