Trust In Him

It’s been said several times on this blog that being a Christian can be hard. In most cases that comment was made with regard to the need to uphold God’s laws or live up to the principles laid out by Jesus. However, those are not the only aspects of being a Christian that can be difficult for believers.

Faith is one of the most important concepts in Christianity. Belief in God is part of having faith, but we can't just say we believe. We have to show it, and that means trusting him with our everyday lives.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; - Proverbs 3:5

Putting trust in God for everything we encounter is an active demonstration of faith, and it is important. In fact, Jesus made it clear that we are not to fret over even the basic needs of our daily lives. We should understand that God knows what we need and will provide.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? - Matthew 6:25-26

Many believers struggle with truly trusting God in their endeavors, feeling instead that success or failure will depend on their own actions. Those feelings are understandable. Today’s world hammers the idea into us that anything we achieve will be through our own merit and struggle. In many cases, even depending on other people is seen as weak, so it is no surprise that nonbelievers see depending on God, whom we cannot see, as being particularly ridiculous. Still, as crazy as the world may believe it to be, God takes our trust in him very seriously. Consider the story of Asa (2 Chronicles chapters 14-16), one of the kings of Judah in the Old Testament.

Asa began his reign at a time when the people of Judah were turned away from God. God spoke to Asa through a prophet and told the king about the state of Judah and how it needed to change. Asa obeyed by getting rid of the idols that people were worshipping and removing personnel who had been complicit in getting the people to turn away from God including his own grandmother.

With God’s help, Asa overcame all his enemies and then ruled in peace for decades because God showed him favor. However, during his 36th year, the king of Israel attempted to make war with Judah. Asa’s reaction was to take the gold and silver out of God’s temple and give it to the king of Aram in exchange for assistance in the conflict against Israel. The ploy worked and Israel retreated. Asa thought he had done the right thing, but God used a seer to tell him differently.

“Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped from your hand. Were not the Cushites and Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you relied on the Lord, he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.” - 2 Chronicles 16:7-9

God was so displeased with Asa not trusting in Him that he cursed Judah to more war as a result. Asa, instead of repenting, doubled down on his lack of trust. Because of his stubbornness, God inflicted him with a sickness.  Even then, Asa refused to ask God for help, and instead turned to doctors. He died as a result of his inability to trust God.

God wants us to trust him, not just with the big or important things, but with everything. That’s what Jesus and others in the New Testament taught. That is what many of the stories in the Old Testament demonstrate for us.

We should be careful though. Trusting in God doesn’t mean that we should just sit around waiting for Him to do something whenever we have problems. Some sects of Christianity discourage actions that could be perceived as putting trust elsewhere, such as going to doctors when sick. In some ways, these directives miss the point.

Asa’s sin wasn’t that he turned to a political ally to win a war or that he went to doctors to get over a sickness. He was wrong because he took both actions without consulting or seeking God. Asa put his faith in man and not God, and that displeased God.

We don’t need to avoid doctors or other worldly avenues of help to do right by God. After all, throughout the Bible, God used other people to help, teach lessons to, and even punish His followers. If God wants to miraculously heal the sick with no help or intervention from doctors, he can do that. However, he can also work through doctors to cure sickness. For us, the way the cure comes is not as important as what we do before it comes. As soon as we encounter sickness or any other trial, our first instinct should be to go to God with genuine belief that he will prevail.

God is our Father, and he wants to be treated that way. He wants us to look to Him in our time of need. He is angered when we don’t, and he has every right to be. With King Asa, God had to point out all the times that He came through for Judah as proof of why Asa should have had no problem trusting that God would help. Let’s not make Him have to do the same to us. If we know that God has helped us in the past, then we should know that He will help us in the present and the future. So many things in this world are built to fail, but God is not among those things, so with whatever issues arise and with whatever routes we choose to address those issues, let us first seek God and trust that he will be the solution.

Chris Lawyer

Image Courtesy of whiteoakworship.org