Roberta, the high school girl whose parents said, “you can’t go to church; no, you cannot be baptized,” held out faithfully for two years and when she turned eighteen, became a Christian.  We hear from her every Christmas.  She writes about the faithful church involvement of her own children now.

Mike Claypool, I don’t know.  I appeal to you to pray for him.  This I know, whether he recovers from leukemia or not, there is a hospital full of people who have heard the gospel preached at his bedside because of his nature and his character.

And Paul? Well, Paul spent at least two years under Roman house arrest.  Do you know what the book of Philippians says?  The entire palace guard heard the gospel.  The last verse in Acts says, “Paul continued to preach without hindrance.”

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You would think that if you were doing the right things for God, everything would turn out right.

You work hard at being a believer and trying to live out your faith at work and you end up getting laid off or fired.  You do your very best to be a Christian husband or wife.  You do your very best to live your home life the way you think it ought to be lived and the next thing you know, there’s nothing but chaos.  Your children rebel or your spouse decides to leave.  You spend your life working in a church doing everything you can to be faithful and do the things that God wants you to do and the next thing you know, you’re battling cancer or somebody you love is.  You go to school and you do the very best you can to be a faithful witness to your friends and it seems like everything around you falls apart and nobody wants to pay any attention to your witness.

You would think that if you did the right things for God, things would turn our right.

They do.  It just depends on how you define right.  Because God in his faithfulness, always, always has things turn out right.  It doesn’t always feel like it, does it?  There are those moments in your life when it feels like all hell has broken loose and you’re wondering what in the world is going on.  I just have one word for you: TRUST! Because that’s all you have.  You simply trust him because he knows things you don’t know.  He knows the future, you don’t.  He knows the heart and you don’t. When the whole world crumbles around you, you don’t have any alternatives except to TRUST him.  Does it make the cancer go away?  NO!  Does it mean that all your friends are going be the kind of people you think they ought to be?  NO!  Does it mean that everything is going go right according to the world standards? NO! What it means is this.  The one person who can make a difference is the one you’re counting on.

Messed up your life?  Think you have made such a mess of it that God can’t do anything with it?  TRUST him!  He can fix it.  Need to be redeemed?  Do you need to have your life turned around, your sin forgiven?  And yet, when you read Scripture and he says, “Believe in me, repent, be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus,” that makes no sense to you?  TRUST him!  He knows what he’s doing.  When things don’t make sense, you have one and only one response. TRUST him!

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Chuck Sackett is Preaching Minister at Madison Park Christian Church, Quincy, IL, and Professor of Preaching at Lincoln Christian Seminary, Lincoln, IL.