Trusting God

I Peter 3:15

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.

For many years now, this has been a life verse of sorts for me. 

As a child and a preteen, I had a lot of questions about God and the Bible and my Mom just didn’t always have an answer that made sense to me. This caused me to begin to search for answers myself. As a teen and young adult I went to several different churches across various denominations. I even studied Mormonism and the beliefs of the Jehovah Witnesses. I had accepted Jesus as a preteen but had never been discipled at all. I had no one to show me how to study the Scriptures or to teach me God’s Word and how to live God’s way. 

In my early twenties, a friend invited me to church with her and for the first time ever, I heard someone truly teach the Bible. Not just read a verse and explain what they thought it meant, but really teach the Bible, verse by verse, book by book. This person showed me how to study God’s Word and how to find the answers to my questions.

It was incredible! I became hungry for the Word and that hunger continues to this day. 

I love God’s Word. It is how He speaks to us. It’s how we know what He expects of us and how we are to live. Before God can truly speak to us through His Word we must first believe that He exists and have faith that His Word is true.

Hebrews 11:6  But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

I can certainly testify that God rewards those who diligently seek Him and not in earthly ways like money and possessions. His rewards are eternal and can’t compare to anything this world has to offer. He gives me a peace in my heart that I just cannot explain to someone who doesn’t trust Him. Without Him, I would be just another statistic pulled in by the world and consumed; doomed to live my life in frustration, fear, and turmoil. 

That is why I have such a passion for God’s Word. Not just to study it for myself but to share His Truth with others. I want to be able to answer those deep questions that people have about God and the Scriptures. If I can’t readily show them an answer in the Bible, we can dig together until we find it. 

In my post last week, I talked about the importance of trusting the authority of God’s Word starting all the way back in the beginning at Genesis 1. We looked at this Scripture in context to see what it was really saying.      (If you missed that post, you can read it here.) 

If we, as followers of Christ, are to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you,” we first must know the Scripture and believe it is true. 

A friend once convinced me to sell cosmetics and I was positively terrible at it. Wanna know why? Number one, I don’t wear makeup. I was trying to sell something that I didn’t use myself. I had to put it on when I went to work a party and could not wait to wash it off as soon as I got home. Number two, I am a horrible liar and I tend to be blunt with the truth. When someone asked me if I used a product or if I liked this or that, I would not only tell them I didn’t like it or didn’t use it but I would tell them why. Needless to say, I didn’t make many sales and realized pretty quickly that makeup sales was not my line of work. I didn’t believe in what I was doing and therefore I was doomed to failure.

The same is true in our spiritual lives. If I don’t fully trust God and believe His Word, I will have a very difficult time sharing Him with others. 

Let’s look at another passage of Scripture that gets passed over and dismissed as “just a story” because we have a hard time trying to reconcile it with what we’ve been taught in school about the origin of man. We are taught that humans are not anything special; we are just highly evolved animals. If we are mere animals, that gives us freedom to choose what is right or wrong. We decide what makes us happy and if it feels good, by all means, do it. You only live once, right?  

Genesis 1:27-28 

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 2:7

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

These passages tell us clearly that God made mankind in His own image and gave him dominion over the earth and all the creatures on it. Man wasn’t one of the animals, he was given charge over the animals. Look also at the difference in how God made the animals and how He made Man. He spoke the animals into existence but He reached down and formed Man with His own hands and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. God literally breathed life into us. We are unique and set apart in God’s creation and we are called to obey and serve our Creator.

Genesis 3 talks about the fall of Man. The moment in history when mankind caused a separation in their relationship with God their Creator. They willingly disobeyed God causing a great divide and bringing death into the world. 

How do I know that this is true history as it is written? 

One reason is that Jesus Himself affirmed most of the historical accounts of Genesis. 

In Mark 10:6-8 Jesus quotes from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in a straightforward, historical manner.

Take a look at Luke 3:23-38. Luke traces the lineage of Jesus all the way back to Adam, the very first man, who is recorded as being the son of God. Meaning he literally had no earthly father because He was created by God Himself. 

Finally, check out Luke 17:26-27. Here Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the end-times and quite literally compares this time to come with the judgment in Noah’s day. This tells me that Jesus believed that there was a literal world-wide flood, which is a topic for a future post. 

There are many other references in the New Testament where the historical account of Genesis is referred to as history. I challenge you to search the Scriptures for yourself and find them. 

If the Genesis account of history isn’t true then none of us have any need for a Savior. If there was never an original sin, Adam and Eve disobeying God and bringing sin into the world, then we have no need for Jesus to come and pay the penalty for our sins on the cross. Please understand if the Genesis account isn’t true then none of it can be true. There is a growing group of Christians who say you can believe in Jesus and not believe the literal history of Genesis; a sort of pick and choose what you want to believe from the Bible religion.

That is a lie. 

Can you accept Jesus as your Savior without knowing the full truth of God’s Word? 

Absolutely.

However, once you know the truth, you can’t remain in ignorance and try to combine Jesus with the ideas and philosophies of the world.   

I encourage you to spend time this week searching the Scriptures and asking God to reveal the wonderful details of His Truth.