Trusting God - by Charmaine Braatvedt

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Trusting God
by Charmaine Braatvedt, Licensed Lay Minister.
Sunday 20th February, 2005

Recently we returned from a 5 week holiday in South Africa. While we were in Cape Town we went on an amazingly strenuous hike in a Wilderness area known as the Cedarberg.
I had never done a hike like this before.
What was new to me, was that we did not have a very detailed map of the area and we had to negotiate a tricky route to the top of a mountain and back down again via a series of little cairns.
Small piles of insignificant stones, barely visible and often easily missed.

What struck me about this was that one could only see one cairn at a time.
It was only once you reached one cairn that the next cairn became visible.(a bit like life really)

At the start of the hike I was somewhat rebellious about this method of finding our way by cairns.
How could I trust them?
How could I know that they really were cairns and not just little piles of rocks?
How could I be sure that they would not lead me along some wild goose chase?
My story has a happy ending.
The cairns led me straight to the top of the mountain to a spectacular view and then back down again. I returned to the car park with sore muscles but with a warm sense of achievement and a new respect for the trustworthiness of cairns!

This experience leads me into The Old Testament reading for today .
THE CALL OF ABRAM
This passage is often referred to as The Call of Abram or God’s Call to Abram, because in these verses Abram receives a revelation from God during which God commands Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s household and to go the land that God would show him.
I can only imagine what Abram might have thought about that instruction. Travel was dangerous, the roads difficult and the destination unclear. But we read that Abram did as he was told.
I can only conclude from this that he must have had great trust in God.

THEME OF TRUSTING GOD.
Today we are exploring the theme of trusting God.

The dictionary defines trust as a firm belief in
the reliability, honesty, truthfulness;
justice and strength of someone or something.

Abram and Sarai’s journey
is a story of trust in God. Trust IS key
as they leave their own home to go to a place where they as yet have no home;
as they go from what they know and understand into the unknown;
as they leave a land which is theirs and go to a land which as yet is merely a promise.
They had already journeyed from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran and now they are asked to set off on another major journey armed only
with the hope of a blessing
and with the trust of God’s keeping: God’s presence and God’s promise.
‘Keeping’ refers to God’s presence and protection.

It is clear that Abram and Sarai not only believe in God, they believe God when God says:

“Go to a country that I am going to show you……I will bless you …”

OUR JOURNEY:
How often in our lives we must do the same.
How often we too must leave the safe places to go into the places with which we are unfamiliar and which are threatening.
We find ourselves moving into new jobs, new relationships, new roles and facing new challenges.
How are we resourced?
What do we have to sustain us as we journey into unfamiliar territory?
Do we trust God to be with us, to protect us, in the known as well as the unknown places of our lives?
Do we both believe in God and believe God?

The cynic in me raises her hand and asks a number of questions about this trusting of God’s keeping.
There may be a part of you that does the same.
YOU MAY BE ASKING: WHY SHOULD I TRUST GOD?
· Well, Abram did, Sarai did, David the psalmist did, Nicodemus did and so did many other Biblical characters including Jesus. Like Nicodemus in today’s reading we are challenged to trust God with the eyes of a new born child, we have to trust before we understand. We have to start the journey without a clear idea of the itinerary and the destination trusting only that God is with us.

Each time we do this we build a little cairn for others and for ourselves.
Each time we trust God we find that God does not let us down
and so as we reflect on God’s historical faithfulness we are encouraged to trust God again.
When life is hard and you feel like you are being overwhelmed by what is expected of you,
reflect on your life
and on the lives of biblical characters like Abram.
Reflect on the relationships you have had, the situations you encountered when God’s trustworthiness showed through
and let them be for you little cairns which encourage you to trust yourselves into God’s keeping on the journey.
Reflect on what has been and you will trust God for what is to come.
TRUST GOD ON THE BASIS OF PAST EXPERIENCE.
Gravity is invisible but we trust it on the evidence that things fall down.
Air pressure is invisible but we trust it on the evidence that things stay up.
God is invisible and we trust him on the profound basis that he never fails us.
“The more we depend on God, the more dependable we find he is.” Cliff Richard.
A second reason for trusting God is because
GOD PROMISES HIS BLESSING ON ALL THOSE WHO TRUST HIM.
· We see in the Bible story of Abram that trusting God leads to blessing. The word blessing means being in favour with God and under God’s protection. God who is all powerful; all loving; all knowing all good, why would you not want to trust such a God and be under his protection and his favour as you journey through this life?

A third reason is that GOD WANTS YOU TO.
· Because God wants to be in a relationship of trust with you. When God created people he created them to be in relationship with him. Trust is vital ingredient in any relationship.
Sin disrupts that relationship because sin demonstrates that we trust something else or someone else more than we trust God and the word of God.
God desires that we trust him and that we enjoy his trustworthiness in our lives.
So he says to Abram ‘trust me’, “go, leave everything you know and trust
and place your trust solely in me and in my keeping, my presence and promise and I will bless you.”

So three good reasons for trusting God are :
1. Past experience proves he is reliable.
2. You will be blessed by Him if you do.
3. God wants you to be in a trusting relationship with him.

GOD’S CALL.
But you may say: How can I hear or know God’s call?

“The Lord said to Abram”…
How did that happen?
Did it happen in the way it is depicted by this artist?

If so, Lucky Abram.
On the other hand Abram’s call may have come in the way it seems to come for most of us in life.
My life’s experience is that God’s call or leading happens much more subtly but no less forcefully.
God speaks to us in many ways and often at times when we least expect it.

God’s call may take the form of an external event that shakes us
or an inner feeling that surprises us.
It may urge us to follow a new path in our relationships our careers our surroundings our lifestyles
or it may urge us to wait, to pause, to be inactive for a while.

“God knows what he is doing. If he has you sidelined, out of the action for a while, he knows what he is doing.
You just stay faithful, stay flexible, stay available, stay humble,
like David with his sheep even after he had been anointed king”.

When the Lord “says” to me… by that I mean when I feel his call on my life:
· I develop a firm desire to embark on a certain course;
· circumstances orientate me in a certain way;
· that direction is affirmed in the Scriptures and in my prayer time
· and people whom I respect confirm it.

LIVED EXPERIENCE OF GOD.
Our relationship with God is not based on physical manifestations of him. Rather it is based on the lived experience of authentic daily encounters with him.
Each time you see a flower; each time you feel love for a child; each time you see a coming together of events in a nurturing way you feel and experience God.
When we are in relationship with God, God walks the talk with us.
This is why the journey analogy is such a good one.
Our life is a journey of trust with God.

LIKE ABRAM WE OFTEN HAVE TO TAKE THE FIRST OBEDIENT STEPS in faith without knowing where God will lead us but trusting that God’s call will lead us to our own land which God will show us.
This is what trust is all about.
Abram did not just believe in God, he believed God,
so in spite of his misgivings Abram left as God told him.
One morning Abram packed up his bags, took down his tents, lined up his family, watered his camels and left.

Imagine that first step he took, and then the next and the next. Each step a commitment of obedience to God, of trusting God.
Abram was walking by faith, by trust and this obedience to God, this trusting in God’s keeping, characterized this patriarch throughout his life.

As Abram goes forth, HE BECAME GOD’S WITNESS FOR 4000YEARS
he becomes God’s witness in the midst of the Canaanites.
to three major religions to hundreds of millions of people throughout the ages.
that God is to be trusted,
that God’s keeping is trustworthy,
that God knows what he is about
and that all will be well and all manner of thing will be well
if we are obedient to God’ s word and his ways.

Trust takes God at his word and obeys him.

THE MESSAGE FOR EACH OF US IS CLEAR:
· Trust God when he says go
· And trust God when he says stay.
· Be obedient and you will be blessed with his presence and protection.

In the words of St Augustine:
“Trust your past to God’s mercy,
trust your present to God’s love,
and trust the future to God’s providence.”

So, back to my story about the cairns.
Each time something of note happens that demonstrates God’s trustworthiness in our lives, We must take note of it so that it forms a little cairn which will remind us that God is with us on our journey and that our journey leads us to the place where God wants us to be.
The actual itinerary is unclear
but the journey is safe,
safe in the keeping of our most trustworthy God.

This will give us the courage to be obedient to his call ,
as Abram was,
to go when he says go and to stay when he says stay.

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