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TRUST JESUS TODAY

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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: TRUST (07/21/16)
Do I Even Know You?

This is what I ask myself when someone replies, “I’ll pay you back, I promise.” just after asking for some money. Believing a promise takes trust. Trust depends on knowledge. Knowledge comes from learning and knowing the truth about a person: their past and their present and even their future.

Learning about a person’s past can come from several sources. The person, themselves, may reveal it in what they say, what they don’t say and in the way they say it. Their demeanor, today, may verify what they have said or it may contradict what they have said. So learning about a person’s past may take some careful reflecting on what is said and how it is said. Is it really believable?

Another source for learning about a person’s past in order to get to know the person can come from what others say about the person. Receiving this information takes an amount of trust in who is relating the information to you. In other words, you must already trust what this person says in order to believe and trust what is said about the person you want to learn about. If you don’t trust the first person, would you find it easy to trust the second person?

A second way to learn about a person’s past is to look at what they are today – how they act, how they speak to and about others and their general mannerisms. Even their facial expressions can tell a story although many have learned to “keep a straight face” when telling a “crooked story.” Does their conduct verify their words?

Do they have references who would vouch for them as the kind of person they portray themselves to be? Many in the business world ask for a person to provide references they can check out. Providing a reference is found common from renting a home to getting a job.

Jesus makes some promises that are hard to believe without knowing anything about Jesus and who he is. Therefore, how can a person believe in or trust in Jesus without knowing anything about him. A Bible story in Acts 8:25-40 illustrates this for us.

The Ethiopian eunuch trusted the Bible although he did not understand parts of it. Philip was able to start with what he trusted and where he had been reading and tell him about Jesus. During the time they were riding together Philip may have had time to relate several promises that related to Jesus and who he was. The one evident promise was the forgiveness of his sin. The eunuch showed his understanding of this promise when in verse 36 the eunuch said, “Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?” The eunuch believed and trusted Jesus enough to know that Jesus would forgive his sin if he was baptized. This has been the promise to everyone who believed and trusted Jesus since Peter first told the 3,000 people (see Acts 2:38) to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Do you know and trust Jesus enough to yield yourself to baptism for the forgiveness of your sin so you can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit?
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Lillian Rhoades 
08/01/16
Great job staying on topic. I like how you give Biblical examples of trust to illustrate your points.

I noticed that you were repetitive in the use of "person." In one paragraph, person was used seven times. There were weak areas in sentence structure and punctuation. Restructuring your sentences will make your points easier to follow and eliminate unnecessary words. For example, to tighten the sentence and eliminate extra words, you might construct one sentence as: "Receiving this information requires trusting in who is relating the information to you. If you don't trust the character witness for the one you want to learn about, then the individual he is speaking up for may be hard to trust as well." There may be other ways to tighten the sentence, but in the example, I have eliminated words that add little to the dialogue, and substituted words to avoid repetition.

I use the Thesaurus quite often to avoid duplication. Jan Ackerman has loads of information on the Faithwriter forum about sentence structure, etc.

Write on!

Lillian Rhoades 
08/01/16
I, too, often fall prey to repetition. After reading over my comments, I noticed that I used eliminate three times. :-) I could have used "removed." Good writing is a challenge and always can be improved, even for the more experienced writer.