TRUST
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
—Jas. 5:7
6917 Trust And OK
I rather like the small boy’s version of the hymn, “Trust and Obey,” when he said that at Sunday school they had been singing “Trust and O. K.” Good! Everything must be O. K. if the life has been committed to His precious keeping. There is no other way.
—Expositor
6918 Middle Verse Of Bible
This text is found in a Psalm which is signalized by the fact that it contains the middle verse of the Bible, namely, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man” (Ps. 118:9).
6919 Moody’s Favorite Verse
Dwight L. Moody’s favorite verse was Isaiah 12:2: “I will trust, and not be afraid.” He used to say: “You can travel first-class or second-class to heaven. Second class is, “What time I am afraid, I will trust.” First class is, “I will trust, and not be afraid.”” That is the better way. Why not buy a first-class ticket? (Ps 56:3).
6920 Both Awake?
Bishop Bashford, in one of his Episcopal tours in China, was one night compelled to sleep outdoors, under the trees, the hotel keeper warning him about marauders. Being watchful and wakeful awhile, he thought of the words of the Psalmist, and then said to the Lord, “There is no use both of us being awake,” so he slept the sleep of the just.
6921 Sultan Was Pleased
A poor woman, in an Eastern city, made complaint to the Sultan that while she slept her all was taken by thieves. “Wherefore did you sleep?” asked the Sultan. “My Lord,” was the response, “I slept because I thought you were ever awake.”
The Sultan, pleased with her simple faith in his care of his people, restored to her more than she had lost. How calmly may the Christian both lie down and sleep, knowing that his God is ever guarding him, for He slumbers not, neither is weary of watching.
—A. Bernard Webber
6922 Her Turn To Sleep In Middle
A father asked one of his three little girls who had just gone to bed if she had said her prayers. She said that she had not. He asked her if she were not afraid to go to bed without having prayed. She answered, “Not tonight, for it is my turn to sleep in the middle.”
When telling that story a generation ago, Dr. John Robertson of Scotland said, “Before God, I know that feeling. When I was in the multitude I did not have to lean upon God. A great kirk I had about me, great ecclesiastical authorities about me, and I was an ecclesiastically big man myself. I was moderator of the Metropolitan Presbytery of the city of Edinburgh, and I did not feel a great need to lean upon God. I felt that I could do somehow without prayer, for I was in the middle. But now I need to cry to God, for I am no longer in the middle. I need to wait upon Him. I can’t do without the Lord Jesus.”
—Donald Grey Barnhouse
6923 Lincoln’s Bible
Joseph R. Sizoo, one-time pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington which Abraham Lincoln often attended, says he will never forget the day he held in his hands for the first time the Bible of Abraham Lincoln. It was the Bible from which Lincoln’s mother had read to him as a child. She had taught him to commit to memory many of its passages. It was the only possession Lincoln carried from Pigeon Creek to the Sangamon River. And book in my hand, I wondered where it would fall open. It opened to a page which was thumbmarked and which he must have read many times. It was the thirty-seventh Psalm, “Fret not thyself because of evildoers. … Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him” (Ps. 37:1, 7).
—James Hastings
6924 Cromwell’s Secretary
Oliver Cromwell’s secretary was dispatched to the continent on some important business. He stayed one night at a seaport town, and tossed on his bed, unable to sleep.
According to an old custom, a servant slept in his room, and on this occasion slept soundly enough. The secretary at length awakened the man who asked how it was that his master could not rest.
“I am so afraid something will go wrong with the embassage,” was the reply.
“Master,” said the valet, “may I ask a question or two?”
“To be sure.”
“Did God rule the world before we were born?”
“Most assuredly He did.”
“And will He rule it after we are dead?”
“Certainly He will.”
“Then, master, why not let Him rule the present, too?”
The secretary’s faith was stirred, peace was the result, and in a few minutes both he and his servant were in sound sleep.
—Gleanings
6925 Hudson Taylor’s Discovery
On June 25, 1865, James Hudson Taylor at thirty-three came to the great crisis of his life. The locale was Brighton beach on the south coast of England. There on a quiet Sunday morning he took a step of faith in response to a simple spiritual principle he had just discovered. He was surprised that this truth had so long eluded him. “If we are obeying the Lord, the responsibility rests with him, not with us!” Months of struggle were over, and the way ahead was clear. To obey the Scriptures and trust God to be faithful to his pledged Word was not rash.
Throwing caution and tradition to the winds, Hudson Taylor formed the China Inland Mission.
—Arthur F. Glasser
6926 Place No Confidence In Man
The king of Italy and the king of Bohemia promised John Huss safe transport and safe custody. They broke their promises, however, and Huss was martyred. Thomas Wentworth carried a document signed by King Charles I which read, “Upon the word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honour, or fortune.” Shortly afterwards, however, his death warrant was signed by the same monarch. “Put not your trust in princes,” were his last words.
“It is better to trust in the Lord” than in anyone or anything else.
—Selected
6927 Trusting Unproved Swords
There was a British regiment once ordered to charge a body of French cuirassiers. The trumpets sounded, and away they went boldly at them; but not to victory. They broke like a wave that launches itself against a rock. They were sacrificed to a trader’s fraud. Forged not of truest steel, but worthless metal, their swords bent double at the first stroke.
What could human strength of the most gallant bravery do against such odds? They were slaughtered like sheep on field. And ever since I read that tragedy I have thought I would not go to battle unless my sword was proved.
—Dr. Guthrie
6928 God Is Too Wise To …
At the 1951 session of the Southern Baptist Convention in San Francisco, M. T. Rankin led a prayer of thanksgiving for the life of martyred missionary William Wallace. The prayer included this sentence, rich in illustrating value, “God is too wise to make a mistake, too good to do evil.”
6929 Putting Down Whole Weight
To celebrate an old man’s seventy-fifth birthday, an aviation enthusiast offered to take him for a plane ride over the little West Virginia town where he spent all his life. The old man accepted the offer. Back on the ground, after circling over the town twenty minutes, his friend asked, “Were you scared, Uncle Dudley?” “No-o-o,” was the hesitant answer. “But I never did put my full weight down.”
6930 Mistrusting Own Feet
A man of Cheng was about to buy a pair of shoes. He measured the length of his feet but forgot to take the measurement with him when he went to the market place. “I must go back and get my measurement,” he said to the shoe man when he discovered his oversight and forthwith went back home. When he returned to the market, the market had already closed. “Why didn’t you try the shoes with your feet?” someone asked him. “I’d rather trust my measurement than my feet,” was his reply.
—Chinese Humor
6931 Anderson Who?
A new resident of Greenwich, Conn., where Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson has a home, asked the Secretary, a friend of many years, if he could use his name as a credit reference. Anderson promptly gave his permission. But the newcomer’s wife drew a complete blank when she gave Anderson’s name to the credit manager of a Greenwich store.
“Who is he?” asked the credit man.
“Secretary of the Treasury,” said the lady.
The credit manager still didn’t unfreeze, and she added, “Mr. Anderson is also a director of the Greenwich Trust Company.”
“Oh, that’s different,” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place!”
—Washington Post
6932 Reinsurance Cartel
One of the most influential yet least-known groups of international interests is the reinsurance cartel, the business in which a direct insurance company safeguards itself against huge single losses by dividing large policies among reinsurance companies which in turn split them up among similar firms and so on ad infinitum. For instance, in Paris, the payment of an $8,000,000 fire insurance claim to a department store revealed that the risk had been distributed among some 400 companies in more than 50 countries.
—Selected
6933 The God Who Is Enough
’Tis far, far better to let Him choose
The way that we should take;
If only we leave our lives to Him
He will guide without mistake
We, in our blindness, would never choose
A pathway dark and rough,
And so we should ever find in Him,
“The God Who Is Enough.”
6934 John Franklin’s Last Journey
Sir John Franklin lived an exciting life of adventure in the British Navy, which took him to many parts of the world. As a signal midshipman in the Battle of Trafalgar, he transmitted the memorable message from the flagship, “England expects every man to do his duty.” He was a devout Christian and found great strength in reading the Bible. His men said they would rather have him hold a service than most ministers.
In 1845 he was put in command of two ships to look for a passage across the polar seas. The last communication from them came through their contact with a whaling ship in Baffin Bay.
Many expeditions were made in the next ten years to learn the fate of Sir John Franklin’s ships. Pieces of equipment found on beaches told of shipwreck in the icy seas. One of the books was Sir John Franklin’s Bible with the following verses underlined: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (Psalm 139:9, 10). There was also a book of devotions with a page turned down at the verse: “Fear not … When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee” (Isa. 43:1, 2).
—Free Methodist
6935 Hope is Yit Good
On November 18, 1559, when Protestantism in Scotland had reached its lowest ebb, Scottish Reformer John Knox wrote two letters, one to Sir William Cecil, secretary of Queen Elizabeth, and the other to Mrs. Anna Lock of London. In the letter to Cecil he set forth most accurately the state of affairs in Scotland, and pointed out that to human eyes disaster stared at the Protestants around every corner. But to Mrs. Lock he had the following to say:
“Lest that the rumors of our trubles truble you above measure, dear Sister, I thought good in these few words to signifie unto you, that our esperance [hope] is yit good in our God, that He, for his great name’s sake, will give such success to this interprise, as nather sall these whome he hath appointed to sigh in this be utterlie confounded; neither yet that our enemies sall have occasion to blaspheme his veritie, nor yet triumph over us in the ende.”
—Christianity Today
6936 Message From The Robins
A Canadian pastor friend, in a period of great despondency, received the help he needed from reading the following delightful, true incident. The local parks commission had been ordered to remove the trees from a certain street which was to be widened. As they were about to begin, the foreman and his men noticed a robin’s nest in one of the trees and the mother robin sitting on the nest. The foreman ordered the men to leave the tree until later.
Returning, they found the nest occupied by little wide-mouthed robins. Again they left the tree. When they returned at a later date they found the nest empty. The family had grown and flown away. But something at the bottom of the nest caught the eye of one of the workmen—a soiled, little white card. When he had separated it from the mud and sticks, he found that it was a small Sunday school card and on it the words, “We trust in the Lord our God”
—Albert Mygatt
6937 Epigram On Trust
• The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.
• A radio announcer once asked Leo Durocher, manager of the New York Giants, “Barring the unforeseen, Leo, will your club get the pennant?” Back came Durocher’s reply, “There ain’t gonna be no unforeseen.”
See also: Belief ; Salvation-Assurance .