Dear Hope family,

Thought for the Week

How to Grow Spiritually – (5) Trust God

Deuteronomy 7v9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.”

The Christian “faith” is not so much a set of beliefs, as it is faith in a person – namely the living and faithful God. Our faith is that He is the one and only God of all, that he keeps his promises to us, and his most basic promise is to love us. Moses sets this before the Israelites in the above verse from Deuteronomy.

A few days ago, someone asked for my trust. I actively went through some rational thought, “Can I trust? Shall I trust?” I decided there was relatively little consequence and the outcome would be short term so I took the step of faith. A few days later, the person proved trustworthy. I now feel I can trust them with something greater. It means that my faith in them can be exercised yet further another time. By trusting in someone trustworthy, my trust in them has grown.

It is the same with God. As we take steps of trust in what He says, we will find He is always faithful, and our trust is built. The only caveat is that our expectations of Him need to be in line with what He has said.  If we are working off our own imaginations, we are on shaky ground. But if we are based on what He has said, then we can expect him to deliver. Always.

We can see from this that our faith or trust is active. Our faith is shown by the actions we take. Hence James says, “Faith without deeds is dead” (James 2v26). In the context of James, the deeds are “Love your neighbour as yourself.” It is a trust that doing what God says is the best way, and a trust that He will provide for us as we give to others.

When Jesus challenged the disciples to forgive, they exclaimed, “Lord increase our faith.” (Luke 17v5) The disciples recognised an important truth: our ability to forgive is based on our trust in God who forgives us and will deal with other people’s sins.

May God continually increase your faith in Him.

With love and blessing,

Roland