Trusting God No Matter What: Surprising Benefits
“Only, may the Lord grant you discretion and understanding, that when he gives you charge over Israel you may keep the law of the Lord your God. Then you will prosper if you are careful to observe the statutes and the rules that the Lord commanded Moses for Israel. Be strong and courageous. Fear not; do not be dismayed” 1 Chronicles 22: 12, 13.
This is a beautiful promise. And it’s echoed in the NT as well. 3 John 2 says “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul”.
It’s worded in different ways in other passages, but the message is the same.
To read the passage for context, click here.
God Looks Good When We Do
We don’t want to be successful just for our own benefit. But it glorifies God when His children are blessed. In the same way a successful child makes the parent look good.
It is said of Joseph and David that God was with them. And they were successful as a result.
When we walk in faith and obedience, God is with us. And if He’s with us, we will be successful.
But the paradox of walking in God’s ways is they look more like they will result in failure than success.
That’s why obedience requires trust.
In fact, if we don’t have discretion and understanding, we will not “keep the law of the Lord your God”(v. 12) for this very reason.
I want to quickly add here that I’m not suggesting we are “under the law” as Christians. But Paul tells us if we walk in the Spirit we will fulfill the law.
Trust God No Matter What, Even Certain Failure
We need wisdom to believe that God will somehow protect us from the threat we’ve exposed ourselves to by walking in His ways.
In order to have the success promised in the passage, we must embrace what looks like certain failure.
Sin deceives us into thinking that if we give in to it, we’ll get our needs met, get what we want or be protected. In essence, sin tells us we’ll succeed if we yield to it.
In fact, if you look at the situation solely from a human perspective, we come to the conclusion that sin is our only option.
Sin Tells You You Have No Other Options
We will never find success or happiness unless we succumb to it.
That’s why obedience to God’s ways requires that we trust Him. Obedience requires discretion and understanding too (v. 12).
Jesus tells us to love our enemies. So, if we do this, we will be successful, according to our passage above.
But that’s not how it looks at the outset.
It seems to our carnal mind that if we pray blessings on and are good to our enemies, they will, in fact, be blessed.
And we will cringe and be disturbed. And they won’t learn their lesson.
So, you can see how obedience to this mandate to love our enemies requires that we trust God. We need to believe He will work it out for our good.
Trust God No Matter What: Sassy Teenagers
Or here’s a personal example. When my kids were rude and disrespectful as teenagers, I had to refrain from reacting in kind.
This made it look like:
- I was encouraging their rude, disrespectful behavior.
- I was allowing them to be a bad example to their siblings.
Now, of course, my kids weren’t my enemies. But if you’ve ever had a rude, sassy teenager get in your face and tell you how it gonna go down, it kinda feels that way in the moment.
So, in order to obey this, I had to trust that God was going to give me wisdom in dealing with my kids.
And ultimately, they would be benefitted by my doing it God’s way rather than my own.
There is a progression in this passage, and it looks something like this: Wisdom> Obedience > Success. And the ultimate goal is God’s glory.
For another post related to Trust God No Matter What: Surprising Benefits, see Being Thankful In all Circumstances and Deliverance.
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