How sweet it is to trust in the Lord!  True trust in God will be “with all your heart” (Prov. 3:5), acknowledging Him “in all your ways” (Prov. 3:6).  Simply put, that means that trusting in God is done by thinking about God, keeping your mind focused on Him.  The believer’s mind is “stayed on” God “because he trusts in” God (Isa. 26:3), and this trust should be evident “at all times” as we “pour out” our hearts to Him who “is our refuge”  (Ps. 62:8).

            Who can trust in God?  Only the one who is no longer “an enemy of God”  (Jas. 4:4), having been “reconciled to” Him “through the death of His Son” and “saved through His life” (Rom. 5:10).  Christ’s death is the only thing that can keep us from being “God’s enemies” (Rom. 5:10), therefore we must trust only in the sacrificial merits of our Savior.  To trust in Christ, we must “believe in His name” and “receive Him” (Jn. 1:12), yes receive “Christ Jesus as Lord” and “continue to live in Him” (Col. 2:6).  Those who are not God’s children cannot trust in Him, but those who are can, for “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12).

            These who received Him “were baptized into Christ Jesus” and “into his death,” being “buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,” they too would “walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4).  Because their hearts have been “sprinkled from an evil conscience” and their “bodies” have been “washed with pure water,” they can “draw near” to God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith” and “hold fast the confession of” their “hope without wavering” trusting in Him and only in Him, “for He who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:22-23).

            Unbelievers cannot trust God because they are “dead” in “transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1), and they “cannot accept” the “Spirit of truth” because they neither “see Him nor know Him” (Jn. 14:17).  Believers have “full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:22)

            Only those who can say, “Surely God is my salvation” and “the Lord is my strength and my song, and has become my salvation” can “trust and not be afraid” (Isa. 12:2). 

            "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." (Jer. 17:7-8)

Bryan Dunaway

Grace and Peace Ministries

www.gandpministries.org