Throughout the Bible, God seems to be saying one thing over and over again to people: Will you trust me?
This is an important question. We know that on the other side of our trust is a God who has a great reservoir of fulfilled promises. Trusting God means believing God’s Word. You believe then that God is for you; he is looking after you and that he will care for you not only now but also throughout all eternity. Though life is hard, and fraught with difficulties, God promises to see us through, cheer us along the way, and lead us to a place where everything sad becomes untrue.
He says, “Will you trust me?”
How do we know that people have trusted him? We know because of how they have lived. We could say our trust leaves footprints in our lives. There demonstrate this trust shining forth in our lives.
We see these footprints in the life of the Israelites as they trusted God’s Word and confidently applied the blood of the lamb to their doorposts in Exodus. The destroyer did not touch them, and they were led out over the Red Sea on dry land. We also see it in the trust of Ruth as she clung to the arm of Naomi. With nothing in this world, she trusted in God and returned to Bethlehem. We see it in the life of Daniel as he was thrown into the lion’s den,
“Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.” (Daniel 6:23)
And of course we see it in the life of Abraham. His life is all about going. God calls him to follow him, and he goes. His trust leaves footprints. God called him to leave his country and to go to a place. He promises him an inheritance and vows to bless him beyond what he could imagine. “And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live it he land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise” (Heb. 11:8-9). Faith left footprints across the Arabian wilderness. Abraham trusted and treasured the most high God.
It is important to remember that these footprints of faith are not merely for us to look at and observe. Abraham (and others) are not simply enshrined in a museum of biblical history for us to marvel at and then slide back into our apathetic, compartmentalized, comfortable, lazy-boy Christianity. The whole point of showing us the “hall of faith” in Hebrews 11 is to remind us that this is what people like us do. If we have come to trust in Christ, then we are those who presently live in such a way that people have not other explanation other than to say, “He knows the living God.” Instead of being compartmentalized, our trust in God seeps into every area of our lives. It affects how we think, laugh, love, dream, and talk. It affects how we spend our time and our money. It has implications on everything we think and do. If we, like Abraham, are “looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10) then we will be calibrated by a completely different reality.
One of the things I love about studying the life of Abraham is his effect on me. Here is a guy who lived several thousand years ago. Yet he prods me along with whispers of faithfulness, and he also urges me to run faster with his footprints of trust. The narratives of his faith still benefit us.
Are you living in such a way that those around you and those who come after you can tell that you trust and treasure God? Trust leaves footprints. It always has.
