Do You Trust God?

 The testament of your faith is your "trust" and "obedience." Knowing about faith is just the beginning of your belief, and it must be followed by acting in faith with trust and obedience. 

     God gives everyone a gift—which is your deep understanding of what to ask, where to seek, and when to knock. This gift is also your “freedom of will.” But it comes with a price: you must follow His commandments. That is, you must also show your trust, and obedience to God through your faith.  

     If you truly believe in God and in His presence, then you must trust and obey Him. Trusting and obeying God is never easy because you’re human with many human flaws and shortcomings innate in your flesh.

     Trusting God also means giving up your control of the happenings in your daily life, as well as your freedom to choose whatever you want to do.

     Like everybody else, you’re controlling to a certain extent because you, too, have an ego. You want to control the people around you, such as your spouse, your parents, your children, your siblings, and even your friends and co-workers.

     Control is basic human instinct. All humans are inherently controlling. Out of fear and insecurity, your ancestors living as early as in the Stone Age strove to survive in their dangerous environments, and thus developing their own controlling fight-or-flight instincts.

     So, letting go of your control of anything and everything in your everyday life is “trusting God.”

 An Illustration of “Trusting God”

      Several years ago, a pastor from Hong Kong was invited to give a sermon in China.

     A woman from the congregation asked the pastor if it was “right” to give money to get her son into an elite school in China. The pastor immediately replied by saying: “Your son getting into that elite school would also imply depriving another child of that same opportunity you’re seeking for your child.”

     A year later, the pastor met the same woman, who told him that her son had got into that elite school but without using her kwangxi or financial connection. The pastor then said to her: “See, God is in control; if you’d just let Him.”

 An Illustration of “Not Trusting God”

 Changing God’s mind for what He has already destined for you is your “not trusting God” as well as your attempt to change and control your own destiny.

     Buying the lottery or the Power Ball is not trusting God.

     What if God wants you to win the lottery or the Power Ball?

     First, God didn’t create the lottery or the Power Ball, but humans did out of their greed. If God wants you to have abundance, He’ll find other means to make you rich.

Obeying God

     “Obedience to God” is doing the right and the righteous things in your everyday life. This daily task is most difficult, if not impossible. Why? It’s because all humans are in their flesh with their own inclination and their propensity to choose their wrongdoings, that is, the sins of man in the flesh.

     According to the Scripture, Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God began humans’ departure from God’s Way to begin their own ways of sin and brokenness. 

“¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’” Genesis 2: 16-17

    But it must be noted that moral evil from the freedom to choose didn’t come from God. Quite the contrary, the goodness of God is to make humans’ wrongs right again in Jesus’ Salvation.

Stephen Lau