Faith = Trust

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  James 1:2-4

Faith = Trust

Faith.  It is the essence of a Christian’s existence.  By faith we are saved… that is just the beginning. Faith is the way we come to know God and the way we develop our spiritual strength and knowledge of God. The way we began is the way we continue.  However, faith is not always easy.  A faith test is when our concept of God and the reality of our lives conflict and we can’t understand why something is happening.  

Faith is like a muscle and when it’s stretched and it’s pulled then it develops. Your faith develops as it is tested.  You don’t develop your faith just attending church once or twice a week, even throwing in a Bible study.  God builds our faith by testing it.  If we had really had our way, our faith would never be tested…but God would never have the chance to prove that faith worked.  Our declarations of faith would ring hollow. We would simply be echoing empty religious clichés learned in church and Sunday School.  No skeptic is ever convinced or won over by that kind of false faith. 

 

The testing of your faith is more about who God is than who we are.  If we truly have faith in God - who he is and what he has done - we will trust him. God’s desire is that we know Him and experience His goodness in our lives.  The positive end of a test of faith may not be a change in circumstance but a greater knowledge of God and His love and power in our lives.  That is when faith gets hard.  It’s easy to understand that God may not answer every prayer by giving us everything we ask for. That, we can wrap our minds around, but it is hard to realize that sometimes God’s will is that everything stays the same for a while.  Maybe nothing changes.  That’s not the answer we want to get when we are in a difficult or painful situation.  Faith becomes a fragile Paper Mache shell when everything inside is withering away as we seek relief from a painful situation.  In those times, faith is stretched thin, but it is there. 

 

If you are waiting… if you are wilting and waiting… I challenge you to drink the living water.  It is hard and exhausting, but there is a reason.  If we simply exist in our suffering, we will miss the point.  What a fruitless effort to just suffer through and completely miss what the Lord is doing because we are so focused inward.  There is something working, something is happening.  It is never His purpose for us to understand His ways, just to understand Him.  Hold fast, trust in the Lord as He is developing and strengthening your faith. 

 

How To Trust In Jesus

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. Romans 10:9-10

What does Paul say that we are to do to trust in Jesus? Have you done this? If so, when? What does Paul say is the result of trusting in Jesus?

How To Trust In Jesus

Chapter 9 of Romans ends with Paul speaking about Israel’s rejection of Jesus – the Messiah. Israel did not believe in faith that Jesus Christ could save them apart from themselves. They still believed that they must be saved by works of the law, rejecting that salvation comes only from Jesus who was crucified for their sins. Paul is heartbroken because they just don’t get it, or they refuse to listen to him. They are choosing to reject the truth that the only way to God is through faith in Jesus Christ. After following the law for their whole lives and trying to keep all the laws so they would be good enough you would think that they might welcome the relief that it is actually not something they could ever achieve on their own. 

Paul begins chapter 10 praying for them and their salvation, and in verses 9-10 he gets to the heart of what truly brings salvation for everyone: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

There is nothing we can do to save ourselves from the penalty of our sins which is death. No amount of works can do for us what only Jesus can. He came to earth as a baby and gave his life on the cross to pay that penalty for us. It is a gift given and all we have to do is to believe it and receive it. It is our belief in him as the Son of God who was raised from the dead that results in our righteousness. When we confess with our mouth our belief in him as the Son of God it results in our salvation. All we have to do to trust in Jesus is to believe, receive, and confess. 

For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame, since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Romans 10:11-13

Paul goes on in verses 11-13 to say that salvation is available for all – Jew and Greek alike. Paul specifically said this because the Jews believed they were better than the Gentiles (Greeks). Jews were also known as Israelites or Hebrews, and they were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were God’s chosen people that he had a covenant with. All other non-Jewish people were Gentiles. The way the Jews viewed it, they were chosen and everyone else was not. But Paul sets them straight here.  

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved – no matter who they were, what they have done, or where they come from. Everyone is the same in the eyes of the Lord as he loves us all equally and offers salvation to everyone, from every heritage and walk of life.  

What about you? Have you called on him and trusted him with everything in your life? 

What are you still holding onto that you don’t want to turn over to him?