CHAPTER ONE
Is It A Matter of Trust?
It’s a beautiful morning out there. As I get ready to begin my day, a gentle breeze makes its way through my window. No birds are singing today, though. Perhaps because it’s cloudy outside, or could it be that they sense something wrong in the air? Someone told me once that animals can sense the presence of evil. Dogs bark, and wolves howl when darkness falls. Birds don’t sing at night, but I wonder why they’re not singing today. It’s just the perfect day.
Yesterday it was a different story, though. Around six in the evening, as I got prepared to have supper, a woman came running toward the house. It was our neighbor, from two houses down. We let her in, but she was in shock, trying to gasp for air. No words were needed to understand that there was something bad going on out on the street. She run inside the house and threw herself on the floor, behind the couch.
Not being able to speak, we had no idea what was wrong with her, but soon we were going to find out. Mom, Dad, and one of my brothers were at the house. The first shots were fired, so my brother came out of his room running and yelling, “Abajo! Abajo!” Which means: “Get down!” Immediately we got down on the floor with our neighbor. We all sought shelter behind the couch as my heart began to beat rapidly. I could feel it in my veins; I could feel it in my head; I could feel it in every breath that I took: One-two; one-two; one-two. The voice of fear in my heart.
I was concerned about my parents. They’re in their 70s, and both of them are hypertensive. I looked at the woman, and she was shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t even know her name, but it wasn’t the right moment to ask. More shots were fired out on the street, and the woman just covered her head as she cried. I told her that I was going to call the police, but she managed to mumble a few words. She said that she had already called them.
That doesn’t mean anything in this country, though. You call 911, but they don’t always make it in time. There’s so much crime going on around here that they’re not able to handle it all. The front door was wide open, so that was not a good thing. We had no idea who was doing the shooting, or how close they were. All we knew was that we were in great danger.
Someone needed to close the door, so my brother began to crawl on the floor, risking his own life, but he got there in a matter of seconds. Not that it mattered anyway. In this country, if someone wants to kill you, doors are not an obstacle. You get killed “horror movie style.”
As for me, I needed to trust God and know that everything was going to be okay. My Faith was being tested again as my human nature was eager to come out and get in the way. This country is full of horrendous stories and unspeakable crimes. I live in El Salvador, one of the most violent nations in the world, so I should already be used to all the killing that goes on around me, but I guess that there are things that you can never get used to.
When you are a Christian, and you’re faced with a difficult situation, there’s nothing that you can do but let God take over and fight for you. We live in an unpredictable world. One day you get ready to enjoy a nice homemade meal, and the next thing you know, you find yourself down on the floor, praying and trying to make sense of a horrible situation. You look around, trying to seek for help, but the people that can help you are down on the floor with you; crying with you.
Sometimes it may not be a life or death situation, but to you it certainly feels that way. A wise man told me once that it’s not about the problem; it’s about you. No matter what you’re going through; to you it feels like a life or death situation because it’s happening to you. You feel the pain inside, and a vague doubt invades your mind. It is there, in the back of your mind, but you refuse to see it because you feel guilty for not trusting God.
You get discouraged when you think about tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow is not looking good for you. Nobody knows the pain that you feel inside. The feeling of hopelessness is overwhelming, and no matter how hard you try, your thoughts betray you as soon as you wake up to face another day. One after the other, the questions pop into your head: What will happen tomorrow? Will I be able to make it? What if something goes wrong?
I should know that well. As I hid behind the couch, many questions came to my mind: ‘What if something happens to Mom or Dad?’ ‘What if something happens to me?’ ‘How will Mom cope with it?’ Questions that I shouldn’t be asking, but they were there. Anybody can preach faith from a pulpit; anybody can write a book on trusting God, but let me tell you something: When death stares at you in the face, your faith seems to go out the window, and the struggle begins inside.
Even if your situation is not life threatening, the feeling of hopelessness is never easy to take. But the question is: Why is it that we fear? Obviously, we fear because we’re not trusting God, but why? Why aren’t we trusting the Lord if we, as Christians, are supposed to live by faith, and faith alone. As it is written:
“Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith”
(Habakkuk 2:4)
So now the question is: Are we being righteous before the Lord our God? Because if we are, we should be able to trust in Him and not let fear invade our hearts. But apparently the problem is not about trust, but about who we are; whether we are righteous or not, and that raises a question: Is it a matter of trust, yes or no? Last night, I was faced with that question, and I needed to know if I was righteous enough, or if I just needed to trust God, but time was running out.
As the sun went down, more shots were fired, so we tried to make ourselves as small as possible. I looked at Mom; she looked back at me, and I could almost see her thoughts through her eyes. It was as if I knew what she was thinking. At that very moment, the calendar turned back in my head. The memory of that horrendous day was present in the air. Without saying a word, I found myself next to Mom, facing death once again.
It was January the 10th, 1981. Just a few minutes before 10PM, the guerrillas launched a nationwide attack in my country. We were a nation at war, and the aim of the guerrillas was to overthrow the government, but in the process, hundreds of innocent civilians lost their lives. We survived the attack. We spent the entire night on the floor, hanging on for dear life as the bullets hit the outer walls of the house, one after the other.
I don’t think about that awful night anymore, but yesterday the memories came back to my mind. I’m no longer a child, but the fear in me was just as intense. It’s easy to have faith when everything is going fine in our lives, but eventually the Lord is going to test us to see how real we are. Many of us don’t make it because when the Lord tests us, He means business, but don’t take my word for it, let’s take a look at the following Bible verses:
And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said unto him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Behold, here I am.”
And He said, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”
(Genesis 22:1-2)
As we can see, the Bible clearly says that God tested Abraham, and apparently, when the Lord tests His children, He makes sure that He cuts deep where it hurts the most. He even reminded Abraham what was at stake: “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest.” Not an easy test, right? We all know how the story goes. Abraham took his beloved son and brought him to the mountains, where he was to be sacrificed as a lamb, but just as Abraham got ready to slay his son, the angel of the Lord stopped him:
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.”
And He said, “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him; for now I know that thou feareth God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.”
(Genesis 22:10-12)
Abraham was ready to kill his own son. He didn’t need to ask questions. He did what he was told, period! He proved that he was capable of trusting the Lord without a doubt in his heart, and that’s exactly what we are called to do. We wake up in the morning and feel the pressure inside; the fear takes over because we’re not trusting the Lord our God, creator of the Universe.
Now, don’t feel so guilty, though. It’s okay to feel fear when you’re faced with a tough situation. That’s what happened to me last night. The Lord understands that we are humans and that our weaknesses are embedded in our human nature. The problem comes when we dwell on that fear and we let it take over our thoughts. This is what happens to many Christians today, and as a result they lose their spiritual purpose and turn back to the things of this world.
Last night, instead of enjoying my dinner, I found myself fighting against that human nature. The fear of the unknown took over me. In this forsaken land, where I live, people get killed in broad daylight. It happens every single day. Entire families get killed in their own bedrooms. A few days ago, for example, a mother and her son were getting ready to go to bed, but their dreams were snatched away from them.
In the darkness of the night, 5 gunmen entered their house, and they got shot in bed, according to some sources. Nobody heard anything; nobody said anything. They were found dead the next morning. Nobody here wants to be a witness; it’s too risky. If you open your mouth, you die. The government is so corrupt that nobody trusts them anymore. It is estimated that 90% of the crimes committed are left with impunity.
One person gets killed every two hours, and one person is reported missing every hour or so. You get killed, and if your body is found, you get buried, if not, only God knows what happens to you. Some people are found buried months later, in clandestine cemeteries. Authorities try to do their job, but they’re no match for all the killing that goes on around here. Now it was my turn to face reality.
I had to trust the Lord and let go of the fear inside. There was a gunman out there. Probably, just a few feet away. If he managed to break in the house, we were dead meat, and I knew it. More shots were fired, and time slowed down for us. “I think that there’s more than one gunman out there,” I said to my brother as he stared at the window. He didn’t say a word; he just nodded his head as his Adam’s apple moved up and down.
We asked the lady what was going on, but she was in shock. “It’s my husband,” she said as her hand trembled. She wasn’t saying much, and we didn’t want to push her to talk. All we knew was that her husband was out there in the middle of that mess. But was he the one shooting, or was he the one getting shot at? That was the question in my head.
Whatever it was, I needed to trust God. I have gone through this madness a few times before in my life, but it’s never easy. Being faced with death is probably the ultimate fear. It’s the end of life, but as a Christian man, I wasn’t afraid of dying last night. I knew that I would go Home, but I won’t deny that I was afraid about losing Mom or Dad. I knew in my heart that they would go to Heaven as well, if something happened, but the thought of losing them was there, and I just couldn’t shake it off.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you won’t feel pain when you lose a loved one. My parents have been there all my life, and I understand that they’ll have to go one day, but I will certainly miss them a lot. I know that the Lord won’t allow them to go in a violent way, so that’s the confidence that I have, but that confidence was being tested last night. Perhaps your situation is different than mine, but the fear is always the same. We were not called to be perfect, but we were called to fight. We were not called to struggle; we were called to endure.
Those who don’t know the truth, struggle. They let their fears take over and control their emotions. They believe the lies of the devil, and when the temptation comes they are not able to resist. As Christians, we all go through those evil attacks, but the difference is that we don’t let any of those things deter us. We have a way out, and our faith is the strength of our spirit.
There were four of us on the floor, trying to stay away from certain death, but each one of us took a different approach to the situation. Mom and I started to pray, but my brother and my father didn’t say a word. As for the woman, she continued shaking nonstop. Apparently, she wasn’t a Christian. Mom grabbed her hand and prayed for her, but the woman didn’t say anything.
Everything got quiet for a moment, but we still had no idea what was going on outside. By then, around fifteen minutes had gone by. We thought that the shooting was over, but we couldn’t move. It was too risky to go outside. The woman began to calm down. I crawled to the kitchen and got her some water. We asked her what was going on out there, and she told us that her husband was trying to kill her, and that he was chasing her with a gun.
That clarified things a bit, but I didn’t like what I heard. This meant that she was the main target. Not good at all! My brother looked at me for a moment, and apparently we were both thinking the same thing. “Go check the back door,” he whispered immediately. Now we understood what was going on. Perhaps the woman wasn’t saying anything at first because she probably thought that we would throw her out, or something.
For a moment, everything got quiet outside, but that only made things worse. We thought that the man was probably looking for her, and that’s why the shooting had stopped. We were faced with a big dilemma. We couldn’t ask her to leave because that would’ve meant certain death for her. I asked her if her husband was capable of killing her, but she didn’t say a word. I asked her that question because I just couldn’t comprehend what was going on.
Most of the time, crimes are committed by gang members, but this was different. This was a family man who lived just two houses down from my house. I’d never met him, but I’d heard that he was kind of weird. I didn’t even know what he looked like, but I knew that he was no gang member. He owned a business, and had children, that much I knew, so I asked the woman about the children.
She told me that she had no kids with him. Those children were from his previous marriage, and they only came to visit from time to time. I asked her again if her husband was capable of killing her, and she nodded her head, saying that her husband was extremely violent. That told me that he was ready to pull the trigger on her. I was concerned about her, but I was also concerned about my family’s safety.
If that man found out the she was there with us, we were going to be in big trouble. I had to trust God, though. It’s in those moments of hopelessness that we are faced with a profound realization: Do we trust God because we have no other choice? I often hear that statement from people that are going through difficult times: “I have no other choice but to trust God,” they say.
Is God like our last resource? Is He like an Ace that we pull from under the table at the last minute? What if I told you that most of us, even Christians, react that way? When we are faced with a tough situation, it seems as if we are forced to trust the Lord. It’s almost as if we take God out of a box so He could do His job, but the question is: Are we really trusting Him?
Apparently we are, but isn’t that like loving your spouse only when you need love? Think about that for a moment. Would you like to be loved only when someone needs you? Profound question, isn’t it? But here is another one: Would you love back if that was the case? Probably not, because your marriage wouldn’t be able to survive on “part time love.”
How about your relationship with the Lord? So perhaps it’s not a matter of trust, and it’s a matter of relationship. If that’s the case, we should be asking ourselves the following question: What makes a strong relationship? In the world, there are many reasons why people get married. And the shocking thing is that most of us get married for the wrong reasons. No wonder more than 50% of all marriages end up in divorce within the first few years, and that’s in the United States alone.
Some of us get married because we are tired of feeling lonely; others get married for financial stability. Whatever the case may be, we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Of course, a strong relationship is built out of many key factors, such as: Loyalty, trust, respect, etc., but what holds it all together is love. As it is written:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
(1 Corinthians 13:1-2)
“And though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing?” Is that right? So this means that even if I had all the faith in the world and trusted God with all my heart, but I have no love, my faith and trust would be meaningless. So instead of talking about trust, we should be talking about love; the love of God, that is.
But what does love have to do with trusting God? This is the mystery that we need to learn today, but we’ll talk about that as we go along because it’s an entire concept that we cannot just jam in a couple of phrases. As Christians, we should already understand that God is love, and that love is everything, and without this love nothing is possible because that love is the power that moves everything in the physical universe and in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Last night, as I hid behind the couch, I began to feel God’s amazing love for me, so the fear in my heart diminished; although, at that moment I had no idea that someone was going to end up dead. At that moment, I was reminded by the Holy Spirit that God’s unconditional love brings trust and peace to our hearts. No matter how difficult our situation might be, His love breaks all curses, and the impossible becomes possible.
One day, Jesus was confronted with one of those impossible situations that we sometimes go through in life. Lazarus, His good friend, was dead, and not only that he was dead; his body was already halfway putrefied. Talk about a tough situation!
Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four days already.
(John 11:17)
His friend had died four days before. Imagine if one day you’re confronted with such news? What would you do? When we’re faced with a major problem, we feel as if there’s absolutely nothing that we can do. Most of us give up before even trying. That’s exactly what happened to Martha, Lazarus sister:
Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house.
Then Martha said unto Jesus, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died.
(John 11:20-21)
Martha was already accepting her defeat. She was even kind of blaming the Lord, wasn’t she? Isn’t that what we do sometimes when something goes wrong? We play the blame game and start pointing fingers at people. Some of us take it as far as blaming God for our problems, but isn’t that a loser’s mentality? Blaming others won’t solve the problem, and do you want to know why we blame others when things go wrong? Because we have no love in our hearts.
When you blame others, you’re only thinking about yourself. You could care less for the person you’re blaming. All you care about is feeling better so by blaming others you ease the pain that you feel inside, isn’t that the case? I see it all the time, and this is because it’s in our human nature to blame others. This behavior has been with us since the beginning of time.
The man blamed the woman, and the woman blamed the serpent, but guess what? They all got punished because they all were guilty before the eyes of the Lord. Nobody forced anybody to do anything. They all sinned against God willingly. The same thing happened when Lazarus died. Some of the Jews that were there with Martha and Jesus also played the blame game:
And some of them said, “Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?”
(John 11:37)
As we can clearly see, this is common because most of us don’t have the love necessary in order to trust God, but one person there did: Jesus.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping who came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, and said, “Where have ye laid him?” They said unto Him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, “Behold, how He loved him!”
(John 11:33-36)
Jesus cried, and He cried because He felt a tremendous love inside, but He didn’t cry out of desperation like the others did. He already knew what was going to happen. He knew that Lazarus was going to rise from the dead, so there was no reason for Him to cry without hope, but some of the Jews knew exactly why He was crying. This is why they said, “Behold, how He loved him!”
It was precisely this love that worked a tremendous miracle. This love was the power that produced faith and trust. It was this love that gave Jesus the authority to rule over the physical laws, so the impossible became possible, and Lazarus, Jesus beloved friend, rose from the dead:
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me.
And I knew that Thou hearest Me always, but because of the people who stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
(John 11:41-44)
The love that the Lord felt inside was stronger than the situation. Lazarus was way far gone, and it was humanly impossible to bring him back. You might think that it was Jesus’ faith that worked the miracle, and although faith is important, it was the power behind it that made things happen that day.
Last night, I felt that power backing me up. I trusted the Lord because I knew that His love for me was greater than my fear. Unfortunately, the woman that was hiding from her husband was shaking like Martha, Lazarus sister. I got closer to her, and just as I was getting ready to tell her not to fear, and that everything was going to be okay because God was in control of the situation, more shots were fired out on the street.
