Tag Archives: Ruthless trust

Posted on

Finding the Sweet Spot

Until You Do, Trust

PREVIEW: Much of King David’s life was categorized by going without knowing — he journeyed hundreds of dangerous and depleting episodes in his life with not much more than simple trust and gritty obedience. From this side of history, we tend to romanticize his life as one victory after another with only an occasional challenge. Not the case! David’s life was every bit as challenging as yours and mine — arguably more. But the secret of David’s amazingly blessed life was simply that he put one footstep of faith in front of the other until he hit “pay-dirt.” Through defeats, dangers, and disasters, he gritted out a long obedience in the same direction, and sooner or later, hallelujah, he hit the sweet spot. Yes, the secret to David’s experience of every desire fulfilled and every request granted was his ruthless trust in God: “For the king trusts in the Lord.” (Psalm 21:7) Make ruthless trust in God the secret of your life as well.

petros network The walk of faith requires obedience — going without knowing, yet trusting in the goodness of a God who does all things well.—Ray Noah

A Journey of Worship // Psalm 21:2

How the king rejoices in your strength, O Lord! He shouts with joy because you give him victory. For you have given him his heart’s desire; you have withheld nothing he requested.

There are some days, even entire seasons of life, when we find ourselves in the sweet spot of God’s will. Everything simply falls into place. The other shoe never drops. “Stuff” never happens. Rather, blessing after blessing makes for one big fat fantastic experience.

We long for days like that, and sometimes, we get them. At other times, we must simply walk in faith and obedience — going without knowing yet trusting in the goodness of a God who “does all things well” and has promised to give us the desires of our heart.

In reality, much of David’s life was categorized by going without knowing — he journeyed hundreds of dangerous and depleting episodes in his life with not much more than simple trust and gritty obedience. From this side of history, we tend to romanticize David’s life as one victory after another with only an occasional challenge. Not the case! David’s life was every bit as challenging as yours and mine — arguably more.

But the secret of David’s amazing life was simply that he put one footstep of faith in front of the other until he hit “pay-dirt.” Through defeats, dangers, and disasters, he gritted out a long obedience in the same direction, and sooner or later, hallelujah, he hit the sweet spot. Yes, the secret to David’s experience of every desire fulfilled and every request granted was his ruthless trust in God. Psalm 21:7 says,

“For the king trusts in the Lord. The unfailing love of the Most High will keep him from stumbling.”

Your hope and mine on this day is that it will include that sweet spot of God’s will — pay-dirt! Who knows if that will be the case? But the thing we do know is that our duty today is to take one footstep of faith at a time and leave the “when,” “where,” and “how” of the sweet spot up to God. Like David, our best option and our highest duty is to ruthlessly truth in the goodness of God.

My Offering of Worship: In your time of personalizing this psalm today, I would encourage you to prayerfully and worshipfully listen to Matt Redman’s song, Blessed Be Your Name. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTpTQ4kBLxA

Posted on

Why Does God Justify The Ungodly?

Since There Is None Righteous, God Must Make Us Righteous

UNSHAKEABLE: Abraham, by his example of faith, became the “father of us all.” That means as our spiritual father, he set the tone and established the pattern for our faith by his response to God’s grace. If we were to analyze and summarize Father Abraham’s life, we would find that ruthless trust in God’s sovereign love was the chief authentication or outworking of his faith. More than anything else, he offered God his trust, and there was no work of righteousness more pleasing and honoring to God than that. Trust became Abraham’s “work,’ if we can call it that, or his response of righteousness.

Why Does God Justify The Ungodly - Ray Noah

Unshakeable Living // Romans 4:4-5

Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.

Take note of that phrase: “who justifies the ungodly.” That is a rather startling statement, wouldn’t you say? It seems contrary to what Scripture teaches about the wicked, yet here we find that God justifies the ungodly because there are no godly for him to justify. That is why God put our wickedness on Christ so he could put Christ’s righteousness in us, and by that he would have some who are righteous.

So, as we have seen so far in Romans, and we will see again, salvation is by God’s grace through faith alone, and not by our works of righteousness. But the question then arises about what place our works of righteousness have in the salvation equation. Where do they fit in the scheme of things if righteousness is what we are, and not what we do?

As I understand it, verse 11 deals with this quite clearly: “Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” In other words, Paul is explaining that Abraham’s works were simply the proof, the authentication, and the natural outflow of his belief in God. Abraham believed, so he obeyed.

Now at this point, I have a feeling you might be saying, “Okay, I get it. We’re justified by faith and not by works — and Abraham’s case illustrates that. I get that works flow out of our righteousness. But what does all of this mean to me right now?”

Going to verse 11 again, we find that Abraham, by his example of faith, became the “father of us all.” That means as our spiritual father, he set the tone and established the pattern for our faith by his response to God’s grace. If we were to analyze and summarize Father Abraham’s life, we would find that ruthless trust in God’s sovereign love was the chief authentication or outworking of his faith.

When God said to Abraham, “Leave your home and go to the land I’ll show you,” Abraham said, “OK God, I’ll trust you on this.”

When God said to this childless ninety-year-old man, “I’ll make you the father of many nations,” Abram said, “OK God, I’ll trust you on this — call me Abraham, the father of many nations.”

When God said to Abraham, “Take your son and sacrifice him on the alter to me,” Abraham gulped and said, “OK God, I’ll trust you on this.”

More than anything else, Abraham offered God his trust, and there was no work of righteousness more pleasing and honoring to God as that. Trust became Abraham’s “work,’ if we can call it that, or his response of righteousness.

Brennan Manning writes, “The splendor of a human heart which trusts that it is loved gives God more pleasure than the Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, the sight of ten thousand butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it.”

Our childlike surrender in trust is the defining response of our lives to God’s gift of righteousness. Our uncompromising trust in the love and goodness and wisdom of God is the work, if you will, that best proves our faith and most pleases God. To be convinced of God’s reliability is the essence of ruthless trust.

I wonder if you’re convinced of that!

Get Rooted: What gift can you give to a God who created everything, so he already has everything? There is one thing that God didn’t — can’t — create: your trust. Like Abraham, you must express trust in God even when there is little to no evidence that a good outcome is guaranteed. When you offer that kind of response to God, you have given him ruthless trust. The question for you is, does God have your ruthless trust in EVERYTHING? If not, go before God and surrender every area of your life to him.

Posted on

Ruthless Trust

When In Doubt, Look Up, Smile And Trust

Doubt is the number one strategy Satan uses to disrupt, weaken and ultimately destroy our faith in God. If he can get us to question the goodness and sufficiency of God and his Word, then our spirituality will be dead in the water. The number one defense against Satan’s strategy to destroy your faith is trust—ruthless, radical trust in God’s care and competence.

The Journey: Matthew 4:3

During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

From the Word of God in general, from human experience—mine and other people I’ve witnessed over the years—and from this story in particular, I could make a pretty strong case that doubt is the number one strategy Satan uses in our lives to disrupt, weaken and ultimately destroy our faith in God. If he can get us to question the goodness and sufficiency of God and his Word, then our spirituality will be dead in the water.

Every time the devil came at Jesus with a temptation, the very first word was “if” — “if you are the Son of God…if you will kneel and worship me…” (Matthew 4:3,5,9) Behind Satan’s enticements was the goal of getting Jesus to question God’s care and competence as well as his identity as the cherished Son of God.

That is exactly what Satan will do to you—most likely even today. He will cause a question to arise in your mind as to the reliability of God’s Word, the dependability of God’s love, the sufficiency of God’s supply, and the truthfulness of your unmovable place as a cherished child of God. Just like clockwork, the “if” question will be sown as a seed of doubt in your spirit before the day is out.

The number one defense against Satan’s strategy to destroy your faith is trust—ruthless trust. Each occasion in which Jesus was hit with the big “if” was met with a return to what was unquestionable, unshakable and immovable—the Word of God. Jesus’ answer to the assault on his faith? “Scripture says…” (Matthew 4:4,7,10) Jesus stood on the promises of Scripture, knowing that obedience to it was the only way to God’s provision (“man shall not live by bread alone”), true spiritual muscle (“jump off” and prove your divine power), and ceaseless kingdom authority (“all the kingdoms of the world will be yours”).

Trust—ruthless trust. No assault from the enemy can penetrate it, and no temptation, regardless of the power of its enticement, can hold a candle against it. So no matter what, lean into God’s Word today—there is nothing in all creation as reliable. Trust in God’s character—his care and competence have never been proven impotent. Wait patiently for his provision—it will never lack the satisfaction you truly need.

And by the way, when you respond to temptation with ruthless trust, not only do you punch Satan in the nose, but you give a priceless gift to God. I love what Brennan Manning says in his book, Ruthless Trust,

The splendor of a human heart which trusts that it is loved gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, the sight of ten thousand butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it…Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.

So throughout the day today, look up, smile, and trust!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, today I simply offer you my trust. I don’t understand how you will use everything that I am facing for my good, but I will go with your care and competence. I trust that you will care for me, and that you will carry me.
Posted on

Living An Overcoming Christianity

Overcoming Christianity truly isn’t rocket science. It is actually quite simple: Trust in God + Passionate Supplication = Answered Prayer … Answered Prayers = The Victorious Christian Life. It is that simple. Not easy, but simple. If we walk daily, hand-in-hand in a relationship of simple trust with the Lord, and boldly, expectantly pour out our needs and desires to him, he will answer our prayers, and at the end of the day, we will have lived an overcoming Christianity.

Going Deep // Focus: 1 Chronicles 5:20

They cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him.

As I read this short, simple, to-the-point verse, here is the first thing that hit my brain: Overcoming Christianity truly isn’t rocket science, is it? It is actually quite simple:

Trust in God + Passionate Supplication = Answered Prayer

Answered Prayers = The Victorious Christian Life

It is that simple. Not easy, but simple. It is not easy because we often allow other things to wreak havoc on that divinely order relational formula. We allow fleshly desires to corrupt our trust and tempt us to desire selfish things; we allow fear to stunt our prayer; we allow busyness and self-sufficiency to shelve our prayer life; we allow the world to push in and push the things of God to the margins; we give the devil a foothold in our lives by flirting with immorality. And the list goes on.

That being said, the biblical formula is still simple: if we walk daily, hand-in-hand in a relationship of simple trust with the Lord, and boldly, expectantly pour out our needs and desires to him, he will answer our prayers.

When we so order our lives to do the will of God, we have every human right—in fact, we have an invitation from God himself—to come before him in bold, expectant prayer, and his promise is to answer us when we call on him. When you string a bunch of those experiences together, you have the makings of an inspiring witness of a life surrendered to and used by God. And that is the victorious Christian life.

That is the kind of life God blesses. In fact, those are the kinds of people God looks for. 2 Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

That is what explains the testimony of the Israelite warriors we read about in 1 Chronicles 5:18-20. We don’t know much about their lives individually; we don’t have details of the battle they were in; we don’t know anything about their enemy; we just know about their trust in God. In the midst of their life and death efforts, they cried out to God. And he heard them:

There were 44,760 capable warriors in the armies of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. They were all skilled in combat and armed with shields, swords, and bows. They waged war against the Hagrites, the Jeturites, the Naphishites, and the Nodabites. They cried out to God during the battle, and he answered their prayer because they trusted in him. So the Hagrites and all their allies were defeated.

They were in a fight—a life and death struggle. They did their part, but they needed God to do his part. So they cried out to the Lord in battle, and as he had promised his people, he heard them. He heard their prayer and they achieved a victory significant enough to make it into the pages of eternal history.

That is the he kind of life I want to live—a life of ruthless trust, passionate supplication, answered prayer and victorious Christian living. My guess is you do too. Follow the relational formula and you will have that life indeed.

Going Deeper With God: You are likely to face a battle today—probably a minor skirmish, but perhaps a major battle. Why do I say that? Because as believers, we have been thrust into the middle of spiritual warfare. Just keep that in mind throughout the day. And when you run into opposition, offer this prayer: “Lord, I need your help in this battle. I am going forth in your name to do your work in order to extend your kingdom. Enable me to do mighty exploits this day as I fight for you. Work in me and on my behalf to bring about a great victory that will result in high praise to your name. I ask for none of the glory for myself. I ask only for a day that can be chalked up in the win column for your kingdom. So I boldly ask that you would answer this prayer. I offer it in faith in the name of the ultimate victor, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Posted on

Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About

ThanksLiving: 365 Days of Gratitude

Make it your goal to live your life in such a way that you give “them” something to talk about. By that I mean, live with such passion for God, with such ruthless trust in God’s goodness, with such great expectation for God’s power to be revealed through you, that you will become the fodder for water cooler conversations, dinner time talks, and bedtime stories. Whether your faith rubs people the wrong way or draws them to your God, it is a badge of honor that they are talking about you.

Going Deep // Focus: 2 Kings 8:4-6

The king had just said, “Tell me some stories about the great things Elisha has done.” And Gehazi was telling the king about the time Elisha had brought a boy back to life. At that very moment, the mother of the boy walked in to make her appeal to the king about her house and land. “Look, my lord the king!” Gehazi exclaimed. “Here is the woman now, and this is her son—the very one Elisha brought back to life!” The king asked her, “Is this true?” And she told him the story.

Elisha had a unique calling, obviously. God did amazing things through this Old Testament prophet that he is not likely to do through believers like you and me—parting the waters of the Jordan, calling out bears to attack young people who made fun of him, pronouncing judgment on kings, performing miracles for destitute widows. Unlike us, Elisha and his predecessor Elijah occupied a very specialized niche in God’s prophetic economy, and the things God enabled them to do became fodder for dinner time conversations and bedtime stories throughout the generations of Israel. Even kings got in on the act:

Tell me stories about the great things Elisha has done. (2 Kings 8:4)

Yet as great as they were, they were just you and me. In fact, in the New Testament, James, the leader of the early church, said that Elijah was a human of like passions as us:

Yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! Then, when he prayed again, the sky sent down rain and the earth began to yield its crops. (James 5:17-18)

The implication is that we, too, will have our prayers heard when we offer them in Elijah/Elisha-like faith. So let’s not sell ourselves short: God can likewise use us in unique ways. Of course, how God uses us is up to him. Our part is to simply offer ourselves to him in wholehearted devotion, ruthless faith, and expectant trust, then leave the results up to God.

When we do that, we will leave them something to talk about. Who is “them”? The people in your world, that’s who—your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. They talked about Elisha; they will talk about you, too. It may not be because of the miracles that God works through you or the spectacular answers to your prayers—again, that is up to God—but for sure, they will talk about your passion for the Lord, your godly character, your willingness to speak his truth and to act lovingly in his name. They may speak in favorable ways, as the king did in Elisha’s case in the present story, or they may speak of you in a negative light, as the king did of Elisha in 2 Kings 6:26-31,

May God strike me and even kill me if I don’t separate Elisha’s head from his shoulders this very day. (2 Kings 6:31)

Good or bad, at least they were talking about Elisha. In reality, however, they were talking about God because of Elisha. And shouldn’t that be our goal? Shouldn’t we so live out our faith that we give them something to talk about, that we give them fodder for water cooler, or dinner table, or bedtime stories? If your goal in life is to avoid being the topic of conversation, I would suggest that is not a worthy goal. However, if your goal is to be a conversation starter for Jesus, then you have lived a noble life.

Today might be a good day to start living your public life with such devotion for God and passionate love for people that you give them something to talk about.

Going Deeper With God: Ask the Lord to give you such a consuming love for him that your concern for what people think of you becomes a distant second. As the Lord does that for sure, you will rub some people the wrong way. That is to be expected—it’s called conviction. But there will be others who are drawn to God because of your love for him. That’s the irresistible witness the Holy Spirit will enable within you. Either way, you will give them something to talk about.

Posted on

Whatever The Cost To Follow God, Do It!

ThanksLiving: 365 Days of Gratitude

God will ask us to surrender our dependencies and self-sufficiencies to him; he will need to crush our pride in order to build our trust. And once he has that—our trust—his blessings are freed up to flow down upon our lives. So whatever God asks you to surrender, in whatever way he asks you to demonstrate it, do it! Whatever it costs to follow God, do it! You won’t regret it!

Going Deep // Focus: 2 Kings 5:1-6

So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and waited at the door of Elisha’s house. But Elisha sent a messenger out to him with this message: “Go and wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored, and you will be healed of your leprosy.” But Naaman became angry and stalked away. “I thought he would certainly come out to meet me!” he said. “I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me! Aren’t the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than any of the rivers of Israel? Why shouldn’t I wash in them and be healed?” So Naaman turned and went away in a rage.

God doesn’t always ask people to do weird things, but he reserves that right. Of course, those things are only weird from our perspective, not God’s. But whenever we obey God’s commands, blessings follow—always!

God asked Noah to build an ark because it was going to rain, neither of which had happened before—neither an ark nor rain. God asked Joshua to have his troops march around Jericho once a day for six days, then on the seventh, march around it seven times with the band playing the fight song—and the rest is history. Jesus made mud out of spittle and put the mixture on a blind man’s eyes, and he was healed—not a precedent setting act for eye-healing, thankfully. God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the son of promise in one of the greatest tests of faith ever—and with that came the greatest preview of the sacrifice of God’s Son of promise.

No, God doesn’t always do that, but when he does, we best obey. Naaman, one of the King of Aram’s most effective and popular generals, had leprosy—a horrible disease that not only destroyed the body physically, but damaged people relationally in the most cruel way—through isolation. Naaman was a good man, and loved, so much so that servants and kings wanted to see him healed. That is why he was sent to the man of God in Israel. Elisha could heal him—through God’s power, that is. But when Elisha gave what Namaan thought were demeaning instructions, he got angry. Why should he wash in that muddy little creek, the Jordan, when he had beautiful rivers back home in which to take a therapeutic bath? So he left the prophet, angry, sullen, insulted—and unhealed.

Fortunately for Naaman, the cooler heads of his entourage prevailed, and he ultimately did as Elisha had instructed—he washed in the Jordan River, dipping seven times, and was completely healed:

But his officers tried to reason with him and said, “Sir, if the prophet had told you to do something very difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? So you should certainly obey him when he says simply, ‘Go and wash and be cured!’” So Naaman went down to the Jordan River and dipped himself seven times, as the man of God had instructed him. And his skin became as healthy as the skin of a young child, and he was healed! (2 Kings 5:13-14)

Why did God give such strange instructions to Namaan? I don’t know; no one does for sure. God has his reasons, but I suspect it had something to do with Namaan’s pride. Namaan didn’t think he needed God, but until he surrendered his self-sufficiency and declared his dependence upon the Almighty, God’s hands were tied. Once he bowed to God’s commands, he not only got his need meet, he met the Great Need Meeter.

Now it will probably work that way for you, too, at some point in your life. That goes for me as well. God will ask us to surrender our dependencies and self-sufficiencies to him; he will need to crush our pride in order to build our trust—perhaps it is a strange way that will require ruthless obedience. And once he has that—our trust—his blessings are freed up to flow down upon our lives.

Whatever God asks you to surrender, in whatever way he asks you to demonstrate it, do it! Whatever it costs to follow God, do it! You won’t regret it!

Going Deeper With God: You don’t need to manufacture weird things to demonstrate your worship of God. But when God leads you to a strange step of faith, get confirmation of it through prayer and a trusted spiritual director, then do it. And watch blessings flow.

Posted on

The Wheelbarrow of Ruthless Trust

Being With Jesus:
John 14.1 (NLT)

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.”

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning tells the story of ethicist John Kavanaugh, who traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa in “the house of the dying”. Kavanaugh was searching for what to do with the rest of his life, so he asked Mother Teresa to pray for him that God would grant him clarity. She refused, saying, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh protested that Mother Teresa seemed to have such great clarity, she responded, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.”

Manning goes on to say that it is trust—the simple but ruthless childlike trust that we place in God—that is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. I agree. That is what Jesus called his disciples to in the first century—to trust in God, to trust in him—and that is the challenge that Jesus lays down for his would be followers in our age.

No matter how you slice it, the basic minimum requirement for following Jesus always comes down to this: Will you give him your total trust? If you will, you are on your way to the most exciting and rewarding experience of life a person will ever have—walking with Jesus. And from what Jesus said in John 14:1, we can deduce that one of the basic blessings of placing our trust in God is trouble-free heart. Not a trouble free life, mind you, but a heart (and a mind, Paul adds in Philippians 4:7) that is guarded by Jesus himself.

However, if you won’t give God your total trust, your Christian experience will never get out of the harbor and set sail on the rewarding voyage of risky discipleship. You will find yourself nursing a troubled heart and travelling a less than satisfying journey with God.

“Trust in God,” Jesus says, “and trust in me.” So are you? When your faith is boiled down to its basic elements, will we find there, in spite of life’s circumstances and in scorn of the consequences of living out your faith, a simple but ruthless childlike trust in God? Or is trust something that merely gets talked about but never fleshed out?

A lot of people talk about trusting God, fewer people actually place the totality of their lives in the Father’s hands and unequivocally say, “into your hands, I commit my spirit. May your will be done.” If you are one of the courageous and committed few who do, you have given the greatest gift a human being can place before the God who has everything—the rare trifecta of extreme dependence, radical faith and resolute obedience. Nothing brings a smile to the Father’s heart like that.

One of the best examples of this kind of ruthless trust came from the life of the famous tightrope walker, George Blondin. In the 1850’s, for a publicity stunt, Goerge decided he would walk across Niagara Falls on a rope that had been stretched from one side of the falls to the other. Crowds lined up on both the Canadian and American sides to watch this unbelievable feat. Blondin began to walk across, inch-by-inch, step-by-step, and everybody knew that if he’d make one mistake he was a goner. He got to the other side and the crowd went wild. Blondin said, “I’m going to do it again.” And to the crowd’s delight, he did. Then, to everybody’s amazement, he crossed again, this time pushing a wheel-barrow full of dirt. He actually did this several times, and as he started to go across one last time, someone in the crowd said, “I believe you could do that all day.” Blondin dumped out the dirt and said, “Get into the wheelbarrow.”

In a very real sense that is what God is saying to you and me. Our talk alone is cheap. At some point, we need to get in the wheelbarrow of trust and prove that our discipleship is real.

“Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it. … Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.” (Brennan Manning)

Getting To Know Jesus: Pray this honest and humble prayer: “God, I trust in you. Help my lack of trust!”