Category Archives: trust

Tough Stuff

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Walt Disney gives us a false message: “Someday my prince will come.” (Okay, this is a true message, in the ultimate sense. Jesus will come back and make everything right. Eventually.)

But meanwhile, life is challenging. Walt Disney tells us that in two hours all of life’s difficult challenges are neatly resolved. The Bible gives a different story.1 Samuel 23-24 tells of David running around in the wilderness, being chased by King Saul, who wanted to kill him. As I previously observed, David was very close to God and yet God let David go through that very tough period.

In the midst of being chased, David knew where to look – God. (He wrote Psalm 63 in the midst of that flight. He must have been carrying a few pens and some paper with him in the wilderness.) In verse 1: “I earnestly search for you.” And then that leads to verse 4: “Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you!” Wow. His longer-term view of reality is amazing in light of his circumstances.

I find it freeing to know that it’s all right that things aren’t always all right. We need God. He wants us to need Him. If you’re in the wilderness today, cry to God and ask Him to show you His presence. He will. Maybe not immediately or in the way you expect, but He will.

Jesus reminds us, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.” (John 14:1-3.)

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday.)

How a doubting Thomas believed

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On Sunday night, ten disciples were gathered in a room.

Okay, there may have been more than ten, but only ten of The Twelve were there. Judas was dead.  Thomas simply wasn’t present.

It was a gathering of uncertainty. The door was locked. The disciples had heard that Jesus was alive, but weren’t sure what that meant. And they were trusting more in locks than in stories that night.

Suddenly there was another person in the room. Jesus said, “Peace.” Jesus held out his hands. Jesus pointed to his side. The disciples were thrilled.

Sometime during the next few days, the ten tell Thomas, “you should have been there! We saw Jesus! He’s alive!”

And Thomas, with the words everyone thinks should go on his tombstone, says, “Unless I see his hands and touch his hands and side, I won’t believe what you are saying.”

And we talk about doubting Thomas. And we get frustrated with the people around us who aren’t as spiritually trusting as we are, as jumping up and down happy to believe as we are.

But wait a minute.

What was Thomas asking for, other than what the other disciples had already seen? And who was Thomas talking to, other than guys who had wanted to hold back when Thomas followed Jesus into danger at Lazarus’ tomb?

Be honest. You would have been skeptical of Peter, too.

The real measure of Thomas is not his honest skepticism about seemingly unreliable witnesses. The real measure is that, when given the kind of evidence he said he wanted, evidence provided more in Jesus’ words that showed Thomas’ heart than in the actually touching, Thomas acknowledged who Jesus was.

An honest skeptic can see evidence. Thomas, seeing, believed. Still others, believing, see.

A professional skeptic, however, often won’t look.

—

This was first posted April 9, 2009.

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more than watchmen waiting.

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You are waiting.

You aren’t sure what’s happening. You can’t see to the end of today. And you are waiting.

It reminds you of that summer before your senior year of high school, the summer that you worked third shift. All alone in the building, all alone working on the computer.  Sometimes alone is okay. But in the hours just before dawn, when exhaustion is setting in, you can see waiting.

It reminds you of the time between you decided to apply for the job and the conversation in your office when they said, “We’ve decided to go the other direction.” Those weeks of wondering, those last minutes of sheer uncertainty about which way your whole life was going.

You are waiting.

And in your waiting, you are trying to talk to God. You make promises and then rescind them and then rescind your doubt and then doubt yourself. It’s so deep, your waiting, that some moments you cannot breath. You cannot sit. You cannot touch the keyboard.

An ancient chant starts playing around the edges of your heart.

More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.
More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.

Every bit of urgency and despair and desire and fear pours itself into that line. Because that’s how much you want hope, how much you are aching for this to be fixed.  But you can’t remember where that chant came from.

It came from Psalm 130, which is familiar even if never before seen.  Right before the repeated watchman phrase, the writer tells us the object of desire:

My soul waits for the Lord
More than the watchmen, waiting for the morning.

You aren’t the first to wait.  Or the first to cry out from the depths for mercy. I’ve known the feeling. And found hope.

Trust

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(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday)

A lesson I’ve been learning again is how to trust.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Paul’s request for us to not worry in Philippians 4:6-7. He gives a great alternative – pray. When we worry, we bring the problems into our own court and say to God, “I can handle this one.” When we pray, we’re giving that worry (or those worries) to Him and saying, “You are the only one who can handle this. So I’m giving it to you!”

When I was a kid learning to swim, I realized that if I fought the water, it would not hold me up. I’d panic and end up sucking in lots of water through my nose and thrash wildly and start to cry. But when I relaxed and let the water lift me up, I could start to glide through the water.

But trusting in God to lift us up in the swimming pool of life is not a call for us to be lazy. Jesus told a parable about talents. The master rewarded the servant who made the most use of the resources he was given. The one who sat back and did nothing was punished. Notice that he worried. He was concerned about losing the resources he was given, so he buried it. He was so focused on himself and his perceived limitations that he didn’t step back to think about what could be done.

Back to Philippians. After telling us to pray, Paul tells us how to pray. Two things: tell God what we need and then thank Him for all He has already done. What a great way to have a positive outlook! If we reflect on what God has done, we’ll remember that He can rescue us. Again.

The reason trusting is on Paul’s mind is that he has just launched a new consulting firm, Greener Grass Media. He can help you with social media, marketing and website visual design, just like he’s helped Jon with some design projects. 

Formulas

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Donald Miller got me thinking. I’ve been reading Searching for God Knows What. He talks about how we can’t use formulas for how we relate to God. We can’t just pray for X and expect it to appear on our doorstep 24 hours later. That would reduce God to being a celestial vending machine.

Yet God created many formulas. The universe runs by an infinite set of formulas that govern how physical things work. When two hydrogen atoms are combined with one oxygen atom, water always results. By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen (Hebrews 11:3).

However, people (and God) are so much more complicated than just a set of formulas. I’d guess that God has countless formulas running in the background that govern how our minds and souls function. And yet there’s that free will thing. God created us to have choice, which indicates He enjoys variables.

Part of the beauty of relating with God is that He has depth and richness of character that takes more than a lifetime to grapple with. If you are married, you can say the same is true of your spouse.

Back to prayer and vending machines… Though we have no guarantees about how God will work in our lives, we can trust that He knows what is best for us – and that He bears our desires in mind too! You parents – if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? … So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him (Matthew 7:9 & 11).

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday.)