Article: TRUST IN THE LORD, NOT IN OURSELVES! | Jacob Varghese
Quite often the words faith and trust are tossed in our discourses. But what do they mean? Is faith the same thing as trust? If not, what is the difference? To have trust simply means having a strong belief in the reliability, truth, or ability, whereas having faith means having our complete confidence. These two have an overlapping dissemination; however, having faith includes having trust. Trust is faith in action!
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” For many people this is a memory verse. Often when we read this verse the emphasis is on the first sentence, while the second sentence—that of acknowledging Him and allowing Him to direct us—not given much emphasis. This scripture teaches us that we should rely on God in whatever we do. However, we often go in the wrong direction and rely on our own intelligence and ability. In the process, things may eventually be done and problems may be solved, but our spiritual life didn’t make any progress. We missed the opportunity to know God and the experience to establish true faith in God.
Once I happened to see a child of around six years old and her father were coming down the stairs in the supermarket. The Child was having a bag full of items in her hand. Her father told, “Child hold my hand and walk and I will carry the bag”. But the child hesitated and replied “no, I am okay” and grabbed on to the railing of the staircase with one hand and carried the bag with the other. In an instant, she was trembling down the steps head over heels throwing the items all around and breaking them. We may smile at the little child’s self-sufficiency but in fact I was thinking after this incident, we too are like this child from the view point of our heavenly father.
Our Lord wants us to take hold of His hands. He wants us to trust in Him, not in ourselves. Lean on what He shows us and not on what we can figure out by ourselves. Dear friends, Can you hear the still small voice of our heavenly father whispering to you, “My child, you should hold my hand!” Are you willing to obey Him? Or do you say, “I can do this father, I can fix this, I can handle this!” If you say so, very soon you will experience a crash and the breakage. Sure you may be saying that you are trusting God, but in reality you not trusting Him but trying what you can do. That is why there are so many stumbles, so many falls, and so many difficulties in our life. But our heavenly Father is saying to us, “Take my hand, lean on me, let me lead.” Take hold of the Lord’s hands and trust Him fully. If you do so then your life will be safe.
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” This verse gives us the most powerful definition of faith. Do you have faith? If so, what kind of faith do you have? The person of little faith says, “God can.” The person of great faith says, “God will.” But the person with perfect faith says, “God has done it!” The scripture says: “To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.” What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead. Remember, the things hoped for are not mere figments of the imagination. Their basis is the word of God. If you don’t give up on your faith, and if you hold fast to your faith, it will bring results! So, no matter what happens, keep calm and don’t lose faith. Your faith and faithfulness will produce powerful results!
We cannot live without faith. Faith is putting our trust in our loving, caring, but invisible heavenly Father. When we hold on to God on the basis of His word, faith is the confidence we have that it will turn out exactly even if and when all external evidence points the other way. Hebrews 11:3 says “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” This tells us that the word of God is more stable, more concrete, more real than that which is visible, than that of the material world which we live. Just as our physical eyesight is the sense that gives us evidence of the material world, faith is the “sense” that gives us evidence of the invisible, spiritual world. Faith is not a bare belief or intellectual understanding. It is a willingness to trust in, to rely on, and to cling to Almighty God.
JACOB VARGHESE
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