About 22 years ago Linda and I decided to get married. That decision, IMHO, is among the best ones I’ve ever made. I love her with everything I have.
There’s so much trust between us that I can confidently say I’d do anything she’d ask me to do. Or rather, I know she’d never ask me to do something I wouldn’t do, or that would seriously endanger my life.
For instance, I know she wouldn’t ask me to leap from the highest cliff I could find. That kind of thing. And she knows the same about me. I’d never ask her to do something she’d regret doing.
In that same way we should love God. We should be confident He’d never ask us to do something that would be bad for us to do. The thing to keep in mind is that His view is longer than ours, like a parent’s is longer than a child’s.
Any reasonable parent would not let their child eat chocolate ice cream all day long while playing video games. It’s not good for any child to do that. Despite all the wailing and screaming about ice cream, no good parent would do that. Kids, however, only have a few years perspective, while a parent has decades of experience.
God has eternity for a perspective. Our few decades don’t compare.
There’s a joke I may have told already:
“Lord, is it true a thousand years is like a second to you?”
“Yes.”
“And then it would be as if a million dollars is like a penny to you, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then can I have a million dollars?”
“Sure! Just a second.”
If you trust the Lord, you’ll get your “million dollars.” Perhaps not in this life, but in the next. And if He asks you to do something that seems nuts, you either trust Him or you don’t.
I trust Linda. If I’m driving and she yells to hit the brakes, I don’t ask “why,” I just hit the brakes. When she asks me to get out of my comfy chair while I’m crocheting a Vortex Afghan, I do it. Believe me, it’s no simple feat when juggling multiple strands of yard. Things have to be folded just so and the yarn has to be set carefully so the different colors don’t get tangled.
Many times in the Bible our relationship with God is compared to a marriage. At the end of time there’s the example of the true believers being the bride of Christ. Those are the people who trust Him and can be trusted BY Him.
Popular culture is full of men and women who marry and divorce at the drop of a hat. One movie star divorces another because neither of them will give up a single thing for the benefit of the other. One’s working on a movie in England, the other in Australia. This star is on a month-long vacation in some tropical paradise, but the other has a society event they just can’t miss.
Neither will give anything for the other. They don’t even trust each other, and a prime example of that is the frequency of prenuptial agreements for the rich and famous.
If both parties really trusted each other, there’d be no need. But that’s God’s goal - get His followers to really trust Him so that when He tells them to hit the brakes, they do.
Back in the days of Abram (before he was known as Abraham), God promised He’d be faithful to His people. The type of agreement between God and Abram was the kind where the person who violated the contract would be torn to bits and pieces. Normally the lesser of the two would take on that responsibility. In that case, God did it.
So when Abram’s descendants violated the oath, God paid the price. Jesus - God - was torn to bits. Perhaps not chopped to chunks, but died a death more agonizing than anything we can imagine. He paid the price to get His bride, because there’s no way people could pay enough.
Now God allows anyone to be adopted into the chosen people. We don’t have to be descendants of Abraham. We simply have to trust that the One who died for us really wants what’s best for us.
We get to be the bride of Christ. Trust Him. He wants what’s best for you.
