When God Can Trust You

Old Treasures on Tuesdays 👑

“…Once your obedience is complete” (2 Cor. 10:6, NIV)

There is a safety that comes when we get to the stage described in this verse: complete obedience.

It would be dangerous for God to entrust us with certain critical assignments before that. The outcome would be too uncertain. If He partnered with an unstable collaborator on a crucial assignment, the mission might abort and be destroyed. Too much is at stake. So he has to hold back meanwhile, testing us with smaller, less decisive assignments.

He is extremely patient with us as we grow through each level of partial obedience. He allows us to move through the stages of development at a pace appropriate to our individual journeys. He would not damage us by assigning us to a role that we hadn’t yet grown into.

However, that all changes once He has matured us to the place where He can say of us:

“…He will do everything I want him to do” (Acts 13:22, NIV).

After that point, He knows He can rely on us to follow the exact instructions necessary for delicate assignments. He knows He can fully trust us.

How badly do we want to get to that point? If we long to be wholly yielded to the will of God, we must count the cost. Look at the price tag attached to such a mighty privilege:

“So, since Christ suffered in the flesh, you also arm yourselves with the same attitude, because the one who has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin, in that he spends the rest of his time on earth concerned about the will of God and not human desires” (1 Peter 4:1-2, NET).

The C.S. Lewis quote that most amuses me is simply this: “Pain hurts.” Though suffering causes us to ache, sometimes to the marrow of our bones, God will bring about beauty through it… if we allow Him to… if we arm ourselves with the same attitude as Jesus did when He suffered. Do we long to spend the rest of our time on earth concerned about the will of God?

How much do we want to be men and women after God’s own heart?

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Suffering does indeed hurt, often beyond what we could even begin to describe. What are some ways that you have learned to find strength in the midst of the more difficult seasons that life brings? How do we become better instead of bitter?