Loving Trust

I have the privilege to be able to help with a program for kids called AWANA. Those letters stand for, "Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed", which comes from 2 Timothy 2:15, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."

AWANA is held on Wednesday nights, and tonight I was working with a kid on scripture memorization. We had come to a section in his club book where he needed to explain to me what it meant to trust Christ. At this point he proceeded to tell me, in a kids way, what that meant. "Oh, yeah! We need to, uh, believe in him, and, and to love him."

So good. :-)

Yeah, he was a young boy. One of the ninety percent with short attention spans, and an extremely flittery, (new word?) or maybe you'd say antsy temperament. So, part of his answer was probably just default response. You know how the saying goes, Jesus is the right answer half of the time. So he didn't exactly break any new ground with his answer.

Still though. The thought that to trust in Christ means that we love him.

I don't need to love someone to trust them. I trust the online business of Amazon to send me what I order. Yet trust and love build together, or more accurately, they benefit from each other. Love can certainly look past mistrust, though mistrust is certainly detrimental. In the same way, trust can look past apathy, but it isn't helped any by apathy though.

Applied to faith though, if I believe in Christ and trust him, but have not love, then what good is it? It's empty. How could I say that I believed in it without loving it? That doesn't even make sense. The reason to believe is equal amounts of love, trust, and reason, and without just one of those, it becomes pointless and hollow.

I guess what I'm getting at is the strength of love and trust together. That as we believe, we trust. And we trust in our reason for believing what's true. And we love the truth. Except, I want to turn it around. I love the truth. And I believe in the reason that proclaims truth. And as I believe, I begin to trust. You know what's so great? After I begin to trust, I fall in love again.

To trust in Christ means that we believe in him. And that we love him.

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