I was listening to a podcast while driving the tractor earlier this week. It was talking about the
Apollo program which ended with the USA winning the space race and getting an American
Astronaut on the moon before the Soviets could. There is a lot of fascinating detail in this
podcast, but something stood out to me in it. The speaker talked about how upset he got
when people said the moon landing was a fake. The reason he got so upset about it was that
he had lived through this era and had seen everything that led up to this monumental event.
He had lived in the era of the Cold War, he had got caught up in the hype of the moon landing, and he had seen how it had rallied a nation together. In short, he didn’t understand why people would questions something that was so real to him. He had experienced it and he knew it was true not because someone else told him about all the hype surrounding it, but rather because he had experienced that himself.
Psalm 34 is a Psalm that begins with David praising God. It was written by David after he
escaped from the Philistines (1 Samuel 21). In it, David praised God for the way God had
answered prayer and for how God had delivered him from his fears. He then went on to talk of how God would deliver those who would cry out to God and how God loved and protected His own. That’s all in Psalm 34:1-7. This is David’s own experience. He is praising God for how God has worked in his life and he is confident that God will do the same for others who call on the name of God. Like that podcaster, David is speaking from his own experience. He isn’t simply
praising God because of what he’s been told God can do. David praises God because God
has made Himself very real to David time and time again.
But David doesn’t stop there, he doesn’t just ask you to trust him and praise God for what God
has done for David. He invites his readers to see for themselves – “Oh, taste and see that the
Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 34:8 ESV).
Over the last while I have been putting different Devotional videos up one our church Facebook page and a lot of those videos have been aimed at believers. The same could be said of these blog posts – they are largely written with believers in mind. My goal with those is to encourage our church family, to keep us connected, and to keep us moving forward in our faith. But maybe you’re reading this and you’re not a believer, or maybe you’ve watched those videos and you wonder why we talk about trusting God so much. Especially in the midst of a world turned upside down, why trust a God you can’t see?
Because God is trustworthy. I know that because I have experienced it. I’ve experienced
forgiveness of sin that comes through confessing them to Jesus and the freedom
that come with that as well. I’ve experienced hope and peace in confusing times. I’ve
experienced God slowly changing, challenging, and shaping me over time, all for the better
and all to His Glory. I don’t always understand how God is working in the moment, but
hindsight often reveals it – not always, but often. God has proven Himself trustworthy in my
life and also (and more importantly in Scripture). I believe He is worthy of trusting even now as we wait to see how 2020 will all play out.
I hope you believe me in that, but it hits home so much more when you experience it for
yourself. My invitation to you as you read this is Psalm 34:8 – Taste and see that the Lord is
good and that He is a refuge for this who trust Him. We can’t go back in time and live through
the space race and see for ourselves what really happened, we have to take others’ word for it.
When it comes to getting to know God, however, we can both learn from others and
experience it for ourselves through faith in Jesus. Give it a taste, you won’t be sorry!