Stop Trying, Start Trusting By Pete BriscoeSample

Trusting to someone else's benefit

Let’s make a deal: We’ll release control and surrender to faith so long as God allows us to experience the benefits of our faithfulness. Deal?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Just as trusting God won’t always offer us comfort or follow logic, neither will our trusting guarantee results.

Hebrews 11:13 speaks of the ordinary people who trusted God:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance...

• Abel offered a sacrifice of love deep from a heart of worship, but he never saw Jesus’ sacrifice of love.
• Enoch foretold of God’s coming judgment through the naming of his own son, Methuselah (Jude 14-15). But Enoch never saw the Son of God come to remove judgment from all who believe.
• And what of Abraham? Abraham left his homeland because of God’s command to go. But Abraham never got to own the Promised Land or see the Kingdom of God arrive. His descendants did, the first of whom was born when Abraham’s wife was 90 years old.

Sometimes we trust not for our benefit, but for the benefit of those who come after us. Which begs the question: Why bother?

Unlike the faithful ones in Hebrews 11, we live on this side of the new covenant. When we trust, we’re promised a reward.

Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

What reward are we promised? Something bigger? Something better?

Jesus. The reward is Jesus now, and Jesus forever.

When we know He is our ultimate gift, all the difficulties of saying yes become worth it. We choose Jesus over comfort, Jesus over popularity, and Jesus over benefits. In return, we know our yes delights Him completely.

Jesus, what are You calling me to say yes to today? Give me an eternal perspective so I look upon that thing without any worry about this life, knowing You’re my prize for eternity. Amen.

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