Addendum on Trust

Not too many days ago, I wrote a blog post entitled "Bedrock" which focused on trust in God.  An old friend of mine who is a faithful reader sent me a comment via email which simply read, "though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."  (Job 13:15, KJV)  Some of the more modern renderings of this verse put the act of God acting in such a way in a more sanitized and not so offensive manner.  The old King James Version seems to do a better job of rendering the intent of the Word.  Job is speaking of trust in a way that goes far beyond our modern easy renderings of the word.   I am not sure I have ever thought of trust in God in such a dramatic fashion.  Perhaps, some of the missionaries who took themselves and their families into perilous situations had an understanding of this verse that most of us miss.  

I remember a young man who served with me on the pastoral staff at Vidalia who had a strong call to the mission field.  It was one he could not lay aside and so off he went with his wife and two small children to Liberia.  Before it was said and done, he found himself in the midst of a civil war where his life and the life of his family was in great danger.    He would likely say the actions which saved his family were more instinctual than heroic, but those of us who heard the story would disagree.  Or, maybe it was, after all the God in whom he trusted who did the delivering.  Regardless, the action of missionaries like him and others model what it might mean for us to trust God even if that trust costs us our lives.   

Trust and faith is a word which gets cast around rather lightly from many a pulpit and from many a person who talks about walking with Christ.  It is the main words of the t-shirt, and the object of many a trite slogan, but it is so much more than any of this.  It amounts to putting our life on the line for God.  It means saying to God He has a blank check.  Whatever it is that He wants to do with our life is His to choose.  We turn loose the controls and put ourselves in His sure hands even if the cost is death itself.