(note: recording begins after scripture -- Genesis chapter 15 -- has been read) "Can I trust you?" It's a question that we ask often, even if we don't do it out loud. In our interaction with bosses, politicians, friends, doctors, sales-people, etc we know that trust is an issue. Other questions come along with this questions: "What's in this for you?" "What's this going to cost you?" "How do I know you'll keep your promise?" Trust, however is not necessary for all relationships, only the ones that grow and bless. We learn pretty quickly "how to get along" with people we don't trust. We spent quite a bit of time with those people and might even think of them as "close." Do you trust God? Can you trust God? To what degree do you trust him? Regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey, those are important questions to consider often. We see in the Bible that God himself asks his closest friends that question directly and indirectly. We're going to be looking at how God answers this in Genesis 15 this coming Sunday as we pray, sing, hear, and pay attention to God's Word. Please take time to read Genesis 15 this week and consider the following meditations. Meditations: Love's as hard as nails, Love is nails: Blunt, thick, hammered through The medial nerves of One Who, having made us, knew The thing he had done, Seeing (what all that is) Our cross, and His. C.S Lewis Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead and He shouldn't have done it. He's thrown everything off balance. If He did what he said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can. Flannery O'Connor Let us endeavor to obtain, and increase in, a [sense] of our great dependence on God, to have our eye to him alone, to mortify a self-dependent and self righteous disposition. Man is naturally exceedingly prone to exalt himself, and depend on his own power or goodness; as though from himself he must expect happiness. Jonathan Edwards (1731)