How is God’s credit line with you? Do you trust his word, or, do you need some collateral?

If you buy a house with a mortgage, the house is given in security. The bank doesn’t have to trust you: if you fail to pay, they’ll just take the house.

Faith is confidence in God — but not because he puts down security. “Faith [deals] with Christ and heaven in the dark, upon plain trust and credit, without seeing any surety of dawn,” Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish pastor of the 1600s.

God has given us many reasons to be confident in Him and his promises. But he doesn’t promise to give us guarantees: we have to trust the Word he’s already given, and the evidence he’s already given.

Can you trust when God takes the old assurances away?

At times, it appears God is taking the assurances away. The blessings from him that you depended on in the past can disappear. Psalms 46 talks about confidence in God, even when the earth is crumbling beneath us —

God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,

though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam,

though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Faith — Trusting God — is the confidence in, and assurance of, things we cannot see — but that we know to be true because God has told us (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is not faith if it demands guarantees from God, so he can establish his line of credit. Psalm 46 shows us that even when God removes the comforts, he is still trustworthy.