Take a moment to read Deuteronomy 14 before reading the devotional below.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. It wasn’t surprising. I was wearing a blindfold, and my teammate was navigating me through a field of obstacles. Sometimes the directions were easy like when he said “Take four steps to the left.” Other times they made no sense, like the command to “Go forward fifty steps” when I was completely sure there was a tree in front of me.” It turns out, however, that the teammate without the blindfold was the one to trust. It didn’t matter what I thought was in front of me. What mattered is what he could see.
Chapter 14 of Deuteronomy is just as much about trust as the game I was playing that day. The Israelites were given two odd sets of commands. The first were commands that split the animal kingdom into two seemingly arbitrary groups: the ones the Israelites were allowed to eat and the ones they weren’t. With the benefits of modern science, many have speculated as to why certain animals were in which group. The important fact, however, is that the Israelites who were given the command would not have understood it at all. They also might not have understood the commands about tithing: giving God the first 10% of our income. God didn’t always try to explain. He did always expect trust expressed through obedience, however.
Sometimes you might be sure you do understand God’s voice, and it might seem that God’s commands run against everything that makes sense to you. It’s okay to admit that you don’t understand. It’s ok to admit that you are confused. The challenge is to take that confusion and craft it into obedience. Trust that God knows better than you. Trust that God is good. Trust that God loves you. Is trust hard for you? It is for most of us. Challenge yourself to begin trusting God a little. Work your way up to trusting God in the biggest challenges of life. Learning trust will always make us uncomfortable. It will also make us safer.