I am suffering here in prison, but not because my trust in Jesus has failed me. I know whom I have believed, and I am confident that he can keep me and everything I have committed to him right through to the end.
2 Timothy 1:12 Author’s paraphrase
I recently learned of a discussion group called “I Don’t Know.” It is made up of young men all of whom were raised in Christian homes, but who now no longer believe in the Christian faith. Most, if not all, would like to regain their faith, but at this point feel they cannot because it seems to them that the evidence for the faith fails the proof test.
But therein lies the problem. There is only one instance that I know of in the Bible in which God submitted to an instant test. That was Gideon and his wet and dry fleeces (Judges 6:36-40). That is the exception. The norm, as I have mentioned elsewhere in these thoughts, is that faith requires us to believe, and act, on the basis of evidence that will only come after we have believed and acted.
Think of Abraham. When did that promised baby come? 25 years after Abraham believed and acted! When did his descendants become a great nation possessing the land of Canaan? 700 years after his death! That example can be multiplied many times in the Bible, and hundreds of thousands of times in the history of the Christian faith. It is in the very nature of the faith to believe the unknowable, trusting that the evidence for the validity of our beliefs and actions will come later.
What I would want to say to those young men is this: it is inescapably clear that human civilization cannot exist without prudent, dependable, responsible men, that is, trustworthy men. But it is also clear that men are by nature imprudent, undependable, and irresponsible, ruled by their desires. What could cause us to live for the long term, to become trustworthy beings? One thing: trust in a trustworthy God. Try him out; admit your own inherent sinfulness; accept what he has done for you in Christ Jesus; live by his Spirit’s power in ways that mirror his character as defined in the Bible; recognize how he provides for the welfare of you and yours, and become a trustworthy man, whose wife and children will one day thank you.
Called To Be Transformed 