“Trust in the LORD forever, for in the LORD GOD you have an everlasting rock.” Isaiah 26: 4 (ESV)
Have you ever been in a storm, an honest to goodness, STORM?
I have such vivid memories of when I was two years old; when at Laurel Lee and Kathryn Judy’s house I would beg my Mom to pump the two old organ pedals while I would try to play a song, using one finger at a time on the keyboard; or throwing rocks in the Warrior River with my cousin, Mary Ruth, then all of a sudden, something must have happened because I was in the river holding onto the floating pier, looking back at the shoreline, watching my Dad slide down the river bank, swimming to rescue me…what a great feeling to be safe in your father’s arms? Or, the time in 1959, while vacationing with my parents in St. Petersburg, Florida, when a hurricane came suddenly, palm trees swaying and bending almost to the ground; my float and beach ball blown away; leaving before the storm hit; raining so hard you couldn’t see the ocean. God was watching over us and caring for us.
Too often contemporary people confuse the word “believe” with intellectual assent or understanding, but a more proper translation of that word would be, “trust.” It seems to me that our American-style Christianity wants us to profess our faith as our “belief in God,” which implies that we are to somehow cognitively, intellectually give our assent to the reality of God. I have a sneaking suspicion that we have it all wrong. I really do believe that our faith is about trusting God; committing our lives to the one who gave His Life for us – Jesus Christ, our Savior.
So I ask, how do you weather the storms of life? Do you trust God with your life? Do you trust God with the life of your loved ones? Do you? If we will trust God, He will be for us an everlasting rock. What that says to me is that God will be with us, present with us in all circumstances of our living and dying, and that we can trust His everlasting Presence. Now the challenge is to discover how to have that kind of trust.
Join me as we continue to experience the amazing grace of trusting that God is with us, always.
Prayer: Holy One, teach me to trust that you are ever with me and I am with you. Amen.
As we serve together
I remain your friend,
Mark David Jackson
