Trusting God starts with knowing and celebrating who God is.
Years ago, I had a gentleman come in and see me in my office at a church where I previously served. The meeting was not scheduled, and he came in with an urgency to ask the office staff if I was available to see him. He came back to my office, I poured two cups of coffee, and we sat down to talk. I appreciate him giving me permission to share this story. He told me that he was leaving his wife. He was a Christian and a man I respected. As he described the details, I was disappointed to hear that his relationship was in such bad condition. He talked for quite a while, and I listened.
Then he said something that really caught my attention. He said, “God told me that I need to divorce my wife.” Although I had been pretty quiet up until that point in the meeting, I could feel the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Truth inside of me welling up. I said, “What exactly did God say?” And his response was, “He told me to divorce my wife so I could pursue a relationship with a woman that I have been seeing on the side.” I said, “That’s exactly what God said to you?” He said, “Yes.” I responded, “How do you know it was God?” He thought for a moment and then said, “I guess I’m not sure it was God.” To which I responded, “Well, don’t you think you should be sure it was God before you leave your wife? That doesn’t sound like something God would say.” I’d love to tell you that this was a singular incident in ministry, but it is not.
Trusting God starts with knowing and celebrating who God is.
Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do? God regularly gets blamed for things He didn’t do. He also gets credit for a lot of things he had nothing to do with. How do we really know if God did something or not? If we are going to trust God, we’d better be sure that we know when it is Him and when it is not.
Here is the good news. God is in a category all by Himself. Who He is and what He does is the same thing. He is consistent. He is the I AM. So if we are trying to figure out if God did something or not, we should start with knowing who God is. We can’t be like God unless we know what God is like. We can’t know the true God unless we know the truth about God. We can’t recognize false gods unless we know the true God.
Trusting God starts with knowing and celebrating who God is.
A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Virtually every major doctrine of the Christian faith is based on the doctrine of God. Who God is and what God does is precisely the same thing. His essence is the same as His existence. This is not always the case with us. We are terribly inconsistent beings. The truth is that as Christians, we are new creations. That’s who we are. We are in Christ. But what we do doesn’t always line up with who we are.
Andy Stanley says, “What gets celebrated gets repeated.” Celebrating is just highlighting and bringing to the forefront what is happening. There are a lot of positive things God is doing. We should focus on them because what gets celebrated, gets repeated. But let’s be real, some difficult things happen in life as well. The more we focus on negative things, the more negative things will happen. Perhaps this is why Paul wrote these words to the Philippians.
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8
Trusting God starts with knowing and celebrating who God is.
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