Trust

Oct 12, 2009 11:18 AM EDT

"Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing."1

"In her autobiography Climbing Free, rock climber Lynn Hill shares the peril she faced in May 1989 while scaling a cliff face in France. As Hill reached the top of a 72-foot ledge, she leaned back into her harness to take a rest. Somehow, her rope wasn't fully connected to her harness. When she leaned her weight on it, she fell backward into space. You can imagine how terrifying this was—falling through the air with nothing to catch her. Amazingly, she survived the fall.

"As an expert in her field, Hill relied fully on her equipment. She had every expectation that her harness would support her full weight. Her experience illustrates the dangers of putting your faith in something that may fail."2

Many of us have learned the folly of putting our trust in others who let us down, or in accountants who adjusted their books to make their company look good on the stock market, or in the stock market itself—or in a broker who stole his clients' entire retirement funds (of whom I am one of the victims).

Living in this world we are going to be let down at times. We can't always avoid it. But the most important thing in life is that we don't put our trust in a false god or a false religion and discover too late that when we come to the end of life's journey, we had not put our trust in the Living God and his only way of salvation. We can trust in man-made religions, our own interpretation of the way to heaven, or we can trust in Jesus who said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father [God] except through me."3 And again, "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven [than that of Jesus] given among men by which we must be saved."4

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for the name of Jesus—the one through whom you have provided mankind's only way of salvation. And thank you that I can trust fully in your Word knowing that you will never let me down. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

Note: See God's way of salvation at: http://tinyurl.com/real-christian.

1. Psalm 146:3-4 (NIV).

2. James B. Meigs, "Extreme Living," O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2002, pp. 35-37.

3. John 14:6 (NIV).

4. Acts 4:12 (NKJV).

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