What Happens When We Trust God?

The most powerful nation on earth has a motto that reads “In God We Trust”. Out of the ashes of the civil war, this nation longed for some sense of hope and stability.  Though the civil war was fought in and around the issue of slavery but the overriding issue was that of economy.  End of slavery meant, end of workforce for the landlords and plantation owners.  In a time like that, this comforting motto first appeared on the coin (money) of the United States in 1864 indicating where the nation’s hope should be anchored.  Nearly a century later in 1956, President Eisenhower approved this motto into a law passed by the US Congress to provide a calming assurance from the looming danger of communism and a new kind of imperialism hiding behind the shadow of cold war.  The congress insert at that time reads: “In these days when imperialistic and materialistic communism seeks to attack and destroy freedom, it is proper to remind all of us of this self-evident truth that as long as this country trusts in God, it will prevail”. Such a timely wisdom of the leadership at that time to recognize the human limitations in governing the affairs of a nation has stood the test of time.  Today this nation reaps the reward of its leaders’ faithfulness and commitment to the faith once handed to them by their forefathers. 

God said to Moses in the second commandment that he will punish the children for the sins of their fathers until the fourth generation but he will show love and kindness to the children of the righteous for a thousand generations (Ex. 20:1-6).  Psalms 33:12 says “blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh”. In spite of the carnality and heathenism coming out of America, this nation still has a divine hedge built around it because God is ever faithful to his promises made in covenant with his children.  The carnal children of the US still benefit from the faithfulness of their forefathers because their forefathers chose to trust God and left behind a blessing for a thousand generations.

As a citizen of a nation like Nepal that has rebelled against God, what hope do I have?  What blessings can I claim from my forefathers who broke the very first and second commandments of God by worshipping the creation instead of the creator? Not only that, the first book of the Bible is called ‘Genesis’, which means ‘beginnings’.  In the beginning of this book, Satan is represented by a snake that deceived the first man.  Bible also tells that Satan fell from heaven because he refused to worship God; he wanted to be like God and demanded the angelic beings to worship him.  But God cast him down and replaced him by creating man.  Thus, we see him in the book of Genesis chapter three as a snake and today there is no household in Nepal (except Christians and Muslims) on whose doorpost they do not post a picture of a snake.  Every year on Nag-panchami (Day of the snake god), the old snake pictures are replaced with the new ones.  These snake posters are pasted on the top horizontal bar of the door frame so that when a person goes out of the house, the head has to be bent down to worship the snake and the same thing when one enters the house.  Traditionally, the doors in a Nepali house are slightly shorter than the average height of a person so that one has to bend the head to enter in and out of the house.  Therefore, the best place to put the picture of a snake god.  

Bible symbolizes snake as evil.  When God wanted to deliver the people of Israel from their Egyptian bondage; the blood of the lamb (symbolizes the blood of Jesus Christ) was put on the doorpost for deliverance from bondage to freedom.  Today, every household in Nepal replaces the blood of the lamb with the symbol of a snake.  What blessings can we hope from a snake?  The communist government might be able to bring economic prosperity (assuming it does) but this economic prosperity might come with a high price of peace and freedom.  In their pursuit of power, the communists will not hesitate to kill any number of people and once they have the power, there will be no liberty left for the common man.  Religious freedom and free expression of thought in social media have already come under attack from this government.  However, because poverty is such a terrible task master, the general public might be happy to live under the political tyranny than the tyranny of poverty. So, there is no hope of a national blessing for Nepal.

But on the individual level, there is hope.  There is hope because God in Jesus Christ had transcended the national, political, religious and ethnic boundaries to bless any person who puts one’s faith in him.  Anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior becomes free from the curses that came from violating God’s commandments.  Those who are in Christ Jesus become new creation of God (2Cor.5:17).  They are born again and their past is wiped away.  They are free to create a new genealogy of blessing for their posterity.  “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law…in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to us” (Gal. 3:13-14).  It is God’s will for us to be saved from our sin, healed in our bodies and be blessed in our material life (3John 2).      

The question we have to ask is; have we seen these blessings (spiritual, physical and material) come to us in the last 60+ years of Christian history in Nepal?  The obvious answer is ‘yes’.  But if we look carefully, we see that Nepali church is very good at preaching about salvation from sin and healing from diseases but very poor at teaching about our material blessings.

Christian population comes from the very lower end of social ladder and they have tremendous needs.  But unfortunately, they have not been told by their spiritual leaders how God wants them to come out of poverty; that God can meet their material needs.  Such a lack of teaching may have been due to two possible reasons; one, pastors are afraid to be labeled as prosperity preachers.  Two, they have no experience of God meeting their own needs and thus lack conviction in telling their people that God can indeed meet their material needs.  Missionaries were prohibited to preach the gospel in Nepal.  But they could hire the local citizens for that.  Because of such a combination, the pioneering native pastors did not have to worry for their material needs; missionaries and mission agencies from outside of Nepal became their source of supply.  Pleasing the missionaries and producing colorful mission reports replaced the needed trust in God for their material needs.  Even today Nepali Christian leadership has misled the believers from trusting God for their material blessings by demonstrating that without outside financial help, Nepali church cannot exist.  But, like the motto of the US, if the pioneering leadership had inspired believers to put their trust in God; not only for salvation and healing, but also for material blessings, situation would have been very different.   

Therefore, Nepali believers need to learn to trust God for everything (salvation, healing and prosperity) and carve a new course for their own life and for the life of their posterity.  The God who is able to save them and heal them is also able to meet their material and financial needs.  The spiritual leadership needs to inspire the believers to expect God to lift them out of poverty just as he has lifted them out of sinfulness and sickness.  Thus, Christians individually can be free from the national curse coming from violating God’s commandments because “In God They Trust”.