Trust

Walking a Darker Path (Mark 10:32-33)

My walk with Christ easily lends itself to the analogy of a path. That path began in late 1990 when I came to Christ from a very non-Christian worldview and found myself suddenly following Christ.

Much of my walk with the Lord has been pleasant and many days have been spent strolling through meadows or climbing through forest glades on well-marked, smooth paths. As the Lord effortlessly strides ahead, I struggle to keep up, occasionally stumbling over a rock or a root. When I lag too far behind, He stops and looks back waiting for me, always smiling, always patient, always encouraging. Thus He and I have spent many idyllic days in sweet fellowship, and thus over time He has taught me about His ways and has taught me how to walk, and thus I have gradually gotten stronger and better able to follow Him. I have seen His power and His faithfulness, and my trust in Him has become more sure.

This trust and increased strength are important, because the Lord knows, and I know, that my path will not always meander through pleasant meadows. There have been times in the past, and there will be times in the future, when the character of the path changes. There are times when, for His perfect purposes and for my deeper discipleship, the Lord needs to lead me into a darker, dangerous place.

I sense that I am now entering such a time and following Him toward such a place, and I feel that there are many others in this decaying world who are feeling the same thing. For the past two or three years or so, the Lord has led me past alpine lakes and through hardwood and hemlock forests, but now, as I peer up ahead, the landscape seems much more barren. Towering thunderhead clouds loom, billowing up to obscure the sun and rumbling their foreboding tune. The path is beginning to drop steeply and to narrow, becoming harder to follow. Rocks, prominent and jagged, threaten the sides of the trail. A gloomy dusk has cloaked the scene, making it harder to see where to walk. There in front of me is the Lord, still leading, still smiling and still patient, but His looks back to me are now more frequent, wanting to make sure that I am staying close. Does He sense my reluctance to follow Him into the darkness? Does He know my fear? And now it has become clear that the Lord is, in fact, leading me into a season of a darker path as He beckons me down into the foggy chasm.

What, then, is the believer to do when the path becomes treacherous and when the Lord leads us toward the edge of a murky chasm? As I walk with the Lord, there are some basic things to do to make sure I stay on the path.

  • Consider Jesus’ example of fearless obedience to His Father’s plan. Jesus’ entire life was one of suffering. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).” He knew what it was to walk a dark path. In Mark 10:32-33, the Bible says:
    • And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, He began to tell them what was to happen to Him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock Him and spit on Him and flog Him and kill Him. And after three days He will rise.”

When I consider that I am going to walk a dark and difficult path, I need to remember and keep my eyes on the Lord Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). In Mark 10, as they go up to Jerusalem, He is the only one who knows EXACTLY what awaits Him there. The Lord is beginning the walk to the cross. He knows with certainty that mocking and scourging and crucifixion await Him and yet He is walking ahead of the crowd. Since my Lord accepted this darkest of all possible paths and persevered, so I need to accept whatever path the Lord leads me down and persevere to the end.

  • As Jesus trusted and obeyed His heavenly Father and accomplished His work (John 17:4), so I need to trust and obey the Lord and accomplish the work He has given me to do (Ephesians 2:10).
  • Regardless of the darkness of the path, the Lord is with me. He has sworn that He will never leave me of forsake me (Hebrews 13:5; Joshua 1:5).
  • Regardless of the darkness of the path, the Lord is the one leading me. The path on which I am traveling may seem dark and difficult, and I may not know the short-term destination, but I know and trust the One leading me. The Lord is trustworthy, and He has sovereignly chosen this path for me, and He is leading me along it. Regardless of the nature of the path, because of the One who has chosen this path for me, I can trust that this is the perfect path.

SDG                 rmb                 7/24/2020

You Knew My Path (Psalm 142:3)

            There is a scene from the original “Star Wars” movie (1977) that sticks in my mind. All the living heroes of the movie (Luke, Leah, Han Solo, and Chewbacca) have temporarily escaped from the battle with the storm troopers by ducking into a convenient trash bin. Their relief from escaping the battle is short-lived, however, because the trash bin becomes a trash compactor and threatens to doom them to a nasty death by crushing.

            While this may not be a perfect analogy, there are times in life when we all feel like we are in this situation. Part of the human experience is the feeling that we are small and weak and that the threats against us are big and gnarly. We have exhausted all our cleverness in escaping our adversaries, only to end up in a sloppy, scummy trash bin just as the maintenance crew decides to activate the compactor. In that moment we realize that we have been outmatched by the challenges that life has presented to us. And the question is, “What do you do then?” To whom do you cry out when life has overwhelmed you and your carefully laid plans have collapsed, when your friends have failed you, and there seems to be no escape for you? Where can you find hope and confidence? In Psalm 142, David is in that place, and we will find, in this psalm, patterns and strategies for how to respond from the midst of the intergalactic trash compactor.

            This study of Psalm 142 will focus only on the first half of verse 3:

“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path.” (NAS Bible)

            Since we have dropped into the middle of the psalm, it would be good to get a little context. Although the nature of David’s trouble is not clear, it is obvious that the shepherd-king is in distress and may have been in distress for a while. Here in Psalm 142:3, David says that “his spirit is overwhelmed within him.” I read this as meaning both his soul and his body are exhausted. He has tried to maintain his courage, but the setbacks keep on coming. Like a surfer caught in the midst of a series of big waves, he is losing the fight to catch his breath. As soon as he fights his way to the surface, another wave of water crashes down. Fear and fatigue are towering over him, and he is overpowered. He is outmatched. “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me . . .” What is David’s source of hope?

            The last four words of Psalm 142:3a are “You knew my path.” These four words are critically important to the child of God who is feeling overwhelmed by the incessant challenges of life.

“You, O LORD, knew my path.”

            David expresses the confidence that every believer can have, that the LORD is personally aware of and concerned with our every trial and overwhelming circumstance. The LORD knows my path, and He knows your path. The NAS Bible renders the Hebrew verb in the past tense, “knew.” In this case, the past tense is much stronger than the present tense. The LORD KNEW my path in eternity past, before the creation of the world, and then He brought my “path” into existence according to His perfect plan. He personally ordained it to be. “You knew my path” means that the LORD has led me into this situation, the LORD is personally with me in the midst of it, and the LORD already knows every detail of the outcome. “You knew my path” means that the LORD has His personal fingerprints on every detail of every circumstance of my life, making sure that exactly this circumstance unfolds exactly this way so that all things work together for good (Romans 8:28) and so that I am conformed more into the image of Christ (8:29).

REFLECTION

            In the book of “Job,” we read that “man is born for trouble as the sparks fly upward (5:7).” Our Lord Jesus Himself said that “each day has enough trouble of its own (Matt. 6:34)” and “in this world you will have tribulation (John 16:33).” The Bible speaks truth about life on earth after sin enters the world, and it is a life of effort and setback and difficulty. Of course, it is not ALL trial and difficulty, but we must have a sober expectation that overwhelming times will come so that we are not defeated when we meet the first opposing waves.

            In light, then, of the inevitability of trials, what can we, as followers of Jesus, do that will make a difference in our lives? First, when we are feeling overwhelmed by the trials of life, we can have confidence that the Lord who guided us into the trial is with us in the storm and will guide us out to our safe haven (Psalm 107:30). Remember, “the LORD knew my path.” Each trial thus becomes an opportunity to increase our trust in the Lord and to anticipate His faithfulness.

            Second, it is in trials that the Lord proves His power to deliver us. God has already accomplished the most powerful act of deliverance imaginable when He delivered us from our sin and condemnation and raised us up in salvation through our faith in the Lord Jesus and His completed work on the cross. Having already demonstrated His power in giving us eternal deliverance, He is more than able to come to our help for temporal deliverance. What I mean is this: The Lord will deliver those who cry out to Him. Nothing is too difficult for Him (Jeremiah 32:17). Your trial may be overwhelming to you, but to the One who called the universe into existence ex nihilo and who raised Jesus from the dead (Ephesians 1:19-20), the trial is completely under His feet. In fact, if my thinking is correct on this, the Lord brings trials into our lives SO THAT He can rescue us when we cry to Him. “The LORD knew my path,” so He knew how He was going to deliver me.

Soli Deo gloria                 rmb                  7/3/2020

1 Peter 5:7 Casting All Your Anxiety on Him – Part 4

In this brief verse, Peter gives profound instruction to the disciple of Jesus Christ for dealing with anxiety in their life. This is the fourth in a series of blogs exploring anxiety and then applying Peter’s instruction to every believer’s everyday life.

“casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”

We have seen that anxiety is “the ongoing fear and emotional distress and unease felt in response to some perceived threat, whether real or imaginary.” In our last study, we began looking at four broad practical strategies that will help lead to victory over anxiety, and we had examined the first one, the strategy of disciplining our thoughts. In this study, we will address the second of our four strategies, namely:

PRAYER AND CONFESSION OF FEAR

Key verses: Philippians 4:6-7; “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Key concept: When the disciple feels even the beginnings of anxiety, he/she must bring that concern before the Lord with prayer and supplication, so that the Lord’s peace will replace the anxiety. Develop the reflex that worry is a stimulus to immediate confession of fear and earnest prayer.

Prayer is such a powerful weapon for the disciple of Jesus Christ and part of “casting our anxiety on the Lord” is having the readiness to pray about those things that are causing anxiety. Notice here in these two verses (Phil. 4:6-7) that there are two commands followed by a promise. First Paul commands that the disciple “be anxious for nothing.” Yes, that is a command from an apostle. Then Paul commands the disciple to make his/her requests known to God through prayer and supplication. If that is done, the disciple is promised that the peace of God will come upon them. So how are these ideas turned into a strategy?
It seems to me that the first step is for me to become aware of my anxiety. Life is going along smoothly and then some threat rears its ugly head and I suddenly notice my anxiety rising. That threat could be a “real” threat (job loss, physical danger, scary diagnosis, major negative change in my world, a potential major expense) or it could be something that I perceive to be a threat to my peace and tranquility, something that I cannot control and that could turn out badly, but whatever the case, my anxiety level rises. So first I sense that loathsome feeling and I recognize and admit to myself that I am experiencing worry. “My anxiety is rising.” I acknowledge, I confess (a good biblical word) my fear and anxiety to myself and to the Lord. Next it is helpful to identify what is causing the anxiety. Specifically, what is it? What is the exact threat that is causing my anxiety to rise? These two steps are necessary because they place me in the best position to attack the anxiety with prayer. I have admitted to myself that I am anxious about something and am therefore in need of a power greater than my own, and I have identified the offending threat so that my prayers can be focused on demolishing the anxiety by bringing that threat before the Lord.

This is a good place to remind the disciple of Jesus of the need to always and often be diligent and persistent in prayer so that heaven is familiar with your voice. The time to learn prayer and to begin to cry out to the Lord is not when disaster is bearing down on your life or when the cruise ship of your life has struck an iceberg. It is wise to be skilled in prayer so that this tool in the spiritual armor is readily pulled from the sheath. Your knees should not be unfamiliar with the floor and your voice should be often heard before the throne of grace. In this way, when the time comes to bring your anxiety and your fear before the King, there will be no reluctance, no stuttering, no hesitation.

Once we have confessed our fear and identified what it is that is causing the anxiety, now the warfare of prayer begins in earnest. Our goal is that, by following the apostolic instructions given in Philippians 4:6, we arrive at the peace of God promised in Phil. 4:7. In our prayer, we are employing the means of destroying our anxiety by bringing our mind to accept and believe and dwell in the truth that, “If God is for us, who (or what) can be against us (Romans 8:31)?” This prayer will be war, since the enemy who brought the fearful thought into your mind at the first will continue to remind of that thought as you seek to reject it, but our weapons are stronger (2 Cor. 10:3f; 1 John 4:4)) and our dread Champion (Jeremiah 20:11) is always victorious. Begin this time of prayer, then, by praising the Lord for His might, for His goodness, for His promises, and for His love for you (Isaiah 12:2). Fear does not cohabit well with praise and with rejoicing. Praise the Lord until you are convinced that He is with you and that He is for you. Now bring the specific fear out into the light and present it before the Lord. “Here, Lord, is what is causing me fear and anxiety.” (Consider Hezekiah in Isaiah 37:14ff in a situation that was genuinely threatening.) At this point you might be comparing the threat that is causing your fear with the power of your Lord and Savior, the One who spoke the universe into existence and who sovereignly controls its every action and feel that maybe your threat is not so scary after all, but this exercise of prayer should continue until the anxiety is fully vanquished. Bring the threat into the light and then cast it onto the Lord, as Peter says you should (1 Peter 5:7). The Lord will receive your anxiety and will carry it away. He will accept your fear from you, if you will give Him your trust. Pray in this manner until your anxiety has been replaced with the “peace that passes all comprehension.” Know that the Lord may or may not take away whatever real threats confront you, but He will remove your anxiety if you will trust Him and if you cry out to Him for His aid. (Psalm 34:4 – The Lord will deliver you from all your fears.)

The next blog will continue our process of casting our anxiety on Him with some more strategies for gaining peace.

SDG            rmb             3/25/2017

Trust in the Storm – Part 1 (Mark 4:35-41)

Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” With that, the disciples set off across the lake and head into a ferocious storm. As the waves are breaking over the boat and filling it with water, the Lord Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat. Here we see Jesus as the perfect example of trust, that, while he is in mortal danger of drowning in the lake, He so trusts His heavenly Father that He can sleep in the storm.

What I want to do with a short series of blogs is first to examine the trust demonstrated by Jesus Christ and understand in a new and deeper way the greatness and the perfection of our Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ. But then I also want to explore ways that we, too, can become people who trust the Lord, even in the midst of storms that may threaten our lives. Since Jesus is our perfect example of trust, we must learn how to live by faith and walk by trust in the Lord in the midst of all our circumstances so that we walk as Jesus walked. A disciple is one who is growing in trust of the Lord.

Jesus, Our Example: Perfect Trust in the Storm

As Mark’s gospel account of the life of Jesus unfolds, it quickly becomes apparent that this Jesus is no ordinary person. While His voice is an ordinary human voice, the authority of His words come forth with unquestioned power. His words are certain and uncompromising and pure. They ring with the truth of heaven. He commands demons and they instantly obey. He dispels disease and death with a word or a touch. He has supreme confidence in Himself without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. His disciples hang on His every word and begin to believe that He may be the promised Messiah. And so when He says they are going to the other side of the lake (Mark 4:35), they eagerly hop in the boats and begin sailing and rowing toward the other shore.

When the boat has left shore far behind and the Master has fallen asleep in the stern of one of the little boats, “a fierce gale of wind” arises and begins to threaten the lives of all the men in the boats, including the Lord Jesus Himself. Make no mistake about the circumstances – the lake is deep and the disciples are far from shore. They are completely vulnerable and the situation is definitely life-threatening. You know that things are dire when the fishermen in the boat, who have fished this lake all their lives, wake up the Carpenter and ask Him to do something. My trust wavers and my faith flags when I hear an unusual noise under the hood of my car or when my manager at work calls me into his office, but our Lord was so confident of His Father’s care that being in the midst of a hurricane in the middle of a deep lake in a tiny boat did not prevent Him from taking a nap. Jesus has perfect trust in His Father taking care of Him.

There are two things that I want to mention that aided Jesus in His trust in the Father’s protection in this life threatening situation. First Jesus knew all the promises of God which had been written in the Scriptures and He had every reason to believe that all the promises made to the righteous in the Word applied to Him. God would be His refuge and His fortress, His help in time of trouble. He could abide with safety in the shadow of the Almighty. God would answer Him in time of trouble. God would conceal Him in His tabernacle. God would deliver Him from the hand of the wicked. When Jesus passed through the waters, the LORD would be with Him and the rivers would not overflow Him. Jesus could trust the Father with these and many more promises.

But more significantly and more profoundly, Jesus could perfectly trust His heavenly Father with His life on the Sea of Galilee, because Jesus knew that He was not going to die on the lake in a storm. Jesus had been chosen by the Father and sent to earth to die on a cross in Jerusalem. His atoning, sacrificial death on the cross had been ordained before the foundation of the world and there was no possibility that Jesus, the suffering Servant and the Son of God, was going to die anywhere but on Calvary’s tree. The salvation of God’s elect and the completion of God’s redemptive plan and the propitiation of God’s wrath necessitated the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross and there could be no deviation from that predetermined plan (Acts 2:23). Since that was the case, Jesus could trust that He was secure on the lake in the storm. No matter how ferocious the storm, Jesus knew that His time had not yet come. Jesus had a baptism to undergo (Luke 12:50) and He still had a bitter cup to drink (Mark 10:38) and the accomplishment of His appointed work (John 17:4) precluded any premature death in a boating accident.

So we see the glory of Jesus in His perfect trust in His heavenly Father. But how can we, as His disciples, follow in His steps and grow in our trust in the Lord so that we are not disturbed by life’s storms? That will be the subject of the next couple of blogs.

SDG     rmb     10/3/2016

Not Involved in Great Matters – Psalm 131:1

“I do not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” Psalm 131:1

When a man or woman comes to the Lord in repentance and in faith and becomes a disciple of the Lord Jesus, they give the Lord a blank check for their life. With that blank check the disciple unreservedly commits to obey the Lord in everything He commands, to go wherever the Lord sends him/her and to do whatever the Lord asks him/her to do for the rest of their lives. It is certainly true that the disciple does not know what will be involved with their specific obedience and does not know all of what it will cost them to follow Jesus, but they give the Lord Jesus a blank check nevertheless and make their commitment to obey.

Now in the course of their discipleship journey, there will be many occasions when the disciple does not understand why the Lord is working out the details of their life in the way that He is doing or does not know the reasons why the Lord is calling him to do a particular thing. In fact, rarely is the disciple entrusted with an answer to the why questions. For example, in my own life I do not know what purpose was served by my three years in Russia and I can tend to think that my years there were a mistake and that I wasted that time. It is in those times that I must remember Psalm 131:1, which says, “I do not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” The Lord called me to go to Russia. Of that I am sure, and that is enough. I obeyed His call and did the best I could with the time that I had there. I tried to learn the language and share the gospel with Russians. But ultimately why I was there is not my concern. I was there to glorify God with my life and to obey His calling on my life. The details beyond that are “too difficult for me.” Those details are above my pay grade and I am not to concern myself with these “great matters.” Instead of regretting that time as if it was a mistake, I rest in the fact that the Lord knows all the reasons for all things and He will work out the details.

What are other examples of “involving myself in great matters or in things too difficult for me”? Often these are areas of life where I want to have sight and the Lord commands me to trust Him without sight. When I was 46 years old and peacefully enjoying my simple life as a bachelor, the Lord called me to marry a widow with three children. The Lord said, “Roy, marry Lisa.” Just a simple command without explanation. “Lord, You have the wrong guy.” (So the Lord came to the wrong address and did not know who He was talking to??) “How will this turn out? Lord, do You realize how risky this is? A lot of people could get hurt in this if this doesn’t work.” All my questions about the future and about the outcome of this marriage betrayed a lack of trust in the Lord. And I plead guilty to that charge! But then I must realize that I gave the Lord a blank check on my life when I came to faith in Him. I told Him I would trust Him in all things and that I would obey Him no matter what He asked me to do. And I must make the decision daily “to not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” Outcomes are not my concern. Outcomes are “great matters.” Outcomes are “things too difficult for me.” Hearing, trusting and obeying – those are things that I can do, but determining outcomes or answering why questions are above my pay grade. I am to leave those with the sovereign Lord and trust Him that He will work out those details in His own wisdom, for His glory, and for my good.

Sometimes I worry about the past. That is, I have a particular tendency within my personality that causes me to regret decisions I have made in the past and to feel that they were huge mistakes. When I do this, however, I am involving myself in great matters, contrary to Psalm 131:1. The Lord is sovereign and He takes full responsibility for leading His children and for determining outcomes. That is what it means to be sovereign God. When I regret something in the past, I hint that God did not control that outcome or that He didn’t intend that to work out for my good and His glory (contrary to Romans 8:28). By “involving myself in great matters, things too difficult for me,” I have discouraged and depressed myself and have dishonored the Lord. So based on Psalm 131:1, I will banish regret from my mind. (See also Philippians 3:13-14.)

Sometimes I worry about the future. That is, I am bent toward wondering if everything will be alright in the future. When I have these thoughts, I must again remember Psalm 131:1 and not “involve myself in great matters,” like how the world and my life are going to turn out in the future. Rather, I trust the Lord and obey what He has told me to do, which is consistent with the blank check I gave Him 25 years ago.

You and I are simple people and we are simply people. We have been given the humble task of obeying the word of the Lord and loving the Lord of the Word. If we do these things and do not concern ourselves with things too great for us (Psalm 131:1), we will be peaceful and blessed.  SDG rmb 12/31/2015