If you speak prophetically (and accurately) about your own death, as well as your resurrection, are you worthy to be trusted?
If you repeatedly exhibit God’s miraculous powers over a span of three and a half years, are you worthy to be trusted?
If, as you are dying by crucifixion on a cross, the afternoon sun darkens, the earth quakes, and the enormous, thick, tapestry-like veil to the Holy of Holies is ripped in two from top to bottom, would you say heaven and earth are witness that you are God’s sinless Son and worthy to be trusted?
If your three-and-a-half-year public ministry proves over and over again that you didn’t come to be served (like every other god known to man) but to serve, are you worthy to be trusted?
If, over two millennia, you redeem hundreds of millions of people worldwide, transforming their lives to become like yours, are you worthy to be trusted?
If twelve guys become your intimate allies over the entire three-and-a-half years of your public ministry, watching you, hearing you, living side by side with you, then go on to give the rest of their lives to faithfully nurturing your church, are you worthy to be trusted?
At the end of Jesus’ public ministry, he uses the sickness and death of his friend Lazarus as one more opportunity for his disciples to see God’s power and to learn to trust in him! They didn’t yet trust! They still questioned his decisions, his wisdom, his relationship with his Father! When he finally decides to go to Bethany, one of his guys says basically: ‘Well, let’s get it over with and die with him.’ Such trust!
In addition to the proofs of his being deserving of our trust, we have 2000 years of Church witnesses urging us to abandon ourselves, in total trust, to him, to see our physical lives as but brief moments in time, and our spiritual lives as having no end – an eternity in his presence, face to face with him! We sing: “We serve a Risen Savior!” “He Lives!” In the nine months remaining in 2024, how will we cultivate a more vibrant trust, a grittier trust, an intrepid trust? How might we engage our hands and our feet and our love and our compassion and all those gifts we’ve received, to demonstrate this ever-growing trust in the one who has proven, and continues to prove, himself worthy? If we consider this for a few minutes, I believe the Holy Spirit will begin to uncover desires he’s planted in us that we haven’t yet detected. I wonder what He has up his sleeve for me? For you? PD
