Article September 13, 2010 Issue

Trusting God's faithfulness

BY JUDITH HARDY OLSON

EXPECTATION OF GOOD is an important element of prayer. Bible figures such as Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Daniel, and Christ Jesus certainly expected good. They all loved God and turned to Him. The Bible shows they trusted their prayer to reach God and trusted Him to answer it. They knew their God—His all-presence, all-power, unstoppable love—and must have worked hard to keep their thought close to Him. No wonder they expected and experienced divine help in times of trouble.

Take David. He expected God to save him from Goliath. "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear [in his shepherding], he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine," he said (I Sam. 17:37). And God did.

Likewise Daniel. He fully expected safety in the lions' den. And Daniel was unhurt by those hungry lions "because he believed in his God," as the Bible puts it (Dan. 6:23). Believed in Him—don't you love that? Daniel believed in God's love so much that he trusted God's complete control over both him and the lions.