AM I REALLY TRUSTING GOD?

Trust and Obey

Although I was not raised in a Christian family, I remember one of the Hymns I sang in the first church I attended as an adult. Well, only a few words. "Trust and obey for there is no other way." Nearly 40 years later I'm still thinking about those words. Am I really trusting God? Can I obey God if I don't trust Him? I don't have complete answers to these questions, but I'll share a few thoughts.

A Starting Place

Romans 10:9-10: "...that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." (NKJV)

I know many of us have been told all we have to do is pray a prayer with these words and we will go to heaven. So, is this all there is? What does trusting and obeying have to do with it? 

In John 6:28-29, the people asked Jesus, "What should we do, that we may work the works of God?" He answered and said, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." Most would say the most important work of God is the miracle of salvation...by believing!

In James 1:5-8 regarding profiting from trials through faith, James says that if we ask God for wisdom we will get it, if we ask in faith with no doubting. He goes on to say that doubting creates a double-minded person that will receive nothing from the Lord.

The Context of Scripture

Here is my take on the context of these verses. Our faith is the decision to believe what God has said through His Word (Jesus) and the Scripture is true. Believing from our heart is trusting in Jesus. Confession with our mouth must be genuine with actions, or fruit, following. It is obedience! Not doubting describes a commitment for a lifetime! 

Doubting God

We live in a society where performance is the measure of our success. Meritocracy some call it. Early in my adult life I can remember saying that if anything bad or good happened to me it was of my doing. This is our performance way. 

While we can't sit idly by and wait for God to do a thing we want, God's plan is for us is to learn to be who we are in Him and what He has done for us, not immediately jump into our performance mode and do something in or own strength or ability. Learning to be who we are in Him should be the first thing. This is where we find His guidance. Sometimes it is new meaning from a scripture. Other times it may be just knowing what we are to do as we pray and spend time with Him.

The Ways of Doubt

So, when are we likely to intentionally or unintentionally doubt God? While I may discuss several of these ways in future posts, today I'll focus on what I think is the most important issue, not believing Scripture as the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. Believing without question what a pastor, teacher or denomination has told us a scripture means, rather than the personal revelation the Holy Spirit gives to us, can result in doubting God. 

1 John 2:27: "But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him." (NKJV) Listening to the Holy Spirit before we listen to man is God's plan!

Do we avoid listening to man's voice and seeking only that of the Holy Spirit? Of course not! This scripture tells us, however, that we are not to blindly accept explanations, doctrine or positions of religious leaders in denominations, churches or ministries without first seeking Holy Spirit revelation. 

Dangerous Ground

Because we live in a society of pyramid style churches with a only a few people at the top running the show, thinking for ourselves can be dangerous ground. Some of us have learned that thinking for ourselves is not the preferred "modus operandi" for today's religion. Some strict religions call the results of having thoughts outside of the status quo "shunning." Most others just ostracize creative thinkers and give them the left foot of fellowship! No soft landing on this dangerous ground!

So our need for affiliation keeps us on the inside of the pyramid and we begin to doubt or ignore what we believe we have heard from the Holy Spirit. More dangerous ground, even worse. When we begin to doubt, we can't believe in our heart. We move under the control of our soul. From this point forward, there is no trusting God, not really! Separation from Him is the result in other words! As described in James 1:5-8 above, when this occurs we will receive nothing from the Lord! Perhaps these scriptures have been removed from some Bibles today, but I can still find them in mine!

Can We Obey God if We Doubt His Word?

Trust and obey, remember. What if we believe some of His Word and just ignore other scriptures? We are a work in process right? Surely God knows our heart doesn't He? Yes, He does, just as Jesus knew the heart of man described in the Gospels. Inside is often different from the outside! We have free will. We can choose to trust God and obey Him, or not. From the Old Testament forward, we have been told that we can choose between His life or our death. It is decision time. Time grows short!

 

HAVE YOU WRITTEN YOUR STORY?

I Didn't Want to Write My Story

Having lunch with a friend several months ago, he shared he had just written his story of life events. He is an accomplished college professor and has had many successes. Writing his story, he told me, enabled him to see what God had done for him throughout his lifetime. He encouraged me to write mine.

This was not the first time someone had encouraged me to write my story. As with the other times, I didn't act on the advice. Reading one of David Brooks books recently, he discussed "connecting the dots" of our lives to see how God has been with us. Again, I didn't follow the suggestion. The truth is I felt the thought of recalling the failures, mistakes and pain of my past was not worth whatever benefit  there might be. I was wrong!

Successes and Failures 

A few years ago, I received a call from a partner in a CPA firm in another state. He called to schedule me for two week-long training seminars in his firm. He called because some 25 years before he and two of his partners had attended and liked a seminar I taught when they were entry-level accountants! I was stunned because I couldn't even remember teaching the seminar! A success? On the other hand, I can quickly tell you about several seminars I taught for other CPA firms that were failures, also 25 years ago! Why am I, and perhaps you, like this?

For some of us, we have learned to operate in a negative mentality. We were raised performance oriented, and in my case, I was a "bad boy" whenever I did something wrong. Who I was as a person was dependent on my behavior. I was only a good boy when I did something good, or sometimes not even then. The result of this mentality is that we almost always see the bad first in other people. We are constantly judging ourselves, as well as everyone else. For me, I tried to break out of this mentality for years under my own strength. Guess how much progress I made. Very little! Only by faith and patience can we expect God to make these changes in our lives.

The process of changing to a positive mentality, i.e., a lifestyle of seeing good in people first, may take a lifetime for some of us, and then only if we recognize the need to change. Despite my striving to have a positive mentality, my default in a crisis was negative. So, we have to begin somewhere to allow God to make changes. This doesn't mean we are going to see an immediate paradigm shift! It means we may be successful some of the time, over a long period of time!

Writing the Story

When I shared some of this with a friend, she said she wouldn't even know how to begin. The secret is to start at the beginning by asking God to bring to your remembrance important life events, both positive and negative. In my case, I just started thinking about my early childhood and chronologically went forward from there. It took two days and 24 typewritten pages to do this and, when I finished, I actually felt worse about my life than when I began! 

Interestingly, I wrote my story over two months ago but yesterday, as I began to share my experience with some friends, a different picture emerged. Some fleeting thoughts I had in the past weeks began to take shape. I realized I was not looking at a series of individual events, but God's orchestrating His plan for me. He didn't cause the negative events; that was my contribution! My sin, my unwillingness to recognize Him and my self-centeredness brought bad results. But the good news was that He was always there when I was ready for His help! Even in the midst of my dirty diapers he opened doors for successful experiences! Was this every day, month or year? Of course not! It was happening throughout all of my 82 years!

Your Story Can Reveal God's Plan for You

Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the thoughts (plans) I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." (NKJV) I'm still seeking God to help me finish well on earth, and if I'm honest, viewing myself positively is still difficult! But that is the purpose of our journey, isn't it? 

In the first remake of the original movie Gladiator, as General Maximus was motivating his troops for battle, he said, "What you do here today will echo into eternity." Likewise, achieving a positive mentality from our story here on earth, and for eternity, will only result from what we do with what He has done for us!

We can go two ways, I think. We can trust Him to do what He has said, or we can live a life that ends in despair.  If we know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and we trust Him with our lives, our story will echo into eternity! When Jesus died on the Cross, He set in place everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3)! Contrary to some religious paradigms, however, receiving what He has given us will not happen automatically! It depends on our believing and receiving in our hearts what He has already done in Jesus!