Michael continues, saying that to trust in the Lord is to acknowledge and subjugate my will to His will. Prayer is aligning my will with His will and my heart with His heart. We can trust in the Lord because God is faithful to His Word. His Holy Word never returns void because His Word is trustworthy. According to Isaiah 55 ... “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returns not thither, but waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud; so shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing where unto I have sent it.”
The Word of the Lord is trustworthy. Since God is Sovereign over all, some say that God can do “anything He wants” even if it contradicts something He says in His Word. This is what the Muslim religion says ... that Allah (God) can change his mind on a whim and because he’s not subject to any constraints. However, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One true God cannot contradict His Holy Word. The derivation of the word “Amen” is “God is faithful to his word.... God has said it, therefore it shall be done.”
According to the book, Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning, we have craved clarity and hesitate to trust in God unless we eliminate the confusion in our own minds. However, God never said to ask for clarity. He said to trust in the Lord. Our trust does not bring clarity to dissipate the chaos in our minds. The essence of trust is in obedience to His Word. We may not see or understand the end from the beginning. Our trust is in knowing that God knows and that He works all things for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. The heart of trust is summed up in Jesus’ final words on the cross: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
Some people think trusting God is believing that God will do what I want Him to do. They think that God is like the “genie in the bottle.” As if He’s here to make our wishes come true. They think that God’s purpose is to give us all things “richly to enjoy” and to lavish on us, aka “life more abundantly.” They say His purpose is that we would prosper and be in health even as our soul prospers. The problem with the “prosperity gospel” is that its focus is on the wrong purpose. The prosperity gospel subscribes to the “WIIFM” doctrine that says “what’s in it for me?”
This is what the “rich young ruler” thought when he asked Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Even though he had kept six of the ten commandments that pertain to the second great commandment, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, he had forsaken the first commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength. The first of the Ten Commandments is “thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In other words, you shall have no other gods between your face and God’s face. When Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “sell all your possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and come follow me,” he went away sorrowful. He had the wrong god. His money and material wealth were his gods. He failed to realize that the true blessing is in seeking the Blessor and not the blessings.
The national motto of the United States is “In God We Trust.” This motto is printed on US paper money and coins. The irony is that money itself is the god in which most Americans trust. However, our nation was founded as a godly nation, where people came to the new world to worship God according to the truth of His Holy Word. God has blessed our Republic founded on “firm reliance on Divine Providence.”
God reserves a remnant of His people to stand in the gap in God’s hedge of protection around His citizenry. For we are citizens of Heaven. Even though we may be natural born citizens of the United States, we are born-again citizens of His heavenly kingdom. When the whole world is shaking with strife, contention, confusion, pandemonium, panic, and a pandemic, Jesus Christ is the firm foundation. He alone is the Rock that cannot be shaken. Therefore, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths ... that we may live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
In God We Trust.
Your brother in Christ, Michael
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