The Bible can be boiled down into one simple truth: LOVE.
Loving god, and loving others. While it’s good to seek clarity and understanding, I fall back on these a lot when the other parts of the Bible seem confusing. Because, in the midst of the genealogy of Christ and 10 commandments and eternal damnation, they really are the most important (1 Corinth 13:13 , the greatest of these is love) and I don’t think God wants us to get caught up questioning him in the other areas when He has already told us repeatedly what it all leads back to: LOVE.
Recently, I’ve discovered another essential truth that has been underrated for a while now in my own faith: trust.
Trusting god, AND believing that he trusts you. Ya gotta have both.
Trusting God makes enough sense because trust & faith go hand in hand. We have to trust that he won’t fail us. We have to trust that He will work all things for our good. It’s hard to have faith if you don’t trust the things He’s promised you. What really baffles me is that He trusts us, too.
God doesn’t just trust the esteemed or the people that have “proved themselves” either. He created an entire universe & saw that it was good . . . and then trusted us with it. Even gave us authority over it. He trusted us before we had the chance to prove if we were worthy of it or not. And when He did give us the chance to prove ourselves, with free will, we failed and proved ourselves unworthy. Yet, He continued to trust that we would choose him of our own free will in the midst of a broken world. Then, He sent Jesus to redeem the brokenness & went as far as to trust us with the same authority He had given him. Healing power. Prophecy. Wisdom. He trusts us enough to walk this earth in His image as representations of Christ – putting his reputation on the line!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not blind trust. He doesn’t trust us with the notion that we aren’t going to fail or that we will get it all right. But he loves us enough to and counts our efforts as more significant than our failures. To him, trusting the ordinary & seemingly inadequate is worth the risk.
As I’ve begun to turn this head knowledge into heart knowledge, to believe that God trusts me, I’ve begun to see that my doubts don’t hold as much power over me. It doesn’t matter if I don’t think I can do it- because Jesus knows I can. He doesn’t doubt our abilities and will never give us more than we can handle.
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” Luke 10:16
I used to think that I had to clean up all the messes in my life and make myself presentable before Jesus could use me but now I know we can’t keep waiting to offer ourselves to His will for a time when we think we are ready because we will never feel ready. His trust in us is much more powerful than a feeling, and I firmly believe he would choose our failure over apathy any day. God gives and takes away, if we don’t steward the things he’s trusted us with well, he has all authority to take it away and give it to someone else. A scary thought, but one that definitely gets the ball rolling in my life.
We can start with the little things. Using the money he’s trusted us with to bless the people around us, as He would have done. Using the houses he’s trusted us with to welcome the people without one. Using the wisdom and knowledge he’s given us and freely sharing it with others as encouragement.
Have faith. Not on your own, but because the God of the universe has faith in you. The more you trust and feel trusted, the more you begin to understand the depth of His love and embrace the plans He has for you.
