Posts Tagged ‘trust’

Relief Through Trust and Faith in God

Friday, August 19th, 2011

I’ve said it before in several ways, but I want to say it again plainly: you have grown comfortable in your fears and anxieties. In a perverse way, they have become the known, the predictable, your comfort zone of behavior and expectation. To use a phrase from the book of Job, your anxieties and fears are “miserable comforts” but comforts still. You are more comfortable giving them control over your life than you are giving your life over to God. You’ve allowed your anxieties to provide you with meager, miserable comforts instead of claiming the true comfort promised by your loving Father. Listen to him argue passionately in his own defense in Isaiah 51:

I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction?

For where is the wrath for the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread.

For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name.

I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand -

I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, “You are my people.”

Do not take meager, miserable comfort any longer in your anxieties; choose to believe God when he says, “I, even I, am he who comforts you.” He is stronger, more powerful, and mightier than the fears and anxieties that oppress you, no matter what lies those fears and anxieties tell you.

There is, of course, another part of this: you must allow yourself to be comforted by God; you must accept his comfort. To do this, you need to reject the tie – the relationship – you have with your anxieties. They’ve become so much a part of you that to reject them can seem tantamount to rejecting who you are. Again, in a perverse and paradoxical way, you’ve developed a relationship, a friendship, with your anxieties that must be broken. This friendship is not grounded in the spiritual realm, in God-reality, as it says in the Message; it is grounded firmly in the perceptions and deceptions, in the lies, of this world. Tying yourself to your anxieties ties you to this world.

To go with God, you have to give up these ties to the world, this relationship you have with your anxieties. James 4:4-10 clearly shows you can’t have it both ways. The world and God are in direct competition with each other for your heart and mind. You already know what happens to your heart and mind when the world – when your anxieties and fears – are ascendant. Day by day, step by step, choice by choice, begin to shift your allegiance from the world of your anxieties, worries and fears to God.

SOURCE: Chapter 14 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace.

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Merry Christmas In the Name of God We Trust

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

Inherent in our celebration of the birth of Christ is our celebration of the Holy Father. God goes by many names, all of which imply the same – unconditional love, of course, but also our unwavering trust.

Webster’s Dictionary defines trust in the following ways: “1 a: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something; b: one in which confidence is placed. In order to obey what God tells you to do, you need to be able to place your confidence in Him. That confidence is based upon His character, ability, strength, and truth.

God’s character is clearly shown through the names He gives Himself. These are descriptors of His character. Regent University has a wonderful website at www.bible.org that outlines the names of God. They are:

  • Elohim – This is the plural version of the term El, which means “strong one,” and refers to majesty. It is plural, signifying the truine nature of God.
  • El Shaddai – “God Almighty.” God is almighty, or as Luke 1:37 says, “Nothing is impossible with God.”
  • El Elyon – “The Most High God,” stressing God’s strength, sovereignty, and supremacy.
  • El Olam – “The everlasting God.” God does not change, nor does He wear out.
  • Yahweh Jireh – “The Lord will provide.” Note it doesn’t say might or could or may provide; it says will.
  • Yahweh Nissi – “The Lord is my banner.” This signifies God as leading the charge in battle and providing victory.
  • Yahweh Shalom – “The Lord is peace.” This peace is global and personal (Isaiah 26:12).
  • Yahweb Sabbaoth – “The Lord of hosts.” God is the commander of the heavenly armies; He has spiritual resources at His command.
  • Yahweb Maccadeshcem – “The Lord your sanctifier.” God has sanctified you; He has set you apart for His purposes.
  • Yahweb Ro’i – “The Lord my shepherd.” (See Psalm 23, one of the most beautiful poems ever written.)
  • Yahweh Tsidkenu – “The Lord our righteousness.” God provides what you and I are unable to provide on our own.
  • Yahweb Shammah – “The Lord is there,” signifying God’s personal presence. HE is not a way-out-there, disconnected deity; He is there with you.
  • Yahweb Elohim Israel – “The Lord, the God of Israel.” You are included as a spiritual descendent of Israel.
  • Adonai – “Master, authority, provider.” This is also in the plural form, signifying God’s truine friendship.
  • Thoes – “God.” This is a Greek word, identifying God as the one true God, as unique, as transcendent, as Savior.
  • Kurios – “Lord.” Another Greek word, signifying authority and supremacy.
  • Despotes – “Master,” with the connotation of ownership. First Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23 remind you that you were bought with a price and are not your own.
  • Father – I thought it was interesting that this form of the word is found only 15 times in the Old Testament but 245 times in the New Testament. Whatever else and whoever else God is, He is your heavenly Father.

Put all of these together, then, and this is who you are being called to place your confidence, your trust, in. What better place can you think of in which to place your trust?

According to the dictionary definition of trust given earlier, God has the character, ability, strength, and truth to be worthy of your trust. There is, however, a secondary definition I’d like to explore. It is “dependence on something future or contingent.”

Hebrews 12:2 says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  ”For the joy set before him” points to this shading of definition for the word trust. Jesus endured because He was absolutely sure of and dependent upon something in the future, that joy. Jesus trusted God for what had not yet occurred. This future joy tomorrow helped Jesus endure today.

In the same way, you can trust God not only for what He can do for you today but also for what He will do for you tomorrow and into eternity. If all of this sounds too good to be true, too much like an evangelical infomercial, let me just say a couple of things.

First, I agree, it does sound too good to be true. However, God is truth, so while it is entirely too good for the likes of me (and you, if I may be so bold), it is true. You can count on it; you can trust in God.

Secondly, it becomes easier to understand and accept if you’ll concentrate on the last word of the names of God, one of the two I added.

Concentrate on God as love. God is trustworthy with your life and future and happiness because He loves you. He has demonstrated that love to you in the most graphic way possible – by sacrificing His one and only Son in your place so you can be made righteous and able to enter into intimate fellowship with this amazing, all-powerful, almighty, loving Father.

Remember, it’s not about you; it’s about God. You can trust Him because He has put in motion this eon-spanning, intricate, creative plan to outwit evil and death, slavery and bondage, sin and torment. All you have to do in response is give up control, listen and pay attention, obey and trust.

SOURCE: Chapter 9, “God As Your Navigator (Spiritual),” in Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

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In Money We Trust? What the Bible Says About Wealth

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

“In God We Trust” has been engraved on our coins since 1864. Somewhere in the intervening years, however, it seems we’ve shifted from trust in God to trust in the coin itself. This isn’t a recent phenomenon; it’s been happening for a long time.

King Solomon, in his book of wisdom known as Proverbs, puts it this way:

“The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it an unscalable wall” (Prov. 18:11).

There are many people today for whom wealth is their unscalable wall. They truly believe if they acquire enough of it, build up a high enough wall of it, the cares and concerns of the world will not be able to climb over. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that cares and concerns have very creative ways of mounting siege ramps against the walls of wealth and breach even the highest parapets. Insecurities also find ways to tunnel under the strongest edifices.

Money, quite simply, is not a secure thing to put your trust in. Again, from Proverbs:

“Do not wear yourself out to get riches, and have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle” (23:4-5).

Money is a fluid, dynamic entity, and its worth is based upon factors out of the control of most people. A person’s wealth can be made and lost within a single year.

How many people have won millions of dollars on a lottery one year, only to wind up losing it all within a short span of time? How many people put their trust in the wealth they committed to Bernie Madoff, only to lose every cent in his billion-dollar Ponzi scheme? Money is not an appropriate place to look for security.

Money can be made and even more money made … and still not enough. This is especially true if money and acquiring money have become an excessity.

Revisit the Solomon quote in Ecclesiastes:

“Whoever loves money, never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless” (Eccl. 5:10).

Solomon was the wealthiest person of his day, above all the other kings on earth. He was incredibly wealthy and incredibly wise. He knew that wealth and acquiring wealth can become a black-hole, Gotta Have It! excessity. Perceiving money as security can create an obsession with money and the things money can buy. And because money can, quite frankly, buy a great deal, there is a tendency to assign it more power than it’s due; there is a tendency to trust it more than is wise.

Money is not permanent because it can be lost in a blink of an eye (or in the crash of the stock market, or in the devaluation of currency, or through theft or malfeasance or cooked books). It is not permanent in the here and now, and it’s absolutely irrelevant in the hereafter. Money can get you some tract when you’re alive, but it is useless to you when you’re dead:

“Do not be overawed when a man grows rich, when the splendor of his house increases; for he will take nothing with him when he dies, his splendor will not descend with him” (Ps. 49:16-17).

In cruder, present-day language: The hearse doesn’t come with a trailer.

Money promises to provide security, but it often creates the opposite:

“A man’s riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat” (Prov. 13:8).

The more stock you set in the things you have, including money and things money can buy, the greater the threat of losing it all. Those who have much have much to lose. Those with little, sleep under a lesser threat of loss and can feel more secure.

Money can be a source of security, but it can also be a source of heartburn:

“The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep” (Eccl. 5:12).

If you put all your security eggs in the money basket, then you must perpetually worry about eggs breaking and losing both.

Source: Chapter 5, “Our Need for Security” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc
 
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