The Place for Trust

January 27, 2006.
Year Three

I've been looking back over Pastor David Lino's remarks during our memorial service at Forest Cove in Kingwood. There is such reassurance in The Promise, and such comfort that there are people in my life who are willing to walk this road with me. Thanks to each of you.

Pastor Lino honored my family with some very strong statements. He also asked why we would want to trust a God who gave me such a wonderful family and then allowed this to happen. Here is an excerpt; I hope you will read it prayerfully, examining your own relationship with God:

"Everything within you says, “I don’t want to trust a God like that. Why would I want to trust a God like that and trust a God like that with my family? Why?” Because how many times didn’t you and Mycol pray as you were going to Virginia, coming backwards and forwards, “Lord, keep us safe and take care of us”? How can you trust a God like that? Who wants a God like that? Do you?

Well, it depends if you’re really trusting in trust. You see, most of us trust a concept called trust, and whatever we understand as trust is what you’re really trusting in. What we’re really trusting in is not Jesus Christ. What we’re really trusting in is our understanding of how life should work and what is best. So, we trust not understanding, we trust what we think is best. We trust our common sense. So, when God doesn’t fit our definition, we don’t want to trust God. We find it very difficult to trust God.

And if Almighty God doesn’t fit our understanding, then we don’t want Almighty God. You see, we predispose who God is, and we have a predisposition as to how God should act and behave. When we pray, we come with certain presuppositions of how God should answer my prayer, take care of me. When we say to God, “Keep my family safe,” what we really are saying is, “Do it my way.”

It’s very difficult for us to understand that when you and I talk to Almighty God, that He is in fact Almighty, that He actually sees the Big Picture and you and I tend to live in a little cocoon and we think that what we can perceive in our little cocoon is the total understanding of what life is really about.

That’s why Mycol’s favorite verse was Romans 8:28, and even though you and I don’t understand, in this little idol that we have created in our understanding of who God is, and our trust in trust is who God is, Mycol got beyond that. He came to the realization that even though he may not understand Almighty God, he may not be able to work through what is it that Jesus Christ is actually doing, that his trust wasn’t in trust. His trust wasn’t in a concept; his trust wasn’t in his ability to understand why. His trust, his faith, wasn’t in the ability to give you an answer as to the question why. His trust was actually in a person. That’s why Romans 8:28 was his favorite verse, that in each and every situation, God is at work for the good of them that love Him.

You’ve heard testimony here today on how he would talk about death. What a strange thing for a young man like that, to talk about death. But why? Because he knew that no matter what, whether it was his death, or Linda’s death or the children’s death, God was actually at work for the good of those who love Him. Do you understand that?

Nor do I.

But my trust is not in my understanding.

One day, when we’re having your funeral, I hope your family knows where you are.

You see, you don’t become part of the family of God by osmosis. What that means is that if you sit in church long enough, you have church membership, you have churchy things done to you, that you somehow think that makes you a Christian. Not according to what God says. And, after all, seeing that it’s His home, you better meet the conditions He wants you to meet so that you can get into His home.

You can have all the conditions you like, but that doesn’t cut it. Jesus Christ says, “You want to come home when you die, you want to see Mycol one day, you want to see those precious little children, you better do what he did.

He humbled himself before Jesus Christ and confessed that he had no rights, no claims, nothing to barter with when he came to God. He acknowledged that he was a sinner, that he was a rebel before God, that he could barely give God the time of day, that if he could choose between God and himself, most of the time he would choose himself. He humbled himself before God and said, “Lord forgive me. Thank you for dying on the cross for me. Please take what you did on the cross and apply it to my life.”

So when we say Mycol is in Heaven, we’re not just giving false comfort, just talking a lot of hot air, we’re taking the promises of God."


Yes indeed, Pastor, yes indeed. Thank you.