Sunday, November 14, 2010

PARTIAL or TOTAL FAITH

Verse for Today: Sunday, November 14, 2010
Psalms 62:8 - Trust in (God) at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge.

We are admonished by the Psalmist, on the basis of his varied experiences with the Lord, that it is always good for us to trust in the Lord at all times. It is often seen that when we are in trouble we trust in Him, but in good times, our trust goes down in quality, substance and sincerity. Not only that, when we do not get a quick fix of our problems through some supernatural interference from God, we often become impatient and start interfering in our matters ourselves, and subsequently mess it up. But the Psalmist wants to remind us that we must trust in the Lord at all times. So we must first of all understand that our Lord is the same for us at all times. Our good times are as much a gift to us from Him, as His presence and nearness for us at the s-called bad times. Our bad times are not bad times per se for us to suffer, but times permitted by our Lord to teach us valuable lessons of trust and faith in Him. The message from the Psalmist underscores another important lesson from his experience that no one else is worth our trust and faith at any time. At hard times, other forces try to challenge us about our faith in the Lord, and sometimes even mock us. These forces even entice us to use the world's ways to solve our problems and try to teach us to trust in our natural faculties and abilities. They want us to learn lessons to solve our problems from world's wisdom, education and money power. But it is guaranteed that these methods and techniques are not expedient for a child of God. This is because we cannot put our legs in two canoes at the same time. Either we should go the way of the Lord and trust Him fully or go our way and pick up all the consequences of our actions. To those who want to solely trust the Lord are given another admonition by the Psalmist to pour out our hearts, heartaches, feelings, emotions, complaints, difficulties, exasperation, doubts and confusions to the Lord. He will give us a patient hearing. He will give us the assurance that He will attend to our needs and handle our case according to His wisdom. In the meanwhile, He will also give us the peace that passes all understanding to keep on trusting Him to believe in His promises and His might to be able to solve our problems, carry our burdens and handle concerns.

Dear friend, have you trusted the Lord for all your needs and situations at all times? If there were times when you switched your trust from Him to your intelligence, experience, skills, money power or human faculties, it is time you go to Him to repent for the trust you put in your own self. If you trust Him only on certain occasions and not at all times, you need to once again go to Him and renew your total, absolute, unconditional and unreserved trust and faith in Him. It is important for us to remind ourselves that if we do not want to trust the Lord fully and totally, why should we expect the Lord to do any thing for us? So let us make sure that we grow in our trust and confess any lapse from our side about our unconditional trust in the Lord, and renew our trust with confession of our failure to do so. If we thus remove the hindrance of lack of trust in the Lord, we will have given the Lord the freedom to come and rescue us from our perils. Either we should trust the Lord fully or not trust Him at all. He doesn't appreciate double minded persons and would look at us as hypocrites if we trust in the Lord and at the same time trust in other things and in our own merit. So let us today go to Him and confess our lack of trust in Him and hand our lives with all our needs and situations to Him to handle it Himself according to His wisdom, resourcefulness and timing. We then have the freedom and opportunity to pour out our hearts to Him in our absolute helplessness. He will hear us, honor our sincerity and childlike faith, and handle our situations. This is the way for Him to get all the glory for all that happens in our lives. This was how the Lord took all glory for all the good things that happened in the lives of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, Jeremiah, Peter, Paul and other saints down through the centuries. Shall we go to this refuge of ours all the time to pour out our hearts and submit our situations and needs to Him and wait for Him to act on our behalf so that all glory for all that happens to us will go to the Lord alone?

Psalms 55:17 - Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and He hears my voice.

Thought for Today
Our level of trust in the Lord reveals whether we believe Him to be our only refuge or not.

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