Can I Trust Him With That?
There is a question that most of us have asked at some point, usually in the middle of a sleepless night or during a season of life that feels like it is unraveling. The question is simple but cuts to the core of our faith: Can I trust God with this?
Not with life in general. Not with the easy stuff. But with this specific thing, the one that keeps your mind racing, the one you have been gripping tightly because letting go feels more dangerous than holding on.
That question deserves an honest answer, and the answer begins with understanding what stability actually is.
We Have Stability Backwards
Most of us define a stable life the same way. There is enough money in the bank. Health is good. Relationships are solid. The future feels predictable. Comfort is the measuring stick, and when life delivers comfort, we call it stability.
But what if that definition is completely wrong?
What if the most stable place you could ever be in your life is not a place of comfort at all, but rather a place of complete trust in Jesus, even when everything around you feels uncertain? True stability is not the absence of storms. It is having a foundation that holds when the storms arrive, and storms will always arrive.
Is God Doing It Wrong?
There is a moment most of us have experienced — watching something unfold in a way that seems backward, inefficient, or simply wrong, and feeling the almost irresistible urge to step in and say so. We do it with our families, our coworkers, and if we are honest, we do it with God. We look at the circumstances of our lives, or the state of the world, and somewhere deep in our hearts we think: this is not how I would have done it.
Romans 9 invites us into exactly that tension. It is one of the most challenging passages in all of Scripture, and it refuses to let us stay comfortable. It raises enormous questions about God's character, His faithfulness, and His plan — and it does not always answer them in the neat, tidy ways we prefer. But that discomfort is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is an invitation to trust someone whose understanding is infinitely higher than our own.
The Anguish of Unfinished Things
The apostle Paul opens Romans 9 with raw, personal grief. He is not writing from a distance about abstract theology. He is writing as a Jewish man who loves his people deeply, who recognizes everything God has given them — the covenants, the law, the promises, the patriarchs, and the Messiah himself who came through their very lineage — and who is heartbroken that so many have rejected Jesus as that Messiah. Paul goes so far as to say he would be willing to be cut off from Christ himself if it meant his people could be saved (Romans 9:3).
This is not the posture of someone who has given up. It is the posture of someone who cares so deeply that the ache is almost unbearable. And it sets the tone for everything that follows. Before we wrestle with doctrine, we are invited to feel the weight of what is at stake.