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| Photo by @Yahudah Solutions Photography |
To know me is to trust me. When that phrase came to my mind as
I questioned how I could trust God, I scoured my Bible for the scriptural
reference only to find that it was not there. I then entered the text into a
Google search. Low and behold it was not
the Holy Scriptures from whence commeth
such truth, but rather an essay from an Industrial Marketing Management
textbook. Interesting. Had I really just credited John Hawes with coining a
statement so profound and yet so poetic that it is as one breathed by God?
Maybe I am being a little dramatic. But, yet again, truth parallels. We
typically go through the process of getting to know people before we truly trust them. And if trusting God
plays such a pivotal role in our lives and the Christian faith, then maybe we better take the time to get to know Him. Does that ring true to you? Keep reading and I’ll share how.
The sequence in marketing is know…trust…buy. When you think
about it, this holds true in all of our relationships: products, people, even God.
Companies use this approach to gain our trust as consumers. They spend millions of dollars
to place their products in prominent places where we, the consumer, can see
them (everywhere we turn) and know more about them. We use this sequence in interpersonal
relationships as well. It is so true that we create discord and risk heartbreak
when we skip the step of getting to know people and engage with them on an
intimate level first. We entrust them with our nakedness be it physical, mental
or emotional and are later devastated when they abuse our trust and turn out
not to be the persons we invented in our mind.
To know me is to trust me. Although this is not a scriptural
reference, the same holds true when it comes to our relationship with God. We
say time and time again, “Trust God” (see my previous essay “Trust God”), but
how do you trust a God you do not know? You don’t. The answer to “How do I trust God?” is you have to get to know Him.
Even God plays by the same rules. I would say that He is the one who made them. He is the original
marketer. He makes Himself known to us everywhere we turn. “For since the
creation of the world God's invisible qualities--His eternal power and divine
nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so
that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). In the Old Testament, God used
the Israelites to show the rest of the world His, love, mercy, kindness and
justness. He chose this group of people and set them up in Jerusalem, the “city
on a hill.” He put them on display so that all else may see Him at work. Dare I
say it? I think I will. God invented the
billboard first. (And here we think humans are the geniuses).
God even invented the walking billboard. In Psalm 40:3 King
David sang (It says, “For the director of music” so I am going to assume these
were put to music and sung) these words, “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn
of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the LORD and put their trust in Him”.
I encourage you to read Psalm 40 in its entirety. We also see how God operates in
the lives of others around us. We celebrate when we see things work out well for our
friends and then give God credit for it. That is how we begin the process of
getting to know Him (It's an introduction). If you attend church,
you hear the stories the pastor tells of other people. Maybe you have heard
someone’s testimony. Perhaps you were taught to pray as a child. One way or
another you have been introduced to God, but that does not mean you know Him.
That introduction might be enough for you to trust Him (after all he is God
Almighty), or you may require a little more.
I love the conclusion at which Job arrived in Job 42:5, “My
ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you”. It’s a beautiful
statement. So many of us start out with an idea of who God is. We know “God is
good, all the time and all the time God is good” because some told us that. But
when we live this life long enough we have our own experiences. We may start
out relying on who we heard God to be but later we rely on who we personally
know Him to be. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you”. A
new, profound, and very personal, very intimate encounter with God might rock
your world. Depending on what you heard about God, you might need to start all
over and learn who He is for yourself. That is a
beautiful thing, because now you get to know Him intimately. But, we cannot merely
rely on the testimony of others, or pastors or even our own experiences alone to know
Him. We must also take the time to read His autobiographical collection.
The pages of the Bible are all available to us so that we can earnestly get to know God for
ourselves. Now your trust (security and confidence) in Him is based on your own knowledge
and experience. You may therefore determine for yourself that He does work in your
life.
There are many misconceptions out there that have damaged
our trust in God. There are messages that incite a sense of entitlement and
reduce God to nothing more than a genie in a bottle. As if to say His sole
purpose is to grant us our every bidding. And He should because after all we are Christians and followers of His Son, right? Isn’t
getting everything we want when we want it part of this sweet deal? Knowing God for yourself is critical to a sustained
relationship with Him. “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one
another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them
to the greatest”. (Hebrews 8:11) Once you know Him, you can trust Him. Keeping
that trust intact, however, is another mission in itself. Stay tuned.
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