Trusting and Believing: Devotions From Time of GraceSample

What Is It Like to Trust God?
I can be optimistic

In 1945, after many decades of missionary work in China, with many churches staffed by expatriate missionaries from the West, there were still probably only about a million Christians. Then came Mao and his communist government that drove out or killed all missionaries and drove the church underground.

Pure disaster? Not to the God who gets the last word. The church grew far faster under persecution than before. Today there are tens of millions of Chinese Christians, and the churches are not dependent on the West.

St. Paul was an incurable optimist because he had seen too often how God could make trouble turn into progress. For instance, from prison in Rome he wrote, “I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me [his imprisonment] will turn out for my deliverance” (Philippians 1:18,19).

God has already seen your future, and it is a happy one. Go ahead--infect some gloomy person with your incurable optimism.