“Are You Going to Trust the God Who Saves You?”

As I walk down the streets of South Korea on my way to work I notice something…

Even though I am walking down the streets of a city in a distant country from home,
Even though I still haven’t travelled that far out of my own neighborhood yet and can easily get lost…

I have already found myself being able to walk to work without having to look up much from the street. Incredible.
How is it that although I am still so new to this country that I get lost in a grocery store that I can already be disregarding what is in my typical path?

Repetition.
If you think about it, there is so much information that passes by our eyes each and every day, while our brain can store all of it, if it becomes a repetitive pattern there is less of a need to be consistently recording the data. What purpose does it serve? Better to eventually tune it out.


I have a confession to make.
And after everything that I’ve seen God do in my life in the past months, I feel as if I should have understood this already to begin with. That as soon as I saw the problem I could rest easy, because God had already shown me that he would provide.
When I first started making plans to come to Korea, there were at least two times that I found out that I would need an additional $200 to make the arrangements to get over here (getting paperwork settled and such). The first time I needed the money I was worried like crazy as to where the money was going to come from. Yet, just fifteen minutes after the need was presented, I was shown where $200 more would be coming from. “Awesome!” I thought. I gave a quick praise to God for providing for my need.
Just a week or so later, another incident occurred and I found out I would need still another $200 to make preparations to come to Korea. $200 more?!?! How will this come?! I was nervous. I was scared. …Yet fifteen minutes later I was shown how God had provided the additional $200 needed. I was thrilled! I was ecstatic! I realized that God was going to take care of this the whole way through! And then I realized…


God…will…take…care…of…this…the…whole…way…through…


I really had to take the time to say that slowly. I realized that in my walk I had grown accustomed to saying, “God will provide.” The most powerful time I remember being reminded of this point was when a teacher pointed out that one of the themes of Exodus 15-17 is, “Are you going to trust the God who saves you?”

Did I? Did I truly live like I trusted God? “Of course I am!” I would proudly say. “God will provide!” I would say (while I nervously glanced over my shoulder, wondering how I would get this lesson made…). “God will provide!” I would shout (while I bit my nails wondering how I would eat…). “God will provide!” (I would proclaim) while I started to really wonder how things were going to work… “God will provide!” (I would yell) while I was now desperately trying to figure out when will it all end??… (“God will provide.”) I murmured out of habit while I was too busy trying to get things to work myself… (“God will provide.”) I hurriedly whispered as I continued to mount plans as defensives against the powers staggering against me… (“ “)…I was too busy caught up trying to take care of myself…

As I busy myself with slapping mortar on another brick, trying to patch up yet another hole in a shoddy wall, a faint whisper catches my ear as the enemy fire pauses for a moment…

are you going to trust the God who saves you?

My hand pauses. The whisper pulls up a memory of times long ago. I remember the class, and I think back to the story. I think back to the history of God and His people, how He has always taken care of them. I think of how many times I could not possibly imagine how I would get through it, yet God somehow provided. Sometimes even more than I could have possibly asked for. I don’t even notice as the brick begins to slip out of my hand as I remember how God has brought me this far to Korea and found a way to get my passport back not just on time but early when the consulate didn’t do interviews that day, and with only 3 days to get it back to me for a process that took 2 days to file…

I remember the cross, and how he had already anticipated my greatest need of all… the whisper again…

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness… (2 Pe 1:3)

…the brick falls out of my hand. The canons fire again, this time in more earnest… The heavy artillery is coming in now. The enemy has seen the cracks in my defense and is ready to smash it down. The whistles grow steadily louder as they rocket ever closer to my frail position behind such a clumsy wall…

…but I don’t hear them. My thoughts are lost in the words of Paul…”No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Ro 8:37-39)

I look at my silly excuse for a wall and chuckle. I look up at the heavy firepower coming in, and tears roll down my face. But they’re not tears of fear from the mortar shells. They’re mixed tears…

They’re tears of shame because I had forgotten one of the most important things in my Christian walk:
That although I may have gotten myself into a mess with finances, that I may lose patience with another or that I may falter in my walk…I had forgotten that nothing…absolutely nothing…

can separate me from God’s love…

What a shame! That I had forgotten the one thing that can give me the most joy in life! But the tears aren’t just tears of shame.

They’re tears of joy as well. Why? It’s simple! Because nothing can separate me from the love of God! That He loves me in my foolishness now just as much as he loved me when he sent Jesus to the cross. That even though the attack is closing in on me, what harm can it do? The enemy can take my money. The enemy can take my health. The enemy can make me feel so alone…

But no matter how heavy the firepower the enemy uses, it will never penetrate God’s love for me.

It is so easy to get caught up in the worries of this world, and forget about trusting the God who saves me. Repetition is so hard to break free from. Paul said it best. “Oh wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God, for Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)


As I walked to work the other day, I happened to break from looking straight ahead and I looked to the side and I noticed something new…

A tree is turning colors…