God shows and teaches me lessons in perspective shifts and stories. This particular one is close to me at the moment: When it comes to trusting God, it would be like being at the pool with your dad. He’s in there smiling at you beckoning you to jump into his arms. You look at your father and examine the pool. How deep is it? Is the water dirty? Then you examine your daddy. Is he strong enough to catch me? Can I trust that he will catch me and not leave me to dry? (… okay, get wet?) While realistically a small child won’t run that through their “grid,” we do it all of the time. Child-like faith/trust says that “Well of course he would catch me!” Our “reason” and “logic” says, “Will he really catch me? Can I really trust him?” I wonder how we get there and I fail to come up with a pin point in our lives where we begin to rely on reason and logic to determine our choices than our faith in a perfectly good, wholly holy, overwhelmingly loving, incorruptible God. Maybe we get let down by someone who we look to and then make the conclusion that ALL that we look up to will eventually fail us. Or perhaps somewhere along the line our parents failed us in some way and we think that if the adults that God placed over us were unable to be perfect, how could the one who sent them be? It’s almost like we think we know better than the God who created everything. We tend to place the failures of humanity onto God and by so doing we doubt His goodness and His love. We see the horrible things that go on and blame Him saying, “Well if God really is a good God, why would He allow such evil things to happen?” Think about this, though. Would a good God control the actions of His creation? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe God causes evil things, nor do I think He rejoices in the tragedies of life. In fact, I know that He weeps with us and is comforting us. The life of Jesus expresses that to us. Any time a parent reached out to Him for help with their children, He answered them and healed their child. When I look at Him at the home of Mary and Martha after their brother passed away, I see Him weeping with the mourners. In short, God is with those who are hurting and is never far from the cry of a broken heart.
One of the beautiful things of life is the beauty of free will. Though through free will entered sin and death, it also enters in love. Free will enables us the ability to love, and there is no greater force on earth than love. The most potent love is God’s love, for it conquered the grave and raised Christ from the dead. It also enables us the ability to trust. God doesn’t force us to trust or love Him. He didn’t create us to be robots. Robots don’t love. Robots don’t have relationships. Only free will-given beings can have relationships. The biggest thing about relationship is trust. Without trust, we’re just paranoid and try to keep control on the thing. Nobody wants to marry anyone who is going to try and control every move they make and every person they spend time with. When God created Adam and Eve, He ENTRUSTED them to taking care of the garden and His creation. God trusted Adam and Eve and still trusts us. Sin didn’t change His view of us; it changed our view of Him and everything else. The thing that causes us to run through the grid is sin. To put it plainly, doubting God is what leads us into sin, for that is what caused Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The enemy had her doubt God, “Did God really say…?” and “You will not die when you eat of the tree.” This is what the enemy did and still does. He got Eve into thinking that God was withholding something from her, and so she ate of the tree. This doubt would have been remedied if she knew this one thing: God only has good things in mind for His children.
When God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tre, what He gave was the amazing gift of relationship with the Creator. When they didn’t trust, they sinned. But when Jesus trusted, sin was defeated. As Jesus was fully God while being fully man, He had the choice to not trust God and choose His own way. (It’s odd to even think about this, and quite frankly hurts my brain because as Jesus and the Father are one, it’s quite mind-breaking to ever envision Jesus choosing something contrary to what God’s will is… ooohh my brain.) In His prayer saying “Father, remove this cup from Me… but not what I will, what You will” Jesus chose to jump into the arms of His heavenly Father, and by so doing, defeated sin and death.
Don’t we see what the result of simple trust in God is? It’s life. And please, choose life.
