Trust

So, this isn't your normal contributor, who's currently on the road and so has asked me to contribute this week.  I hope none of you mind- I will probably have a substantially different style.  Also, if you read this in the next few hours after posting, please pray for his safe travel.  

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to write about when I was asked to write this, but I decided to write about a tangent of what I've been learning and relearning for about six or seven years now- just how much we can trust God and how much He loves us.  Forgive me if it is a bit rambling, as this is a bit more of a testimonial than the exegesis that is Carter's normal format. 

One of my favorite passages is Romans 8, but I've always concentrated on the part towards the end, starting in verse 28.  Something I've been thinking about, though has made me look to even more passages to see just how much God loves me.

As I've grown in Christ, I think that the way I've gotten to know him more is through seeing Him in the roles He takes towards me.  The first role that I associated Christ with was that of Savior, when I became a Christian at a young age.  Later on, I began to realize that not only had God saved me from my sins' consequence of death and Hell, but had provided me with both the command and ability to live for Him- I came to see that He was not only my Savior, but my Lord.

In high school, as I went through a traumatic time in my life, I began to realize that God was not just Savior and Lord to me.  As I read Romans (and, honestly, George Orwell's 1984), I began to understand just how much I needed Christ in my everyday life, not just for salvation, but for sustenance- if God wasn't involved in every second of my day, I didn't see it as worth living.  While before high school I had unconsciously seen God as Someone who saved us and said, "meet you in Heaven!" I now realized that just as eternal life begins when we are saved, so Christ is intimately involved in every part of our lives right now.  In Romans 8:32, Paul reasons that if God loved us so much that He would kill His own Son for us, how much more will God take care of the little things in our lives, the things we mistakenly think are too small to "bother" God about.  He cares about every part of our lives, on a level that not even our spouses ever will.  Things we might find wonderful about life, or just something we find neat about our life that, if we tell our friends or family about, they will not be impressed with or care much about matter to God.  It is amazing to me that we can tell Him these things.

It so happens that I am a Biblical Studies major, and I've been taking a class on Christian doctrines, as well as being mentored by my university's missionary-in-residence.  In both arenas, as well as a private conversation lately, the discussion of how to be saved has come up, with me being convinced that belief and trust in Christ as Savior is how we are saved, but I have found doubt in this idea from many around me.  I had a conversation today with someone not convinced, I don't think that nothing can separate us from Christ.  This kind of belief system, I think, builds fear and erodes at our belief in God's greatest gift to us- salvation by grace through faith alone, not of works, so I'm going to go into a bit of what I've been learning from different passages of Scripture regarding this.

When someone believes that if they sin so much, or do some particular sin, they begin to try to work hard to make sure that they are saved, as works are what they see as the proof of their salvation.  They begin to do good works out of guilt- if they don't do them, are they really saved?  Do they really have a proof of election?  The cycle of guilt continues, however, even if they manage to do enough works that one would think that they had proved their salvation, as they feel guilt for why they did their works- instead of doing them out of love, they did them out of fear- fear that if they didn't perform, they were not Christians.  This is a terrible place to be, but I think many Christians approach this position at one point in their life or another.  It is this situation, I think, that prompts John, in 1 John 4:18 when he says that "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."  When we understand God's love for us and the totality of what He has done for us, how He has bought and redeemed and purified us, we no longer fear God as someone who will punish us- He still may punish us, temporally, of course, but as a good father punishes his child, with that child's best interest in mind, but that is not what the child thinks of as the main aspect of the father, nor is punishment the biggest reason that the child will avoid disobedience in the future.  Both the child and the understanding Christian now performs what is expected not out of fear of punishment but out of love for the father/Father.

This, of course, requires trust- trust in God's love for us.  Trust that God loves us more than we can imagine in the same way that we love our children- trust that banishes fear.  We have to trust God, as difficult as it may be, when He says that we have the adoption as sons that He promised that we now have.  I want to end this devotional with some quotations:

John tells us that we are saved when we are born of the spirit.  Paul describes this spirit in Romans 8:15, 16: "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God"

And back again to the passage I love that tells me how much God loves me: Romans 8:28-39.  "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Finally, what this trust in Christ gives me:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! 

O what a foretaste of glory divine! 

Heir of salvation, purchase of God, 

born of his Spirit, washed in his blood. 

This is my story, this is my song, 

praising my Savior all the day long; 

this is my story, this is my song, 

praising my Savior all the day long.

- Chris O. From Tokyo, Japan -