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The Solid Rock

Wednesday, May 01st, 2013 | Author:

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.  Psalm 130:5  ESV

Hope – Psalm 130 is a cry to the Lord from the depths of despair.  It’s not despair over the external circumstances of life.  It’s despair over the chaos of disobedience, of sin at the center of who I am.  It is agony over my true state of being – twisted and bent before the holy God.  The psalmist tells us that there is hope.  Forgiveness is possible.  Restoration can come.

But not immediately.

If I want to know the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, I will have to deal with death – my death, the destruction of those things that I could not wait to consume, to possess, the destruction of my unbridled desire to have the world my way, the destruction of any residual belief that I can barter a solution with God.  If I am going to experience recovery, I will first have to wait in the grave.  That’s why waiting must be at the core of who I am.  When I reach this place of surrender, there is no negotiating.  I am done, finished, empty, exhausted.  There is only one thing left.  The promise of YHWH.

The Hebrew word yahal is connected to batah, the verb “to trust.”  Over and over the Psalms assert that trust in God will bring praise for His faithfulness.  Unlike men, God can be counted on always.  His deliverance is guaranteed, even if it is not presently visible.  Waiting in the dark only prepares me for the blessing of His light and His word assures me that this light is coming.

Plato has taught us to be suspicious of claims of hope.  In the Greek world, hope is merely the projection of desired ends in order that I may survive the current trauma.  Hope is not real.  It is merely psychologically necessary, a convenient crutch to support my battered psyche until I can return to a more rational state of mind.  So when the psalmist declares that I can hope in God’s word, my good Greek training whispers, “Well, if you need to believe this, go ahead, but you know that things don’t turn out that way in the end, do they?  You don’t really think God’s goodness will show up, do you?  After all, how could the world be in such a mess if what God says is really true?”  Ah, the wonders of paradigmatic assumptions.  If I listen to all that good training, I will stay in the dark, brooding over the lie of fate.

But God isn’t Greek – and neither are the ones who stand on His word.  Throw Plato out with the bath water.  To trust God is to remember what He has done in Israel and to wait for His handiwork to show itself again.  Hope is not a dream of the future.  It is an anchor firmly set in real past events.  If I want to know where God is going, I must know where God has been.  My hope is in the past, not the future.  God did what He said He would do and He will do what He says He has yet to do.  I can be confident of His promises because I know what He has already done.  And that’s the end of it.

When Edward Mote penned the lyrics to a famous Christian hymn, he forgot that YHWH’s acts with Israel are the real basis of our faith.  Without the Great I AM, the mission and accomplishment of Yeshua would be pointless.

“My hope is built on nothing less
 than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, 
but wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

When darkness seems to hide His face,
 I rest on His unchanging grace.
 In every high and stormy gale,
 my anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
 support me in the whelming flood.
 When all around my soul gives way,
 He then is all my Hope and Stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
 oh may I then in Him be found.
 Dressed in His righteousness alone,
 faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
 All other ground is sinking sand;
 All other ground is sinking sand.”

Mote was right.  I do stand on the righteousness of Yeshua, but not alone, not alone.

Topical Index:  hope, yahal, trust, Psalm 130:5

 

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Speed Limit

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 | Author:

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.  Psalm 130:5  ESV

Wait – I don’t like to wait.  I don’t like to wait for anything.  I hate lines.  I want to get there now.  No red lights, no detours, no queues.  Just a freeway without traffic.  Pedal to the metal.  Unfortunately, the world will not accommodate me.

And neither will God.

“Waiting with steadfast endurance is a great expression of faith. It means enduring patiently in confident hope that God will decisively act for the salvation of his people (Gen 49:18). Waiting involves the very essence of a person’s being, his soul (nepeš; Ps 130:5). Those who wait in true faith are renewed in strength so that they can continue to serve the Lord while looking for his saving work (Isa 40:31).” [1]

I cannot appreciate who God is unless I understand and practice the Hebrew verb qawa.  This verb includes waiting, looking for and hoping.  All three concepts express the Hebraic idea of eager expectation.  Waiting is not passive.  When I wait, I anticipate.  I set my stance in the blocks, ready for the signal to run.  But in order to enter the race, I must wait for the sound of the gun, and in spiritual terms, this means waiting for the sound of His voice.  It is so easy to run ahead of God, but what is the point?  He will simply bring me back to the starting line and require me to get ready again.  But it’s not my soul that waits in the blocks.  It’s nephesh – all of who I am – the person, me!  Waiting is not simply a spiritual game.  This eager anticipation must be learned in my embodied self.  False-start penalties don’t happen because I think about moving.

Hartley draws attention to the important insight that as a follower of YHWH waiting is at the very center of my being.  Nefesh without qawa is a body of animal instinct, not a human being.  Human beings delay in order to hear God’s word.  Unless I practice qawa, I will slip toward automatic response and that will prevent me from becoming human.  By the way, since my instinctual mechanics constantly push me toward immediate gratification (a sure sign of the domination of the yetzer ha’ra), I have to learn to wait.  It doesn’t come naturally.  What comes naturally is the assumption that I am the master of my own world and everyone else should make way for me.  What I must learn is that I am neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Solomon.  What I must learn is that if I am to serve Him and become myself I must practice being Joseph.  Oh, so that was the point of the story!

The spontaneous result of trust is waiting.  If you want to measure your trust level with God, examine your ability to wait.  Patience is not only a virtue.  It is a picture of confidence in the word of the Lord.  I can’t wait until I learn that lesson.

Topical Index:  wait, qawa, trust, Psalm 130:5


[1] Hartley, J. E. (1999). 1994, קָוָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (791). Chicago: Moody Press.

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Keep My Commandments

Tuesday, October 02nd, 2012 | Author:

“In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”   John 16:33  NASB

Take courage – In the Greek text, the word translated “take courage” is tharseite.  This verb (tharreo) means, “be confident, take courage, be bold,” in one of its forms, and “to trust, to rely on” in another form.  The LXX always uses this verb in the second sense, “to trust, to rely on.”  In the New Testament, the word is only used in one way – as an imperative.  It is a command!

Did you know that Yeshua never suggests that we be encouraged?  He never tells us, “Oh, I empathize with your situation but I want you to know that you can have hope.  It’s so important to look on the bright side of things.  Cheer up!”  He doesn’t play psychotherapist.  “You know, you’ll feel a lot better if you think encouraging thoughts.  Try not to be so negative.”  No, Yeshua commands us to be confident, to be bold.  Now, if Yeshua commands us to be like this, then it must be possible for us to actually do what He tells us to do.  After all, God would never tell us to do something that we simply can’t do.

And this command tells us something else that is very important.  “Taking courage” is not about how I feel.  It doesn’t make any difference how I happen to feel about my situation.  A command implies an action, not a feeling.

Think about it.  What if someone comes to you and says, “Now I command you to feel happy.  Right now, I want you to have the emotions of good feelings.”  Unless you’re an actor (in which case the outward signs don’t match the inward reality), such a command is useless.  Good feelings are the result of good circumstances.  You can’t command someone to feel one way or the other.  But you certainly can command someone to act in a particular way no matter how he happens to feel.  And that is exactly what Yeshua does.  He says, “I know that you have troubles in your world.  But I am telling you; this is what you must do.  Do this. Be bold.  Be confident.  Take action.  Trust Me!  Because I have already been victorious over your world.”

So, if this is a command, what does it mean for my actions?  It means that I never give up my confidence in God.  I never give in to the voice that says, “Your troubles are too much for God to deal with.”  I never listen to the whisper, “God doesn’t really care about you.”  And I never, ever stop expecting God’s faithfulness to show itself.  Trust is an decision-action of the whole person, not an emotion I wait to have pumped into me.

There is one other thing I can do.  I can shout out my battle cry, “Yeshua has overcome the world and I am with Him!”

Topical Index:  take courage, trust, rely, be bold, John 16:33, tharreo

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Already Finished

Monday, October 01st, 2012 | Author:

“In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”   John 16:33  NASB

Overcome – Here is the Greek word nenikeka.  This is the verb nike (you can see it in the middle of the word).  It means, “to be victorious over.”  Now you know why a shoe company in Portland has a Greek name.  The most important thing about this verb is that it is in the perfect tense.  This tells us that the verb describes a completed action in the past that has continuing impact in the present.

Yeshua is telling us something incredibly important.  What He accomplished in His death and resurrection (the events in the past) has continuing impact for us today.  Because of Him, we have been made overcomers of the world too.  Yeshua says that we can take courage.  We don’t have to do it all by ourselves.  We don’t carry the weight of the world on our shoulders alone.  We have been rescued from the specter of failure.  No matter what we face in this life, Yeshua has overcome all that stands in the way of victory.

I really needed to read this verse today.  In spite of my belief that God’s faithfulness never fails, life has handed me a series of real disappointments recently.  Issues that I hoped would be resolved remain.  Directions I thought would become clear stayed hidden.  I prayed, “God, I know that You love me and I know that You care for me.  You have told me that You want good gifts for your children and that You won’t withhold what we need.  And I believe you.  I am being obedient to you.  But I really need some help here.  Things are just not getting any better.”  The question I face is a question of timing.  I see bad things on the horizon.  But they are still on the horizon.  God is asking me to trust Him.  He is the only One Who sees over the horizon.

I could be Greek about all this, project my fears into the unknown (for me) and imagine what might happen.  Or I could listen to the voice of Yeshua, reminding me that His victory is mine, even if I can’t see how it all works out.

I need to pay attention to Yeshua’s words in this verse.  He has overcome the world.  The answer to my trials and tribulations are in His hands.  He doesn’t say, “Don’t worry.  You have overcome the world.”  He says, “Take courage.  Rest in what I have already done.”

This is not easy for me.  The pattern of my world tells me to panic, to worry, to hurry, to get out there and make everything happen.  But God has given me a problem so big that I cannot fix it.  Not without Him.  So, I have only one direction to go – back to my knees.

“Father, I believe that Your Son has overcome my world and all of its mess.  Help me to stay faithful to that belief.”

Topical Index:  nike, victory, trust, overcome, John 16:33

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The Hiding Place

Friday, January 13th, 2012 | Author:

“How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust”  Psalm 40:4 NASB

Trust – The word batach means the sense of well-being and security that results from having something or someone in whom to place confidence.  It is translated in the Greek Old Testament as “hope”, not “belief.”  It stresses the feeling of being safe and secure rather than an intellectual and volitional act in response to revelation.  It means to live at ease because of confidence in God.

Those who trust in God alone will be delivered from their enemies (Ps. 22:4); their prayers will be answered (I Chr. 5:20); they will walk in straight paths (Prov. 3:5); they will be given joy and gladness (Ps. 16:9 and 33:21); they will know inner peace and absence of fear (Ps. 4:8 and Isa. 26:3).  The cause for our trust in God’s promises is not based on what we have done or can do.  Trusting in God’s promises does not depend on how worthy I am to receive anything from Him.  It is based solely on the unswerving loyalty of God’s gracious kindness.

In English, the opposite of trust is mistrust or doubt.  But not so in Hebrew.  The opposite of batach is master, the act of hiding.  In other words, the antonym of trust is keeping secrets.  In biblical terms, the man with a secret sin has no hope.  Why?  First, because his secret is a delusion.  There are no secrets from God.  Therefore, his life stands on something that is not openly shared with God and that means he is not trusting in God alone.  His secret is a personal form of idolatry.  Secondly, the man with a secret knows that he is out of alignment with God’s directive.  His secret robs him of hope in the Lord because it demonstrates his unfaithfulness.  Secrets break hesed obligation, the very obligation that maintains an open relationship with God.

Hope in God is not wish fulfillment but rather confident expectation.  God’s chief characteristic is His faithfulness and trustworthiness (Deut. 33:28, Ps. 27:3).  These characteristics show themselves most clearly to a believer who recognizes that he is utterly without personal resources.  The believer must trust completely in a gracious and dependable God.  Putting one’s confidence in anything but the sovereign God is complete foolishness.  In the Bible, there is a long list of false grounds for security.  In particular, the Bible heaps scorn upon those who live in complacency, never having evaluated the flimsy basis of their lives (Isa. 32:9-11, Ezek. 30:9, Amos 6:1).

Batach is a very serious word.  We say that we trust God, but too often our actions deny these claims.  Recovery begins when we honestly examine our lives and commit ourselves to do something about what we find.  A fearless inventory of our behavior usually reveals that we are still trying to take care of things by ourselves.  An examination of our personal secrets reveals how little we trust our emotional well-being to God.  We really don’t think God is reliable in every area of life.  That isn’t trust.  Trust says, “God, You are able.  I put all my eggs in Your basket.  I’ll do whatever you want me to do, but unless You come through for me, I’m finished”.   Start today.  Pick the one thing that you have tried over and over to fix in your life but nothing has changed.  Decide to trust.

Do your actions show that you trust God, or is “trust” just another word in your religious vocabulary?

Topical Index:  trust, batach, Psalm 40:4

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The Cutting Edge

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 | Author:

Indeed, he does not know what is to happen; even when it is on the point of happening, who can tell him.   Ecclesiastes 8:7  NJPS

On the point of – Do you know what’s happening?  Now, really, do you actually know?  Anyone who claims to actually know what’s happening is either a complete fool or beyond arrogance.  That’s Qohelet’s point.  Human beings simply do not know what’s happening, even at the very moment that things occur.  Literally, the Hebrew text says, “for when it will be, who can tell him?”  We have no idea what is to come nor even how the events in our lives will shape us or the future.  We are people rowing backwards.  Proverbs 27:1 says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.”  Ben Sira echoes the same thought: “when he says, ‘I have found rest, and now I shall feast on my goods!’ he does not know how long it will be until he leaves them to others and dies” (Sira 11:19).  Bigger barns do not provide any security in this life.

Michael Fox draws attention to the comment of Rabbi Levi, a comment that expresses the complete lack of control that human beings have over the really big issues of life and death.  “Rabbi Levi observes that David is called ‘King David’ fifty-two times, but in 1 Kings 2:1, when David’s life is drawing to a close, he is simply called ‘David,’ for on that day he has no more authority.”[1]

Musing like this paralyzed Qohelet.  His pessimism about life forced him into temporary hedonism (enjoy it while you can) and Stoicism (grit your teeth and bear the rest).  Those are two very popular options today.  When I finally confront the fact that life isn’t mine to direct and control, I might choose to just take what I can get or I might choose to doggedly press on.  Neither is the biblical answer.

Most scholars believe that the final few verses of Ecclesiastes, those few lines that attempt to redeem Qohelet’s dark attitude by injecting worship and obedience, were added by someone else.  They were added because readers of the Bible want positive and upbeat endings.  But Qohelet’s analysis is critically important.  It strips us of our false belief in human ability.  It destroys ego, pride and the myth of control.  We need the unexpurgated Qohelet in order to understand who we really are – dependent creatures under God’s design and purpose.  Qohelet is absolutely right.  Even at the very moment of an event, we don’t really know what it all means.  We are not gods!

But we can trust the One who is God.  We are not paralyzed because of our finitude.  We can still act with hesed because God, who does know what it all means, has given us instructions about living.  We might not understand what those instructions are really all about, but that doesn’t mean we can’t follow them.  It is useless to demand a full explanation of God’s point of view before we decide to follow His directions.  Once again, Qohelet reminds us that we are not gods.  God speaks.  We listen.  We do.  That is the simple formula of life.  Of course, we still ask “Why?”  That’s part of who we are.  But when the “Why?” prevents us from acting, we join Qohelet in hedonism and stoicism, and even then, we don’t know what is happening.

The only real question in life is this one:  Do you trust Him?

Topical Index:  trust, hedonism, Stoicism, Ecclesiastes 8:7


[1] Michael Fox, Ecclesiastes: The JPS Bible Commentary, p. 56.

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The Heresy of Fear

Friday, October 21st, 2011 | Author:

 “Do not be afraid.  I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”  Revelation 1:17-18 NASB

Do not be afraid – “. . . the opposite of the believer was not the heretic but the coward.”[1] God commands us not to be afraid.  It is an impossible command – if it is understood as an imperative concerning emotions.  I can no more command someone not to fear than I can command someone not to let his knee jerk when the doctor hits the right nerve.  Emotions are not subject to acts of the will.  Control of emotions might fall under the topic of volition, but emotions themselves are much more like a reflex reaction.

Since God is obviously aware of this fact, this verse cannot be about God asking us not to feel.  “Do not be afraid” means that He asks us to act according to His truth in spite of how we feel.  “And yet God does not need those who praise Him when in a state of euphoria.  He needs those who are in love with Him when in distress, both He and ourselves.  This is the task:  in the darkest night to be certain of the dawn, certain of the power to turn a curse into a blessing; agony into a song.  To know the monster’s rage and, in spite of it, proclaim to its face (even a monster will be transfigured into an angel); to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God – this the challenge and the way.”[2]

That’s why the opposite of a believer is a coward.  A coward is someone who fears in spite to God’s promises.  A coward is someone who will not believe, who chooses not to trust in the sovereignty of God.  In fact, you might say that anyone who contends with life without trust in God is a coward no matter how heroically we think of them.  To fight against the tsunami of evil circling the earth without fighting because of the goodness of God is cowardice.  Will such a fight result in righteous acts?  Perhaps.  But the real hero is the one who refuses to dishonor God’s reputation even if the world is evil.  That hero fights not only against the evil in the world but also against the more insidious idolatry that says God is impotent.  That hero fights on two fronts, both critical to victory.  That is the hero or heroine who can go through Hell and still believe.

“Do not be afraid,” says the living One.  But without His promise, without His guarantee, fear is all that I can have.  It might motivate me to surmount impossible odds, but my efforts will not change the direction of the world.  To act in spite of my fear because I trust in the Lord – that changes the direction.

Topical Index:  fear, emotions, trust, coward, hero, Revelation 1:17-18


[1] Abraham Heschel, A Passion for Truth, p. 315.

[2] Ibid., p. 301.

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The Order of Rest

Saturday, August 13th, 2011 | Author:

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He has made.  And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made.  Genesis 2:2-3  Hebrew World translation

Rested – Who rests and who works?  If you grew up in Babylon, you were taught that the gods created men so that they could rest while men did the work.  The duty of Man was to serve the gods in order that the gods would not have to do the work of taking care of creation.  There was no rest for the wicked, and that included everyone born of a woman.

But Israel was different.  Israel was commanded to participate in God’s rest.  Israel was not to work when God rested.  Why?  For the answer, we need to reconsider the framework of the creation story.

Hebrew creation is about order.  It is not about the victory of good over evil or the battle between rival divinities.  It is about the safety and security provided by one sovereign Lord of all creation.  It is about His arrangement of the universe so that everything works together as it should.  The creation story is about control and nothing epitomizes control more than the ability to stop maintaining it all.  In other words, rest is the clearest and strongest metaphor for the fact that what God did is working perfectly.  No more tinkering is needed.

Israel is commanded to acknowledge and honor God’s ultimate perfection in creation by resting with Him.  Two important distinctions emerge from this Hebraic point of view.  First, of course, men do not work for God.  God does not need the ministrations of men in order to find rest.  He creates all that is necessary for a perfect world.  Unlike other ancient views about the gods, men are not required to benefit YHWH.  In Israel, men work for their own prosperity and provision.  Secondly, men are not commanded to actively engage in God’s rest – to do something that will facilitate His rest.  Instead, they are commanded to share in God’s rest; to rest themselves in honor of His perfect creation and His absolute control.  God stops because nothing more needs to be done.  We stop because we honor a God who has finished all of it.  If He rests, so can we.  His control guarantees that the world will not fly apart if we take a day off.  In other words, by ceasing to work on the Sabbath, I acknowledge my trust in His control.  It is more than a mental construct.  It is a behavioral, practical, visible sign that I trust Him.

Walton points out that there is no other civilization in human history that has such a provision.  There is nothing like the Sabbath to be found anywhere else than in Israel.  Shabbat is a day unique to the God of the Bible, a day unlike any other, a day of literal trust in His order.

If our frenzied activity cannot be set aside for this sanctified day, what does that say about our trust in the one we claim to worship?  Does it mean that we still subtly need to take charge?  Does it mean that we dishonor Him when we think we are so important that we cannot rest?  And what does it say about a religious culture that ignores this visible sign of trust in God?  What does it say to the pagan world when we cannot let go for fear that something won’t get done?  Whose world is that kind of world?

Topical Index:  Sabbath, shabbat, rest, Genesis 2:2-3, control, trust

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The Secret Treasure

Friday, March 04th, 2011 | Author:

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. Psalm 56:3 NASB

When – Are you afraid?  I am.  I have had a growing sense of fear for about a year now.  I am concerned that our civilization is rushing toward the brink at breakneck speed.  I look at my own financial circumstances.  Things don’t look very reassuring.  In fact, they appear more fragile than ever (and I have gone through a lot in the past).  I worry about my children, my wife, my purpose in life.  The Hebrew expression fits – yom eera, literally “the day I fear.”  The verb yare is a Qal imperfect.  That means the action is incomplete and fluid.  The day of my fear isn’t over with.  That day keeps happening in my life like rain in the Spring.  One minute the skies are blue.  The next minute there’s a thunderstorm.  The “fear day” catches me by surprise, but it’s just as real as the rain.

David was afraid too.  Did you notice that David doesn’t chastise himself because he is afraid.  Being afraid is a natural human response to impending threats.  Being afraid is not the kind of emotional reaction you can simply dismiss.  The “No Fear” gang seems just a bit disconnected from reality.  Just like David, we often find we are afraid – and for apparently good reason.  Having someone tell you that God is in charge so you don’t need to be afraid seems a bit callous.  What does that person know about my fears?  Just being told that I shouldn’t be afraid makes very little difference.

David doesn’t hesitate to express the remedy to his fear.  “I will put my trust in You.”  Ani elekha evtah.  Shout it out!  “I in You will trust!”  Trust – batah – a great verb, used only once for safety and security between human beings (Proverbs 31:11) but used many, many times for the feelings of safety and security between a man or woman and God.  The basic idea of trust is reliability.  “I can count on You, Lord, and I will count on You.  You promised to care for me.  I am banking on that promise.”  The opposite of the Day of Fear is the Day of Trust.  But there is more than an antonym here.  The Day of Fear is an on-going experience of human existence forever projected into the future.  It rides on the wings of what might happen to us.  But the Day of Trust is not a Qal imperfect.  The Day of Trust is a finished action in the past.  It is anchored to the character of the promise-maker and it has been that way since He spoke the world into existence.  The same God who enabled the sun to rise on the Day of my Fear is the God who asks me to trust Him with the rest of the hours in this day.

And I will.

Topical Index:  fear, day, yare, yom, trust, batah, afraid, Psalm 56:3

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Eternal Security

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 | Author:

Those who trust in the LORD are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. Psalm 125:1

Trust – Trusting YHWH doesn’t matter until it matters.  When life is consumed by the routine, we don’t think much about trust.  If we think of it at all, we think about the expectation of its consistency.  I don’t have to trust that the sun will come up tomorrow.  I don’t have to trust that tomorrow will be another day of writing or traveling or phone calls.  Those things fall into the category of inevitability.  They happen because the universe generally follows a cause and effect scenario.  That’s why I have an appointment calendar.  Life is not normally chaotic.

Trust is important when life isn’t so routine.  That doesn’t mean you have to have an externally observable crisis like a terrorist attack or the loss of your job or a devastating injury.  Life can be chaotic on the inside too.  It can be filled with doubts, fears, loneliness, heartache; things that are hidden from the observation of others but are quite apparent to the one feeling the chaos.  While you might not need an example because you already know this experience, indulge me here.  I am often afraid.  Of course, I don’t talk about my fears and I do my best not to show them publicly, but I know very well that they are there.  I fear failure.  I fear shame.  I fear being left behind, being alone.  Most of my fears are emotionally charged projections of self-induced despair.  I simply don’t think I’m good enough – for my wife, my family, my friends or for God.  I have a long history of sins.  I know guilt in the first degree.  That’s why trust is such a critically important experience for me.

I resisted writing that trust is a concept or an idea.  Concepts and ideas will not remove the inner terror.  I must experience trust to know it is real.  Trust is found in behavior, not in dictionaries.  If I hear my friend say, “Trust me,” but I see him act in ways that appear to be irresponsible or personally damaging to me, his words become nothing but words.  I might suggest that he become a politician but I probably won’t give him my checkbook.  This is even more critical when I have to deal with my most intimate inner fears.  There has to be a reason to put confidence in someone and that reason cannot be a verbal assertion of fidelity.

But trust contains a paradox.  In order to trust someone, I must take a risk.  You see, no matter how much behavioral evidence I have that the other person is trustworthy, I know they might still fail me.   I know this because I know myself and I have produced considerable evidence of trustworthiness and yet still failed to be 100% faithful.  And if I can fail myself, others can also fail me.  How can I really trust if trust requires me to risk what I don’t trust?

The psalmist exhorts me to trust YHWH.  But why should I?  Have I seen His invisible hand moving in my life?  Am I confident that He will shelter me from my personal terrors?  Do I feel safe with Him?  I certainly can’t answer these questions with a resounding “Yes!” unless I have experienced His care and concern.  But even if I have, there is this tendency to doubt His continued care, especially when I have no doubt at all about my sinfulness.  This is when I need to know the difference between the Greek words for trust and the Hebrew word for trust.

Hebrew expresses trust with the word batah (Bet-Tet-Chet).  The pictograph is “inside the surrounding fence.”  In other words, the principal idea behind trust is protection.  Trust is expressed in feeling secure, in being able to rely on someone, in being unconcerned based on confidence in another.  Hebraic trust is about feelings!  It’s not a lofty theological concept.  It’s real behaviorally-based emotional security.  The most important words that I can say in any relationship are these:  “I trust you.”  That means I  place my well-being in your hands because I am confident that you are reliable, responsible and concerned about me.  I believe that you will bring me shalom.  If I don’t believe these things, then no matter what I say, I don’t trust you.  When I say, “I trust you,” I take the risk implied in the equation of trust.  I hope that my risk is rewarded, but I don’t know for sure.  The Greeks noticed this inherent paradox, so their expressions of trust tend to be a little different than the Hebrew idea of security.

Greek doesn’t have an exact equivalent for this feeling of inner safety.  In the Greek New Testament, several different words are translated “trust,” but none of them fits the Hebrew perfectly.  Greek uses elpizo (to hope, to expect with desire), peitho (to convince, to persuade), pepoithesis (from peitho – trust or confidence), pisteuo (to believe, to have faith, to trust) and proelpizo (from elpizo – to see ahead, to know or foresee).  You can see the cognitive orientation of the Greek terms in opposition to the emotional orientation of the Hebrew word.  You can see that the basic idea of trust in Greek is tied to hope, not security.  That doesn’t mean the Greek expressions aren’t correct.  It just means that Hebrew is a “rubber meets the road” approach.  In Hebrew, trust is about living, not just about thinking.  In Hebrew, it’s about what I am experiencing now, not what I wish to experience if everything works out the way I hope it will.  Perhaps that’s why we find this startling fact of the Hebrew Scripture:  there are hardly any verses that actually describe people who trusted YHWH.  There are plenty of verses that exhort us to trust Him but there are less than a dozen verses that tell us about people who actually did trust Him.  Apparently the most important element of any relationship is not only difficult among human beings who can and do fail us, it is just as difficult with a God who never fails us.  We might reflect on this fact when it comes to the lives of Yeshua’s disciples.  There is no doubt that Yeshua demonstrated His trustworthiness, but every disciple ran when put to the test.

Now we have discovered why trust requires such an effort.  Others fail to uphold our trust.  Havvah failed Adam.  Adam failed Havvah.  It’s been the same ever since.  Based on my experience with other people, I can never completely trust anyone.  That is not a reflection of their deliberate malfeasance.  It is simply a statement of the human condition.  Everyone stumbles.  I have failed to be trustworthy innumerable times.  Just ask those who love me the most.  I have failed to keep confidence with myself.  Just ask God.  So how can I trust someone else?  They are just as human as I am.  How can I put my well-being in the hands of someone else with unconcern for the consequences?  In spite of the fact that the Bible exhorts me to place my well-being in the hands of my wife (Proverbs 31:11) in the same way that I would place my full confidence in YHWH, I struggle to do so because I have experienced pain and suffering at the hands of those I trusted.  I am afraid because I know what it means to be double-crossed.  To trust is to risk myself.

Paradox is at the heart of trust.  Coming to grips with this paradox is the task of the human condition.  I cannot become what God intends until I risk trusting Him and others.  Other people may disappoint, but that cannot prevent me from risking myself with God.  I must take myself by the neck and say, “What’s the matter with you?  God doesn’t fail.  Ever!  It doesn’t matter what the circumstances happen to be.  He is completely trustworthy even if you can’t figure out how He is engineering your life to bring about shalom.  Stop peering in from outside the fence.  Put your hand on the gate and step in.  Of course it’s scary.  But who are you to judge this situation?  Is God like you?  Not a chance!  Put your fears away and take the risk to trust Him no matter where it goes.  Put Him to the test.  He’s up to it.”

Topical Index:  trust, batah, risk, security, Psalm 125:1

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , ,  | 14 Comments
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