“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21, AMP)

Genuine saving faith possesses a quality that transcends religious posturing. In Matthew 7:21-23, we encounter from Jesus’ perspective, unsaved religious people who do certain things like prophesy (preach), drive out demons and perform “miracles.” Looking into His future Church, Jesus warned of religious charlatans who seemed to have the words and actions of authentic faith but lacked one essential ingredient — personal TRUST. Trusting in what is seen can be difficult. Trusting in an unseen God is counterintuitive. To develop trust, God begins by using visible things. In my story, God used my Father. 

My dad was a heavy equipment operator for as long as I can remember. He ran bulldozers, motor graders, tournapulls and anything that moved dirt. When I was quite young, he taught me to drive a bulldozer. I knew how to raise and lower the blade but never got the hang of dirt leveling. One day he decided to use his company’s bulldozer and motor grader to fix the road around the pond that belonged to the owner of the company he worked for. He got too close to a big hole next to the road and got the bulldozer stuck, which is not an easy task! It was sitting at a 45-degree angle. He hooked the motor grader to the bulldozer and had me sit on that dozer, engage the clutch and steer it while he pulled us out of the hole. I had to put my feet on the dash to keep from falling off the seat! I was scared, and my mom was terrified, but after saying “her piece” she watched while the dozer came out of the hole. All I wanted to do was get off, but my dad made me take it down to a clearing and turn it around and bring it back to where he and mom were. By the time I brought it back I had calmed down. He told me I could get off if I wanted to. Then he told me the reason I had to stay on it until I turned it around was because he didn’t want me to be scared the “last time” I was on a bulldozer. It turned out that this would not be my last time on a dozer! Dad had planted a seed. 

My dad had another unique ability. He wasn’t bothered by household electric current. In fact, one time he was holding bare wires with 220 volts, and it didn’t bother him. As he got older, he could barely feel the current. Once when I was 15, he was holding two wires and told me to touch him, but I didn’t want to. He asked me if he had ever told me to do something that hurt me. He had not. I touched his shoulder and felt nothing. He told me to move my hand closer to his hand. When I got just below his elbow I could feel a light tingle. True to his words, dad didn’t let me get hurt, but he taught me to trust his judgement. 

The French tight rope walker, Charles Blondin, became famous all over the world for his amazing feats at such places as Niagara Falls. He once pushed a wheelbarrow, across the falls, while blindfolded. When he returned from the other side, he then asked the crowd if they believed he could do it with a person in the wheelbarrow. Everyone said they believed he could cross the falls, but no one got in the wheelbarrow. Blondin’s challenge clearly defines the difference between a living faith versus mere mental assent. My dad, in a very real way, planted the seeds for a genuine trusting faith by challenging me much like Blondin challenged his audience. I eventually “got in the wheelbarrow” and learned to trust him. And, eventually, in a counterintuitive way, I learned to trust God even when things seemed like He wasn’t in control.

Last year during a thunderstorm our out-building caught fire due to a lightning strike. We called 911 and did what we could with the extinguisher and water hose, until the fire department arrived. But the heavy winds pushed the flames past the building damaging another small building nearby. The heat also damaged the vinyl siding on part of the back of our house. The building and everything in it were destroyed. With that fire came lots of mixed emotions. It was the greatest material loss we had ever experienced. Looking back, there seemed to be weeks and even months of crushing stress. My wife and I both trust Christ. Why would He let this happen? But God was using the pressure and stress of this loss to deepen our trust in Him.  

I was reminded during this season that Jesus used a stressful situation to build Peter’s trust. Jesus had sent His disciples on ahead in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee at night, while He stayed behind to pray. These veteran fishermen began to fight the waves as the winds blew against them. It was dark, around three in the morning. When things seemed hopeless, they saw Jesus coming to them walking on the water. At first, they thought He was a ghost. A hopeless terror gripped these men. Their faith withered. But then Jesus identified Himself. Peter said, “if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water.” (Matthew 14:28) What happened next became one of Peter’s great faith-building moments. HE ACTUALLY WALKED ON WATER just as his Lord was doing! His 10 seconds of fame were short-lived, for as soon as he took his eyes off Christ and focused back on the storm, he sank like a corpse. Then in one last grasp of desperation, he reached out to Jesus and reestablished his supernatural footing and was rescued. 

Jesus, like my dad, was inviting my wife and me to trust Him in the middle of a storm. He was doing this to build something far more lasting than lawn tractors, garden tools and weed eaters. He was teaching us to trust Him and grow in our relationship with Him. In our first focus verses, Jesus revealed that phony believers built their religion on showy performance. But in the next verse, Matthew 7:24, Jesus reveals the secret of genuine, counterintuitive, trusting faith: “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice will be like a man who built his house on the rock … .”

Jot down the names of individuals who have helped you learn trust on a human level.

How is genuine trust in Christ (versus religious performance), foundational to flourishing in Christ’s Kingdom?