2017 Belmont University Lenten Devotional Guideنمونہ

Scripture seems to be full of stories of people who are asked to step out in faith and trust that God will do what God has said will be done. These stories call us to believe that God will show up in the difficult places and tell us that we can put our hope in that. We see this in the lives of Abraham and Nicodemus, whose stories are found in our scriptures for today. Abraham was called to leave his land, his people, his livestock, everything that he had to follow the call of God. He had a choice to make—would he follow, trusting that God would keep God’s promises, or would he stay because he wasn’t sure about what would happen? For Abraham, this didn’t happen once; he experienced it over and over again in his life. Each time, he had a choice to make—would he step out in faith or stay behind because he wasn’t sure. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He had heard about Jesus, and he knew that he was not supposed to like or trust Jesus. But still he chose to come to him in secret to find out for himself who Jesus was and what he was all about. The things that Jesus said to him that night must have seemed a bit far-fetched, crazy even. As he heard the words of Jesus, he had a choice to make: would he believe what he was hearing or return to his community a skeptic? Many of us have our own stories to match those of Abraham and Nicodemus. We hear the call of God asking us to go somewhere, to step out in faith, to put our trust in God—and we must decide what we will do. We have questions about who God is, and when we are shown the answers, we must decide how we will respond. The good news of these stories is that God keeps God’s promises to Abraham, and that Jesus proves to be exactly who he told Nicodemus he was. So when we find ourselves at a crossroads in life, when we must choose what we will believe and who we will follow, we can look back at these stories and remember that God is faithful, we can be assured that we can put our trust in God, we can know that it is okay to hope in God’s work in our lives as we step out in faith. God has always been faithful to God’s people, and God will continue to be faithful in your life. HEATHER DAUGHERTY University Minister University Ministriess