DEPENDENCE ON GOD – Part 2 EVERYONE LIVES BY FAITH Faith is a universal experience – everyone, including the atheist, lives by faith. The issue is not whether we will trust in a belief system or trust in people or things, but whether we are placing our trust in that which is reliable or untrustworthy. Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. The prophet Jeremiah provides us with a look at two conflicting sources of personal dependence: This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:5-8 Jeremiah draws a sharp contrast between those who depend on human strength and those who depend on the living God. He makes it clear that we cannot look to both as our supreme basis of trust; we will either put our hope in the promises and power of people, or we will look beyond human capability to the person and promises of God. When we make people the basis of our confidence we experience rejection and disappointment again and again. But when God becomes the ultimate source of our confidence, we are never let down. Willy Loman is the central character in Arthur Miller’s brilliant and moving play Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman personifies failure and broken dreams as he spends his life chasing the ever-illusive dream of being an irresistibly successful salesman. He lives in denial, tossed back and forth between the notion that tomorrow will bring great success and the heart-wrenching desperation of feeling utterly worthless. He continually tortures himself with the belief that if he just tries harder, believes in himself more, persists long enough, he will find success. His biggest mistake is the belief that success will fulfill his deepest longings. If only Willy Loman could have found the courage to face the pain of failure and his emptiness, perhaps he might have realized that he was pursuing the wrong dream. In the end, he commits suicide. His son, Biff, comes to see the truth his dad could not face: There were a lot of nice days. When he’d come home from a trip; or on Sundays, making the stoop; finishing the cellar; putting on the new porch…. You know something, Charley, there’s more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made…. He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong…. He never knew who he was. Habakkuk learned that “the righteous will live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4), and he was not talking about faith in men. “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe” (Proverbs 29:25). Those who put more confidence in themselves or in other people than in God will find bitterness and disappointment in the end. They may appear to prosper for a season, but the journey will not get them to their desired goals. But those who transfer their trust from themselves or the promises of others to the Lord will discover that their lives are deeply rooted in well-watered soil. The Lord declares that “Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained” (1 Samuel 2:30). HOW THINGS REALLY GET DONE Zerubbabel must have felt overwhelmed. His task was so huge he needed a prophet of God to give him perspective. The Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple 70 years before, and now Zerubbabel was in charge of the group that had come back to rebuild it. When Solomon first built the temple, he had the optimal situation – nearly unlimited resources and a motivated workforce. Zerubbabel now faced strong opposition, a demoralized workforce and limited resources. God’s word to him in Zechariah 4 is everlastingly and universally true: Work hard and smart. But if God doesn’t look favorably on your work, it will result in nothing significant. The text reads: “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty” (v. 6). Zerubbabel had to make tough decisions, wrestle with personnel problems, sit in long meetings, listen to grievances – everything other leaders do. But the prophet Zechariah’s message to him was that the job ultimately depended on God’s Spirit, not on his or anyone else’s might or power. The wonderful truth of this is that all of our activities are now infused with meaning as we work in the power supplied by God’s Spirit. We can now join in the prayer of Blaise Pascal: “Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; and little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name.” Leaders are responsible to manage their resources well and to lead their people effectively. But prayer to God and dependence on him for the outcome is the wise leader’s constant strategy for success. AN EVERLASTING GUARANTEE Every leader will discover that there are times when it’s hard to trust in God. In an effort to help us do that R.C. Sproul reminds us of the absolute dependence of God as demonstrated in his promise to Abraham: So the Lord said to [Abram], “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away…. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendents I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…. Genesis 15:9-11, 17-18 Legal counselors are some of the highest paid executives in business because they protect us from each other. We find it so hard to depend on anyone’s word that we have to close all the loopholes in any transaction. In business, doing so is more than smart – it’s essential. But Sproul reminds his reader that there is One on whom we can always depend. Commenting on this passage, he wrote: The meaning of the drama is clear: As God passed between the pieces His message was, “Abraham, if I fail to keep my promise to you, may I be cut asunder just as those animals have been torn apart.” God put His eternal being on the line. It was as if He were saying, “May My immutable deity suffer mutation if I break My promise. May My infinite character become finite, My immortal essence suffer mortality. May the impossible become possible if I lie.” The author of Hebrews reflected on this event when he wrote, “Since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself” (Hebrews 6:13). The surety of God’s promise is God Himself. All that He is stands behind His promise. It would not do for God to swear by the temple or by His mother’s grave. He has no mother. The temple is not sacred enough to confirm the oath of God. He must swear by His own integrity, using His divine nature as an everlasting guarantee. In spite of the great and wonderful promises, in spite of the centuries of proven faithfulness, in spite of mounting evidence, empirical and anecdotal, demonstrating the folly of trusting in ourselves, people still reject the faithfulness of God. Perhaps because of their status, leaders are more acutely prone to lean on their own understanding. But God calls each of us – especially those of us in positions of leadership – to lean on him. Such trust is difficult. It requires humility. It requires commitment. It will demand a constant vigilance. We will need to regularly review and renew our commitment, but if we train ourselves to trust in the only One who is worthy of our dependence, we may find, as Lucy in Narnia found, that our God is bigger than we ever imagined. God places a premium on our trust and dependence on Him in all things. It is such a high premium that he has specific outcomes for those who depend on Him and for those who do not. Both Jeremiah and Isaiah experienced special blessings as they lived their lives in complete dependence on the LORD, with total trust in His faithfulness. SCRIPTURE READING 1 Samuel 2:30; 2 Kings 18:21; Psalm 34:19; Proverbs 29:25; Isaiah 36:6; 40:27-31; Jeremiah 12:6; 17:5-8; 20:10; Lamentations 3:22-26; Habakkuk 2:4; Zechariah 4; Matthew 6:25-34; 10:29-31
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:08:03 +0000
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