A two-story house has caught fire. The family is pouring out the front door to safety when the youngest child, out of fear, loses contact with the others, runs back into the house and upstairs. He appears at a smoking window and begins to cry. His father from below calls out, "Jump, son! I will catch you." The boy cries back, "But I can't see you, Daddy!" To which his father replied, "I know. But I can see you."
There is a great concoction that works together for something remarkable in the Christian life. It is made up of trust, love, and experience of God.
We want to trust God with al or at least with more than we do right now, and we will only trust God if we truly love God. It is so much more likely we will love God when we have truly experienced Him.
Romans 5:8 reminds us that God loves us, and we can know He loves us because Christ died for us while we were still sinners.
When we can go beyond intellectual acceptance and acknowledgement into experience of the love of God, it is much easier to trust Him. Too often my interaction with the love of Jesus is one of intellectual cognition, and I rarely sit and allow my heart to experience the reckless raging fury of God's love for me contained in the cross and Spirit of Christ.
Our love for God the Father will lead us to take the leaps of trust. Even if we do not see what He is doing or where He is. We trust those we love and have experienced in the past. For those we are willing to step out on to nothing, hoping to land on something. There has to be equal parts trust, love, and experience of God's love to really propel the Christian life. This is my hope and prayer.
