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Show God Can Be Trusted Lesson for July 31, 1949 , 1 : EVEN if you do nothing else with this lesson, jt will be a good thing to learn by heart some of the Psalms of Trust which have been selected for your study this week. They are far too rich to be treated in one column. Who Can Trust in God? PSALM 34:16-22.) Not every one has a right to trust in God. Those who do not believe in him, do riot love him, work against him, try to break down and corrupt those who do believe in him these need expect nothing at his hand. But there are three classes of persons who are encouraged to put their trust in God. nia ic tVio "rfin. trite," the repen- Dr. Foreman tant, those who sincerely wish to be cut free from their sins these can surely trust in God for forgiveness. One who cannot trust God for forgiveness has no right to trust him for anything any-thing else. Then the "righteous," as the Psalmist calls them, have a right to trust in God. If that word means only the perfectly and altogether go6d people, it would leave all of us out. But in the light of the Bible as a whole, the righteous are those whose dominant desire de-sire is to love and serve God. Their service is imperfect, their love is far from perfect, and no man is without sin. But if you can say with Peter, "Lord, thou know-est know-est that I love thee," then you have a right to trust in God. Also the broken-hearted can safely trust in him. Whoever else may break your heart, God will not. He is the great Mender of hearts. For the little lit-tle sorrows there may be lesser comforters; but the real heartbreaks heart-breaks only God can cure. Why Trust God? PSALM 37 gives one answer: The opposite of trust is worry, and worry never did any good at all. Worry eats into the mind, casts no light, gives no strength, solves no problems, worry makes any trouble worse. Then the writer of Psalm 34 gives another reason for trust: he had tried it. If trust in God were simply a doctrine of theology or a theory of preachers, not many people peo-ple would take it seriously. Trust is really passed on by a kind of contagion from heart to heart. If there are not more people who know what trust means, it is because those who have known' have kept it too much to themselves. It would be a wonderful stimulus to most churches to have a little "cell" of people who would really agree to trust God every day. When to Trust in God NE of Dicken's famous charac-ters charac-ters used to make a great point of being cheerful under the most un-cheerful circumstances. Anybody can be jolly when everything every-thing is lovely, he said. There's no credit in not worrying wljen there's nothing to worry about. Although the writers of the Bible, one c.d.alV trusted in God, not one had an easy life. Read Psalm 46, for example; , it gives a picture of a world much like ours of today, shaken to its foundations, torn by wars, a desolate, deso-late, discouraged world. If it mode sense to trust only under bright skies, religion would have perished long ago. For What Shall We Trust God? RJO ONE PSALM puts the whole truth in one nutshell. If you read Psalm 91, for example, by itself, it-self, it w.ould seem to prove that if you trust in God you will never die a violent death, nor an early one; but too many saints (and indeed our Lord himself) had died early and ' violent deaths, for us to take Psalm 91 in that way. Trusting in God does not mean he will give us long lite. It means he will give us strength to match our days. It does mean he will give ns all we need. It does not mean we shall be shielded from troubles. troub-les. It does mean he will save us from troubles greater than we can bear. It does not mean that in this life we shall be wholly free from burdens or from pain; It does mean we shall have strength in our souls (Ps. 138:3). Which is the greater thing to be a weakling wearied by a straw's weight, or to be one of God's ath-'etes. ath-'etes. able to bear the worst the world can pile on? ,i'S,tUDrl?,hl- bv lhe International Conn--11 (M Rellcious Education on behalf ol A?,l,esA.ant denominations. Released 3V WNu Features. |