Blessed is He

We desire to experience the divine favor and protection of the Lord. We want to know God hears our prayers and grants us our requests. When we face difficulties, we want relief and pleasure. None of us like to go through hard times. We want to be in the place where we know we have trusted the Lord and He has come through. What does it mean to trust in the Lord? How does a person get to the point where they are trusting the Lord in all areas of life? In Genesis 22, we read the story of the Old Testament patriarch, Abraham. God asked him to offer his one and only son, Isaac, as an offering. The problem was God promised Abraham He would multiply his descendants as the stars in the heavens (Genesis 12:2, 15:5). Abraham and his wife were old, well past child bearing years. If he offered Isaac as an offering, he was doing away with the one God promised. It did not make sense to do what God asked. Yet, the Bible says, he went ahead trusting the Lord to provide a Lamb (Genesis 22:8). Abraham knew what God asked him to do, but also had an unwavering trust in the Lord to follow through on His promise. We gain more insight into how strong his trust was when we get to the Faith Hall of Fame listed in Hebrews 11. In verse 19, we read, “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead…” (ESV). How does a person develop such a deep faith in the Lord? Over the past three decades of ministry, I have heard people say, “I believe in God.” Trusting in the Lord is more than a mere belief that He exists. We can say we believe in God, yet would we be willing to go as far as Abraham, offering our own child on an altar if God told us too? Do we live our lives showing a deep, unwavering trust in God, or are we trusting in ourselves? Many times, we show by the way we live our lives, that God is not the one we trust. We trust what we can do for ourselves more than we trust what God can do for us. Lest I sound arrogant and judgmental at the very start of this book, I must state, I do not write under the guise of having it all together. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12, “Not that I have already attained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own…” The Lord has been working with me for almost fifty years to help me trust Him better. It is a growing process. God is working moment by moment, through many different situations and circumstances to teach me how to trust Him completely. I do not write this book feeling like I have “arrived” at full trust in God. I am like the father of the demon possessed boy in Mark 9. He brought his son to the disciples to heal. The disciples tried to help, but could not offer the boy what he needed, so the father brought the boy to Jesus. When Jesus saw the father and his son, He said, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” The father’s words are where I am so many times. His response to Jesus was, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” He believed Christ had the power to heal, but lacked the trust He would heal. I see myself trusting that God has the power, but doubting He will actually use the power to help me. We do believe God can do something, but we doubt He will do something. I have learned the more I trust the Lord even in the smallest things, the more He shows He is worthy of receiving all my trust. It is like working an arm or leg muscle. The more I work with a muscle the stronger it becomes. The more I work out my trust muscle the more my faith grows. God shows He is able to do “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,” Ephesians 3:20.