Trusting in man

You have lost your job; you want to get married; you have been taken ill; you have been given notice to quit; you can’t have children; these are some of the situations in which one of you may find himself. What should you do? There are two possibilities before you; to put your trust in man or to put your trust in God.

If you trust in man, you will do what men will tell you to do in order to come out of your distress, and thus, according to the circumstances, you will pay a backhander, you will give presents to someone, you will court someone’s favour, you will take the medicines that the doctor will prescribe for you, etc. and you will expect to receive your deliverance from man because you will resort to him. By so doing you will not experience at all the peace of God, nor His joy, and you will have no fellowship with Him because you will make yourself an enemy of God.

However, if you trust with all your heart in God things will be completely different, because you will experience a great peace and joy in your heart and you will expect to receive in a glorious way what you need and desire from Him. You will pray, you will fast, you will be reviled and discouraged by both unbelievers and believers, but you will have plenty of joy and peace while you wait for the deliverance and eventually God will reward your faith and your steadfastness and will show to everybody that the goodness He shows towards those who fear Him and trust in Him with all their heart is really great. And you will be able to proclaim that the Lord heard your prayer and He will be highly glorified through you.

I urge you to choose the second way, because it is the best way, it is the way God commands us to follow. Of course, it is a way full of pains and afflictions and sometimes you need to wait on God for a long time, but it is also a way on which you can experience the powerful and great deliverances of God, which astonish everybody.

I conclude this exhortation of mine with the following words of the prophet Jeremiah, which show the difference existing between those who trust in man and those who trust in the Lord: “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit” (Jeremiah 17:5-8).

Brothers, things are just as Jeremiah said so long ago; therefore, have faith in God, for He delights in those who rely on Him alone, I say it again, on Him alone. But God not only delights in them, but also delivers them from all kinds of distresses. Remember that He is the Almighty.

Back