How do you know you can trust someone? This is a very important question in this day and age- where promises are continually being made and broken. Which politicians do we trust, or is that even possible? What sources of news are reliable? Which brands do we feel will get the job done for us and our families? Who do we turn to when we need someone to come through in the clutch for us? So much of our daily decision making is built on who and what we trust. How trusting do you consider yourself to be? Too trusting, and we can be labeled gullible. Not trusting enough, labeled a cynic.
So… again, how do we know we can trust someone? The internet. Seriously- internet reviews are amazing, aren’t they? If we can learn about how someone or something has worked for other people, we can guess how well they or it will work for us. While that is all well and good for buying products, what about interpersonal relationships? That can be much trickier. The bottom line is that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. People can change, but their personalities generally don’t.
The importance of trust varies with the importance of the task at hand. Trusting someone to give a good haircut is a totally different level than trusting a doctor to perform surgery on us. If I look goofy for a few weeks, that’s normal, no big deal, but on the rare instance that surgery doesn’t turn out well, ramifications could be painful and last a very long time. We trust our doctors with our very physical lives. What about our spiritual lives? Our life’s purpose and direction? Our eternal security? What will we trust when it comes to life, death, and the afterlife?
In Daniel chapter 8, we find compelling reasons to trust God’s Word. The prophecies laid out in the chapter are so detailed, written 400 years in advance of the actual events, that modern critical scholars say it is impossible for this book for a man to have written it centuries in advance. Join us as we look at why this is the case, and why we know we can trust God’s Word still today.
I invite you to join with us this weekend as we look at Daniel 8. Our socially distanced service is Saturday afternoon at 3:30, and our Sunday morning service is at 10:15, where you can join us online if you can’t make it in person. We also have excellent Sunday School classes at 9 for all ages.
Have a great weekend and I look forward to pursuing Christ, Community, and the Great Commission Together with you soon!
-Pastor Nathan Rice