PART ONE OF TWO Can I Really Trust God? Yesterday we talked about how faith is something we receive from God, not something we create for ourselves. But here's the thing: It's hard to receive from someone you're not sure you can trust. I get it. I met God through fear. Hell sounded awful, and I didn’t want to end up there. Eternal torment was something I desperately wanted to avoid. So fear motivated a lot of my Christian activity because I didn't want to end up in the bad place. I wasn’t running toward God. I was running away from the worst-case scenario. But Scripture tells us that God is love, and perfect love casts out fear. God doesn’t use fear of punishment or rejection to motivate us, even though it was a motivator that marked many of my years in the faith. When fear shapes your first impressions of God, it's hard to draw near to Him. Hard to believe He wants to give you more faith. Hard to imagine Him as anything other than disappointed in your shortcomings. Here's what I've learned: often the things that keep us away from God aren't our failures or our past. They're our wrong ideas about who God is. We imagine He's less kind than He actually is. Less forgiving. Less interested in us. More demanding. Can you relate? I also misunderstood what it meant to please God. I thought it meant doing things He wanted so that He wouldn’t be mad or disappointed with me. And I’d read verses like Hebrews 11:6 as a pass/fail test. "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6 NIV) I thought this verse meant that until I had enough faith, God could never be pleased with me. I assumed I had to muster up my own faith, and since I couldn’t, I'd never measure up. But that’s not what the verse means. Since faith comes from God, receiving the faith He offers us, pleases Him.