When You Trust Jesus

The Gospel, if it is about anything, is about Jesus transforming your life. During His earthly ministry, Jesus was all the time changing people. He changed a Roman tax collector and a Zealot into friends. He changed a prostitute into a servant. He changed Peter, a pompous boaster, into the leader of the fledgling church. He changed Christian-hunter Saul into world-evangelizing, empire-challenging Paul.

The common factor of all these lives changed by Jesus is not what they were before they met Him, but what happened when they did. And what happened was that they all began to act more like Jesus. His nature, His character, and even His actions came to dominate their very lives.

To them the Gospel was more than just something to be affirmed in church on Sunday. The Gospel was what introduced them to Jesus, and Jesus is what - or rather, Who - changed their lives. Changed them. Transformed them. Made them different from what they were before - radically different!

The world, when it takes time to be honest with the church - and by "the world," I mean those outside the church, those who have never truly met Jesus - has some great questions to ask the church and its people who claim to have met Jesus, claim even to know Him. One of the greatest of the world's questions is this one: "Why don't Christians act more like Jesus?"

The reason I say it's a great question is that it's very similar to one Jesus Himself posed to His sometimes-avid, sometimes-aloof followers of two millennia ago: "Why do you say to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' but do not do what I say?"

I think the answer to both questions is the same: we don't trust Him. Not really, not with the everyday things of this life where we live. Oh, there are plenty of people who trust Him with the sweet by and by. But what about the sour here and now?

Trusting Jesus in the here and now means saying to Him, "Jesus, I want You to be in my whole life. I want You to be in all of my living. Please transform every aspect of my life. Please, Lord, I want you to show what to do and how to do it."

And then learn to listen and obey.

And so the cure to the problem of not acting like Jesus, of not having a transformed life, is this. Trust Jesus. Trust Him in everything and with everything. Trust Him in your job. Trust Him in your marriage. Trust Him with that co-worker who's always on your case. Trust Him with your money. Trust Him with your health. Actively, consciously, in trusting prayer, bring all these aspects of your daily life to Him.

Then, see how He changes you, transforms you and remakes you . . .

. . . when you trust Jesus.