Trust God

Man was created to worship.

I believe that there is just something about man that makes him want to worship something. I also believe that whatever it is that makes man want to worship is something on the inside of him that is searching for and reaching out for God. And that it was put there by God. I believe that God put it there so that when a man embarks on a sincere quest to find the creator of the universe, he would find God. Or to put it more succinctly, he would find a God who was already looking for him.

Even when a man’s spirit is not regenerated, there is something in him that makes him seek for something to revere, to hold in high esteem. There has always been something that he feels is deserving of his “devotion”. Mankind’s history is full of stories of men “worshipping” something or the other. In the world today, we hear stories of different tribes of people who worship or hold certain animals in high esteem. To the Hindi’s, the elephant is highly revered because of its association to Ganesha, the Hindi god of prosperity. Other cultures revere cows, snakes, goats. Then there are other cultures that worship trees, metal, precious stones. There is no limit to what the imagination of man can ascribe the attribute of being worthy of worship to.

However, there is a tendency in man to try to understand what it is he is worshipping. In the Bible, we have the example of the Israelites who had just been liberated from Egypt in the book of Exodus. They were ready to worship God, but being a people who walked by sight, they were not comfortable walking or worshipping a God they could not see. They were more comfortable with Aaron making a golden cow out of all their golden ornaments. To them, it was a representation of the god that had brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand. In the book of Acts, we see the men of Athens who erected an idol to the “unknown god”. They had their “gods” which they worshipped but they had a feeling that there had to be another god somewhere out there.

In the world today, we see people who like the Israelites do not believe in a God that they cannot see. Rather than reach out in faith to find God, they turn away and worship something else and creating an idol out of what they worship. Some people worship themselves and make a god out of themselves. There are those who, while not worshipping themselves, worship an ideal or a concept and make it a god. They worship the ideal or the concept of equality; freedom or some other concept. Then there are those who worship things like knowledge. And because they worship knowledge for the sake of knowledge, they miss the truth. They think thank because they have found knowledge that they are too wise to believe in a God that they cannot see. And because they have totally given their minds over to these ideals or concepts, there is no space for a loving God to reach them.

When we seek to understand God, we try to put him in a box. We try to confine him and make him predictable. It’s like a mathematical or scientific equation. We would feel more comfortable with God if he were like the mathematical equation that tells us that 2+2=4. Or that two molecules of hydrogen mixed with one molecule of water will give us water. Always. That makes it so comforting, the fact that in any given situation, we know what will happen. That in any given situation, God will act in a certain way. But God it’s so good to know that God cannot be boxed or his action predicted. Because if it were otherwise, we wouldn’t be serving an all knowing, all powerful God whom the Bible speaks of by saying that “his ways are past finding out.” We can’t predict him or understand him. But we can trust him. Just because he has said so.

In the absence of understanding, trust is the only thing that can enable worship. If there is no trust, there can be no worship. God has asked us to trust that not only is he God, but that he has our best interests at heart. The important question is, if we don’t trust him, who can we trust? Other men who are just like us. Unfaithful, unreliable, untrustworthy men like us? I don’t think so. Should we trust in money, our jobs, or the economy? Even before I finished that last part, a chuckle rises up. In these times of turmoil, I doubt that those things are worthy of trust. Is it wood, plastic, silver or gold? These things like everything else will perish. That leaves God.

Trust God. He is the only one who won’t leave you in a lurch. He has promised to never leave nor forsake you. He has promised, not to take away all your troubles (like the politicians) but has said he will go through the trouble with you, he will feel your pain and give you peace to bear the trouble. And in the end, when you come out of the trouble, you’ll wonder why you were ever worried in the first place.

Trust God.