Trust in God | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 28, 1875

Trust in God.

NOTHING is more becoming or natural in children than entire confidence in the promise and care of a parent. A father stands in a child’s mind as the embodiment of courage and power; the mother, of love and goodness. The feeling of trust is perfect. There is no anxiety on his part while father has the charge. There is a certainty that all is well. Neither sickness nor trouble diminishes this trust. It grows stronger then. Danger drives the little one to the parent’s arms, and there is a sense of security which is felt nowhere else. Now, “as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” God has said that he is “a father of the fatherless,” and he promises to be our father, if we will be his children.

Will a father let his child perish if he is able to save him? If he asks for bread, will he give him a stone? And can we not confide in our Heavenly Father’s promises, and trust in his ability to care for us! “Yes,” says one professing Christianity; “we can trust in him.” There is no difficulty in trusting in the Lord for food, when our granaries and store-houses are well filled; for health, when sickness comes not near our dwellings; or for prosperity, when the waves of adversity are all quiet. But let misfortune come. Let the greedy flame devour our dwelling and all our substance, and can we trust him to care for us then? Would a kind father pity his child, and care for all his needs? Yes, all his wants would be supplied; and how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good gifts to them that ask him. “Ask, and ye shall receive.” Can we trust in him?

“The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” Can we believe it? We can leave our affairs with the Lord when all goes well; can we when all seems to go wrong? We can rest quietly in the hands of God when in health; can we when sick? What is confidence in God good for, if we have it only when we could get along very well without it, and it leaves us when we most need it? What is a ship good for that cannot be trusted to go to sea, but must be kept in harbor? or a sail that will split in the first gale?

Patience, when there is nothing to bear; courage, when there is no danger; hope, when everything is within our reach—what are all these worth? But such is the trust that some people have in God; and when trial and adversity come, such a trust will be found worthless. We need a trust that will take hold on God in every trying hour, and hold on through whatever may come. Consider that as uncertain, which is felt in time of joy and prosperity. Look upon that only as genuine trust in God that does not fail in hours of darkness, when every earthly resource is cut off. If it fails not in time of trial, we may feel that we have something on which we can depend, and have confidence to say in the language of inspiration, “Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”—Sel.