For over 30 years now, Peggy and I have taken our cars to Payne’s Service for maintenance and repair. It’s not a flashy place, just a few bays on Indianola Avenue, and I’ve never heard a catchy Payne’s jingle on the radio. So, what keeps us coming back, and why have we referred so many friends there over the years? The people at Payne’s — Jeff, Tiffany, Jeremy, and others — are extremely knowledgeable and very good at what they do. Equally important, their integrity over the years has gained our confidence. They alert us to repairs we’ll need months down the road (which we appreciate), but never have they even attempted to oversell us or push a repair prematurely. Why Payne’s? Their ability and reliability.
Trust doesn’t always come easy: it can be anxiously built, openly vulnerable, and easily shaken. For years, I struggled to entrust myself to Jesus. I saw Him clearly in many believers and wanted faith like theirs, but perhaps in response to what seemed to me as painfully unanswered prayers, I would not trust. But as Paul writes, “if we are faithless, He remains faithful,”1 and, over time, God faithfully showed Himself to be more than trustworthy. I had looked to Him for my desires, but He desired something greater — the healthy, two-way kind of relationship in which each is all about the other. It is in this kind of relationship that we best read Jesus’ promise: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”2 For it is in relationship that His desires become ours and our desires willingly subject themselves to His.
Still, there are times when God seems silent, nonresponsive. We know He is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine”3; we’ve seen too much to seriously think otherwise. Yet this only heightens our discouragement — God is able answer my prayer, so why doesn’t He? Here Jesus calls us to persevere, that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart.”4 Trust our Father to do what is best, when it is best. For He is able, and He is reliable.
“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” — Lamentations 3:25 ESV
Father, “My times are in your hand.”5 I choose to trust You. Lead me in Your path for me, and be my God. In Christ I pray. Amen.
1 2 Timothy 2:13 NASB
2 Mark 11:24 ESV
3 Ephesians 3:20 NIV
4 Luke 18:1 ESV
5 Psalm 31:15 ESV
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Paul Nordman—Author 