A friend of mine gifted me this (amazing) little book of prayers, and it has prompted my own heart stirrings and whispered aspirations even as I turned it’s pages. This little snippet in particular gripped my attention recently:
“May I… leave the mists of doubt and fear in the valley, and climb to hill-tops of eternal security in Christ by simply believing he cannot lie, or turn from his purpose.” — Valley of Vision (emphasis mine)
Once God made some promises to a man, showed him the stars to underscore his point, and it was wildly applauded that trust was offered. Sometimes I encounter the story of Abraham trusting God, and it being credited to him as righteousness… and I think, “Wow, that bar was super low.” (Thank you, Lord!) But today was not that day. Today I heard on a national Christian radio program a question being posed — “what is hard for you?” And the number one most frequently called in answer was: trusting God more. Which apparently wasn’t even the congruent with the researched response — which was: prayer. Interesting, right? It sure does feel like trust and prayer might just go together.
So here’s what is true: Trust is hard. He cannot lie. He does not turn from His purposes. And He wants to be known. By you.
One of my kids has a staggering value for justice, and has elevated this question “Are you telling the truth?!” to a degree one feels morally compelled to answer honestly. All jokes are off once he stares right into your eyeballs with this inquiry. At some point, he’ll have to turn the question in on himself and evaluate what is being said around him with “is this true?” But until the day I must sadly lift the veil on the fact that not all self-proclaimed truth tellers are actually telling the truth, I’ll enjoy his trust that just by asking one will faithfully comply.
I think perhaps we look with scrutiny (realized or not) at the promises God makes. We narrow our eyes and say, “do I believe that?” Or we just listen and go about our lives determining intermittently whether we’ll actually rest in what he said or not. Maybe because we’ve all experienced a broken promise or unrecognized vow, and after the shock wave passed we constructed a more careful approach to proclaimed promises. Maybe we’ve had an encounter with a liar. And so… trust is hard. But God’s holiness renders him incapable of sin, and this incompatibility with sin means he cannot lie.
“If God is holy, then he can’t sin. If God can’t sin, then he can’t sin against me. If he can’t sin against me, shouldn’t that make him the most trustworthy being there is?” — “Holier Than Thou”, Jackie Hill Perry
Why am I even talking about this now? Because Easter is upon us. And in a few days we’re going to consider the fact that Jesus knew that try as we might, we would never be able to find our way to him without sin being payed for. And so he satisfied justice by giving his life. And He made some promises around that. That we could have life at it’s fullest measure. That we could access God. That we could offer trust and be given a right standing… take a minute and ask this — “What do I believe about this? Do I trust him?”
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” — 2 Corinthians 1:20