“Trust Works Both Ways”

Scripture Text: Isaiah 26:2-4, 10-15

As you all know, we have two cats – Rusty and Robo. They are good cats, and as cats go, are pretty sociable. At night, especially during colder weather, they both vie for treasured spots on the bed. Treasured for them, I might add, because it usually means that Diane and I wind up cramped for space of our own! We can’t roll over without getting hissed at, and we can’t stretch out our legs without kicking at least one of them.
And as nice as these two furry creatures are, and as much as we both enjoy their attentiveness, there is at least one moment when you simply can’t trust them – and that is when we sit down to have a meal and watch a TV show in our family room. Do not – I repeat – DO NOT trust that either one of them will leave your food alone if you need to get up for a few moments! And sometimes, you don’t even have to leave the room – I don’t know how many times I’ve had a furry little paw sneak up over the edge of the TV tray and reach for my plate, even while I’m still sitting there!
Trust, in this life at least, is something that must be earned through experience, and those two cats still have a long way to go!!

But what about trust in God? Does the Lord have to earn our trust, or should we instinctively give it to Him? I might offer that, experientially, people do not spontaneously give trust, but I will say that while God already deserves our trust, we all must discover that truth for ourselves.

Read Isaiah 26:2-4

And when we finally come to the conclusion that God is deserving of our trust, we also uncover the fact that He has already been giving His trust to us. We don’t deserve it, we haven’t earned it, and we continue to give God all kinds of reasons to withdraw that trust, but He never has and never will. He has given it, and will never take it back.
And verse 3 also tells us that we will gain a peace in Christ because of His trust. I don’t think that I need to remind you, though, that this peace does not mean that life will automatically be wonderful! A life in Christ is still filled with all kinds of trials and troubles and pains, but it is His peace that sees us through those times.

Buell Kazee, a writer, musician and preacher in the early 20th century, tells us that “Faith is not trusting God to get something; faith is trusting God when there seems to be nothing left. When everything is gone with no hope of restoration and when there is nothing on which to base your faith; then can you still trust God?”
--Buell Kazee, Faith Is the Victory (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1983), 149.

Kazee had lived through the Depression in the rural South, and he knew what “nothing” was. When there is nothing left to sustain you, when the world has given you up for loss, when even your faith seems to be teetering on the verge of total collapse, do you still trust God? Isaiah tells us that He will still trust us, but do we still trust Him?
When others seems to be doing very well in the world without God, and when, in faith, we are struggling to make ends meet, do we still trust? That seems to be a real test, doesn’t it?

Read Isaiah 26:10-11

Even the people of this world who want nothing to do with God can still experience His grace and mercy for a while, but it will not last forever. In Jesus’ words, “They have received their reward in full (Matthew 6:2-4).
God gives His trust to all, but how many are willing to return that trust? All too often, we want God to earn our trust before we give it! We want Him to be obvious in His blessings, obvious in His grace, obvious in His trust, but unfortunately, that isn’t how the Lord works! And actually, He works in just the opposite way – trust in Him first, and then His blessings and grace and trust in us will be revealed!

Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God!“

We need to stop demanding those things that we have decided are important from our Lord, and start giving Him our best. We need to be “still” in voice, and “loud” in faith! We need to trust that God is generous and will give all good things to those who believe. We need to believe that God is gracious and loving, and that His greatest desire is for us to have a relationship with Him. We need to know that He is God, and we need to know that we aren’t!

A prayer by Theodore Parker Ferris, rector of Trinity Church in Boston for thirty years, was found penciled on the back of an in-flight beverage list from American Airlines: “Lord Jesus, I would like to be able to do myself the things I help others to do. I can give them confidence that I myself do not have, and I can quiet their anxiety but not my own.
What do I lack? Or is it the way I am made? I want to be free to move from place to place without fear, and I want to face the thing to be done without panic. You did it, and you made it possible for others to do it. You didn't count on drugs. You trusted your Father. You didn't turn away from life, nor did you seek pain or death. You met each as it came.
I would like to do the same, but by myself I can't. I like to think that you can be with me and in me, and with your help I can do better. Amen.”

Now there is a prayer that we all should be praying! We need to trust God enough to know that He trusts us even more. We need to see His hand that rests over us, as well as that same hand that comes against the evil of the world. We need to recognize the ways that He works in and through us, we need to know that “He is with us and in us and with His help, that we can do better" – in faith, in trust, in life.

Read Isaiah 26:12-15

And we have to acknowledge that in everything that we may accomplish, that it is really God who has enabled it to happen. The prophet reminds us that while others have had authority over our lives from time to time, that their power can never be permanent – it rises up, and then it is taken away, it becomes strong and then withers to nothing. During Isaiah’s ministry, he would see the power of the Assyrians rise up and defeat the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and he knew that in another hundred years or so, that the Southern Kingdom of Judah would fall to the Babylonians and that the city of Jerusalem and the temple would be completely destroyed. And he also knew that the power that Assyria and Babylon held would never last, but that God’s would. When you are facing conquest and annihilation, and can still love God, that’s trust! When we can still look to God when everything that we have ever valued is being taken away, when we can trust that God is still in charge, even though the evil in this world seems to be on a never ending rampage, when we can still have a hope for a glorious eternity, even while we see nothing but futility and failure in our own lives, that is the level of faith that God wants for us.

Abraham Heschel writes: “God does not need those who praise him when in a state of euphoria. He needs those who are in love with him when in distress.... This is the task: in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing, agony into a song. To know the monster's rage and, in spite of it, proclaim to its face; to go through hell [on earth] and to continue to trust in the goodness of God - this is the challenge and the way.”
(Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973], 300-301)

Trust with God works both ways. Heschel tells us to “trust in the goodness of God”, and I will add that we should do this because God trusts in the potential for goodness that is in each of us! He loves us, and He rains down His blessings upon us, and in return, we are to give Him the glory.
God trusts that we will give Him our best, and we trust that He will give us His. God’s trust never fails. Will ours be that solid?