Trust is the basis of any healthy relationship in life. You will only enjoy life as you trust other people. The raw excitement of trust is worth the inevitable experience of being disappointed by people. At least we have lived, because the person who doesn’t trust doesn’t really live. You may end up divorced, you may end up suffering, but at least you have lived because you trusted. Trust is essential to healthy living and a deeper G0d-filled life. Trust is also critical to healthy spiritual living and spiritual transformation. God, who is the ultimate model for all that is healthy, has made trust the central fact of Christianity.

For a righteousness of God by the Gospel is being revealed out of faith as a source back into faith, even as it has been written, and the righteous person shall live out of faith, and shall go on living out of faith. (Romans 1:17)

Trust is also at the core of who we are in Christ and key to becoming the person God intended you to be. Look at Romans 1:17. These Bible verses are saying that there are two ways to be righteous: either be a perfect human or participate in the righteousness that flows between God the Father and God the Son. A human righteousness depending upon perfect obedience exists. The righteousness belonging to God, however, is defined by the quality of relationship between God the Father and God the Son. When you exercise faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, no matter how little faith you can muster, God gives you the righteousness of God in Him.

That is the definition of justification by faith. Our standing before God is not based upon our working to earn it. It is based upon the understanding of how to have a personal relationship with God. God the Father is perfectly willing to treat us the way He treats His Son, if we will do one essential thing — trust His Son. God is not suspicious. He is not full of dysfunctional family quotes. He trusts us instinctively.

This does not mean we trust God at the beginning, and then maintain our place with Him by working like religious fanatics (i.e., become like tomato canners on His production line). We can neither keep the love of God and God’s acceptance by canning a lot of tomatoes or doing repetitive religious works.

And may the God of hope fill you with every variety of joy and peace in the process of believing, unto your abounding in hope by the inherent strength from the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

We need trust for justification, but it is important to remember that we also need trust for emotional maturity.

The richness of our emotional life is directly related to how we trust God and people. As we trust God, we will develop the capacity to see the encouragement He sends into our lives. As we trust God we will experience the positive emotions that the spiritual agape love through the Spirit of God will produce, called the fruit of the Spirit. Christianity is intended to create a rich emotional life. The door to that is trust.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ answered the aching question of His listeners, “How can I find God?”, with a picture of God the Father. It is important to remember that there were only a few references to God as a Father in the Old Testament.  Part of Christ’s great mission was to introduce this loving Father who is God.  “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared Him (John 1:18).”   In the Sermon on the Mount, the three major pictures that Christ introduced were a new picture of our inner life, a new view of the world, and a new view of God as a God Father.

What the Sermon on the Mount told us about Jesus and this deeper God our Father is:

1. The Father is unseen in Heaven  (Matthew 5:4, 6).

2. The Father loves His enemies  (Matthew 5:44, 48).

3. The Father rewards those who are not hypocrites  (Matthew 6:1, 4).

4. The Father knows our needs before we ask  (Matthew 6:8).

5. The Father’s Name needs to be set apart  (Matthew 6:9).

6. The Father’s forgiveness is dependent upon our treatment of others  (Matthew 6:14, 15).

7. The Father takes care of the world and faithless humanity  (Matthew 6:26-30).

8. The Father will give good things to His children who ask Him  (Matthew 7:11).

9. The Father only allows those who do His will to enter the Kingdom of God in Heaven (Matthew 7:21).

Christ was determined to introduce to the hearts of women and men the Person He loved most of all, the Father.  It was the Father who was at the center of the pictures concerning the inner life:  God is the treasure the heart should value;  God is the person the lamp of the inner life should shine upon;  He is the master the disciple should choose in the face of the other masters of this world.  For the new picture of the world, it was the Father of Jesus who is responsible for it.  For it was the Father whose care was consistent even as human beings were not.

Ultimately the answer for the crushing confusion of this world, and the answer to the ocean waves of a guilty conscience that have engulfed the emotions of the listeners, was the new picture of the Father in Heaven.

The wonderful message of Christ in the bible verses of the Sermon on the Mount was that God took care of humanity whether that we believe in God or not. In order to understand this in the emotions, the listeners had to step out of the prison cell of their emotions, and allow their imaginations to embrace Christ’s picture of the world and the love of God in order to feel the sensations of the grace of God.  Then, the choice was theirs to embrace that new picture of the world and the kingdom of God by faith.  Notice the order: picture, entering by faith, then feelings.

The most important series of pictures Christ used was that of the New Father.  Before and during the time of the real Jesus Christ, leading Pharisees argued over whether God should be ever called Abba, or “Dad.”  Their conclusion was that He should not be.  Rabbi real Jesus of Nazareth was the great exception to that.  He called God, “Abba.”  A major part of the Bible verses of his Sermon was giving the listeners new pictures for the imagination all about God.  He presented God himself, the love of God, as a caring, compassionate Father who showing grace to others and wanted to show His children how to have a personal relationship with God.

“Be asking, and it shall be given to you; be seeking, and you shall find; be knocking, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he?If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:7-11)

Christ informed the listeners that Heaven has a God who is God the Father. As people were praying and asking, the grace of God was continually giving; as they were seeking, they were being found by the glory of God.  He was a God who is continually relating and opening the door of the kingdom of God to those who were knocking.  Jesus then explained how God was like a good parent who liked to give good things to his children.  He was not a perverse, dysfunctional parent who enjoyed disappointing the child’s heart and not meeting the young person’s needs.  In fact, He was better than a good human parent in that He was not tainted by human evil.  The grace of God the Father aggressively answered pray and aggressively cared.

In fact, it was one of the major themes of Christ’s Sermon that God’s care came uninvited.

“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  (Matthew 7:44-45)

God the Father cared for humanity whether humanity had any care or concern for Him.  God took care of humanity whether humanity trusted or not.  God knew what we needed before we prayed, so that does not have to be the great preoccupation of prayer.  Heaven did not need a grocery list from us.  But our important duty, as Christ pointed out, was to hallow or set apart the Name of the Father in Heaven. In other words, to have a clear understanding and picture through Bible verses about the One that we are praying to (Matthew 6:9).