Trusting God: For Time and Eternity

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46)

The Father’s hand is the place of eternal security, from which nothing and no-one can ever be seized (see John 10:29). The Lord Jesus had entrusted His disciples into these mighty hands—and into these same hands He now placed His spirit.

He did so like someone who hands over a treasure to be looked after by someone in whom he has complete trust. Because He trusted God so unreservedly, He could say even when faced with death, “My flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.” (Ps. 16:9-10).

The following applies to each of us: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Instead of clinging to what we have received by grace, we may give it back and entrust it to Him Who, with His mighty hand, can make all things great and give strength (see 1 Chron. 29:12). David expressed this truth very well in prayer when he said, “All things come from you, and of your own have we given you” (1 Chron. 29:14).

Paul was able to say with conviction, based on his own experience of faith, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12). What does he mean by this “deposit”?

W. Kelly writes, “By ‘my deposit’ is to be understood all that I as a believer entrust to the safekeeping of God, not only the security but the blessedness of the soul and the body, of the walk and the work, with every question conceivable to be raised in the past, present, or future.”

The better you know your Savior in Whom you have believed, the more you will enjoy the grace in which you stand, and will also rest in Him with confidence in the present or future (see 2 Pet. 1:2). Isaiah encourages us with the words, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord for- ever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” (Isa. 26:3-4).

How well do you know your Lord? If you have entrusted the most precious thing you possess—your soul—to Him for eternity, why do you still hesitate to trust Him wholeheartedly for the short time left on this earth? The Lord is your Shepherd, you shall not be in want (see Ps. 23:1)!

J.P.S.