So much of the Bible seems to be about God testing our willingness to trust Him. It was an issue in the Garden; in Job’s troubles; in Abraham’s willingness to offer Isaac; in our response to the Good News of what Christ did for us… and at each step of our journey home…
Why does the best book in the world maintain that our faith/trust is so important to God that he is willing to declare the most ungodly people right with himself? Why is he willing to do this, even if they don’t do anything right… except put their faith in who Jesus was and what he did for us (Rom 4:5)? Why, even after we have “believed”, does God continue to test our faith as if it were gold being refined by fire (1Peter 1:3-9)?
Some who have doubted the Bible’s answers think faith in anyone but ourselves is a sign of weakness.
Maybe that’s exactly the point. Maybe from the first day of our Creation until now, God has been using trust as a means of aligning our hearts with the truth of who he is, who we are, and why it will never make sense to match wits with him… about what is true.
Maybe trust is all about God’s way of getting our hearts to rest in the truth…
Is that why God put the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the middle of the Garden? Was the trust that tree asked for a way of keeping the first couple in touch with a reality that a fallen angel had lost?
Could that be why we are told to respond to the “alternative father of lies” by wrapping ourselves with the “truth” (Eph 6:14)? Is that why it’s so important for us to be obsessed with what God has really done for us… and what he has really said?