He Trusted God

ByJim Stephens

Scripture: Matthew 27 (Click Link)

42 “He saved others,” they scoffed, “but he can’t save himself! So he is the king of Israel, is he? Let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him! 43 He trusted God—let God show his approval by delivering him! For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” (Matthew 27:42-43 NLT)

Everyone, both his friends and his enemies alike, thought that if Jesus really was the Son of God, the Messiah, then his legitimacy and his power would be demonstrated by miracles and invincibility. The crowd of onlookers scoffed, “He trusted God…so why doesn’t God rescue him?”. They mocked his foolish faith because God didn’t rescue him from the terrible things they were doing to him.

It was hard for them (and for us) to understand that being God’s child and being in God’s will doesn’t make you bullet-proof, nor protect you from hardships and pain, nor ensure an easy and problem-free pathway. They couldn’t grasp that this was both God’s greatest act of love and Jesus’ greatest act of trust.

We’ve got to be careful not to judge others or ourselves as faithless or out of God’s will when bad things happen to them or to us! We’ve got to resist measuring the quantity or the quality of faith – even our own God-pleasing faith, by outward signs of blessing. It’s easy now to see that Jesus hadn’t failed in his mission. It’s not so easy to measure faith or foolishness in our own lives or others’ lives in the middle of it all!

God has called us to obedience, not success. Our faith is validated by our faithfulness, not by the results we achieve or the “blessings” we receive.

Sometimes the greatest faith is faith that endures, not faith that avoids or escapes trials and suffering. Sometimes the greatest love is love that sacrifices, not love that receives. I want to trust God completely even when the things that my faith has contended for, the things I have “believed for”, don’t happen.

Prayer:

Father, I know that you love me because you are good, not because I am good. I know that you love me completely and unconditionally even when I’m not all I should be (because I’ll never be all I should be). Please help me to know your heart better, to judge others less, and to be as “sure of you” in hard times as I am in good times. I pray for my friends who are facing faith challenges right now that neither they nor those around them will misjudge their faith or your love. In Jesus’ Name.