More Than Able
Note: Our Caring Fund helps to meet the needs of neighbors in Ames and Gilbert who are facing housing instability or difficulty paying utilities. We have seen an increased need over the last several months, and invite you to consider giving a gift to the Caring Fund. Every dollar given to the Caring Fund goes directly to meet those needs. Thank you for your radical generosity, which makes our church a first-call resource for the city of Ames! You can give by clicking here and selecting “caring fund.”
…
The Bible is a collection of sixty-six individual books. But they’re really not all individual books, are they? Well, yes and no. All sixty-six books fit into five different genres of literature – wisdom and poetry, historical narrative, gospel accounts, apocalyptic, and epistles (letters). Then, there are collections of books with the same author. Moses, Solomon, Jeremiah, Paul, Luke, John, and Peter all authored several books in the OT and NT. And more than anything, the Bible tells one unified story from beginning to end. Yes, with multiple authors and styles of literature, this story is expressed within unique settings, language, and personalities that are reflective of those authors, the region, and the time they are writing. But reading the Bible cover to cover reveals a singular story of the God of creation (Gen. 1-2) purposely working for the total redemption of the world he created (Rev. 21). And all along the way, God never demands that humanity trust him blindly. Instead, he repeatedly gives evidence of why he is, as Paul says, “more than able.”
I realize that in Christian circles, we often talk about blind faith and trusting God in the same vein. But they are not the same thing. Trust is always earned, and faith is about trusting for what we can’t see in the future based on what we have seen in the past. And yes, the God of the universe doesn’t have to earn our trust, but the remarkable thing is that he still provides evidence of his trustworthiness. Let’s consider a few examples from the OT.
- Creation – The very fact that God created everything from nothing by speaking it into existence is reason enough to trust him! In fact, Paul will say that creation itself makes God known to us (Rom. 1:19). If he can create the cosmos he is more than enough for anything we face.
- The Exodus – Put yourself in the shoes of the Israelites, you know Egypt and how to survive there, then a prophet comes saying that God is going to lead you to a promised land. Amazing, right? Yes, if you can trust this God to actually do it. Now consider the plagues and every event through the exodus, God was demonstrating that he was more than able to rescue his people.
- The Judges – This was a volatile era in the life of Israel where everyone did what they wanted and had no king (Jud. 21:25). Yet, time after time, God raised up a judge to rescue his people from their own evil doings. Over and over again God demonstrated that he could be trusted and the people wavered.
- The Prophets – God even gave his people prophets so that they might hear from him directly! And what did they do to the prophets? In the case of Jeremiah, they exiled and killed him. A God who earnestly makes himself known to us is a God who is worthy of our trust.
Then we come to the NT and its key figure, Jesus. As if God had not done enough to demonstrate his trustworthiness in the OT, he now sends his one and only Son. God in the flesh, the very visible image of the invisible God (Jn. 1:1-18; Col. 1:15-20). All of this to demonstrate that he is trustworthy and that we might believe and be saved. All of this for us, because we needed it and God loves us.
Yes, trusting God is hard. Why? Because we have to trust him for things we can’t see yet. And we have to trust him in situations that have very scary realities attached to them. That is hard. Paul was writing to a group of believers who were living in a place that was unfriendly to Christians in his letters to the Ephesians. Paul had suffered much for the gospel and was even writing to them as a prisoner in Rome! Paul doesn’t tell the Ephesian believers to just trust God blindly. No, he reminds them of their salvation and of God’s character and nature (Eph. 1-3). Then he tells them to trust him because he is more than able for what they’ve gone through and for what they will go through. This is a truth that Paul knows personally.
Here’s how Paul will say it, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)
So, when you are facing a situation where it is hard to trust God, remember that he is more than able, never asks you to trust him blindly, and loves you so much that he’d send his one and only Son to demonstrate all of that. Then, actively remember when you saw God come through in the past. Big and small ways. They all add up to a God who is trustworthy.
God is trustworthy and is working out a redemptive plan. That is the unified story of the Bible.