Completely Trusting God     

Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust, and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. – Psalms 40:4

It is so easy to say, “I trust God.”  It is not so easy to live your life like you really do trust Him.   This verse tells us that a person who fully puts their trust in God will be blessed.  I am certainly the happiest and most content when I am looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.  (Hebrews 12:2)  On the other hand, I am the most miserable when I take my eyes off of Him and begin to listen to others or simply do my own thing.

The God of the Holy Bible has done an amazing thing.  He has offered to be in a personal relationship with anyone and everyone who will place their trust in Him.  If we are completely honest, this is a very difficult thing to just straight up give Him our trust.  When I first got saved, I believed for the first time that Jesus was God in the flesh and had come to give His life on the cross as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).  Now as cool as that is and as much love as that shows, I had a hard time making it personal.  I had a hard time believing He did that for me.  Preachers always worded it as if Jesus would have done what He did even if I had been the only one who would have received Him.  But, in my mind, He had done nothing for me other than the stuff He did for everybody.  Of course, now I know and understand that what He did for everybody was and is crazy amazing, but as a sixteen-year-old ignorant kid . . . I just didn’t know.

My very first test came at work.  I directly disobeyed my boss’s instructions at my first job.  I had recently read Colossians 3:9; “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices.”  I realized that my current self was a liar; it was simply in my default settings.  I also read in Revelation 21:8 that “all liars will have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.”  Hell was the last place I wanted to go.  So I prayed and told God that my new self would stop lying, and asked for His help.  There was this very big, dramatic moment where I had to stand before my boss man.  My heart was pounding out of my chest.  I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I wanted to lie to him.  Had I not prayed my prayer earlier that day, there is no doubt I would have done just that.  Instead, I manned up possibly for the first time in my life and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  He was shocked at my honesty.  He had expected me to lie.  Since I told him the truth, he let me keep my job and didn’t even make me pay for one cent of the hundreds of dollars in damage I had done.   I left work that day with a pure trust in Jesus Christ.  My relationship with Him had just become personal.

That was over 20 years ago.  In no way did that experience “cure” any of my other faults.  I was still loaded with other sinful behaviors and wasn’t sure they were ever going away.  I realize now why God set all that up as my first test.  From that moment on, I was able to be honest with God.  I didn’t have to pretend to be something I wasn’t.  I was able to bring the brutally honest truth of my sinful behavior before the throne of grace. If I drank alcohol underage at a party, I confessed to Him that I flat out sinned by breaking the law.  If I had sex with my girlfriend or even looked at pornography, I confessed to Him that I was sexually immoral.  If I was angry with someone, I told Him that I flat out hated that person.  If the Holy Spirit or the Bible in any way pointed out to me that I was wrong, I simply admitted it to God in my prayers.  He had taught me that He could be trusted and that I could be totally honest with Him about the truth that He knew anyway.  To this day, the best thing about knowing Christ is our open and honest conversations.  I still confess my sins to Him as well as rejoice on the few occasions where I actually get it right.  There is nothing like a real deal authentic relationship with the Lord.

Do you have one?

Do you absolutely trust Him with every single fiber of your being?

If you don’t, you are missing out on absolutely the greatest thing this life has to offer.

There is and never will be anyone like our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Later

Adam