It's Personal!

 "How can you believe in a God who is so involved in your daily affairs? someone once asked.

My answer is twofold:  first, personal experience.  Nothing is too small to ask about or to be answered, in my experience.  And experience grows little by little.  People are fond of talking about "the leap of faith," as if we jump across a chasm based on some vague hope that Someone is there to catch us if we fail.  But faith is not really like that at all.  Usually it begins as a mustard seed, tentatively put into the ground.  When we actually see a small sprout emerge, we begin to believe.  And so we have the "faith" to try again, and our faith does not disappoint us, as the Scripture says.  We ask for something small and personal, and we find that, indeed, Someone is listening and bending close to our prayer, much to our surprise.  "This is what I had hoped for, but was pretty sure that nothing would come of it," we say to ourselves.  But now, now, maybe we can ask again.  After all, we find that the Gospels tell us that very thing:  You receive not because you ask not, the book of James tells us (chapter 4):

God does not expect a "leap of faith" from us.  Scripture shows us again and again how gently He trains us to ask and believe.  Abraham "walked with God" a long way from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of promise (Canaan).  Each evening, he built an altar to the God who called him out of the land of pagans to a "place I will show you."  "Am I going the right way?"  "Are you still with me?" he may have been asking along the way.  And then, Sarah is taken for the Egyptian harem....Is this what you have brought us here for?  This wouldn't have happened if we had stayed in Haran, among our own people!  Who are you, Yahweh, that you have tricked us?  These are not "statements of blind faith," and yet I imagine these may have been the very questions of Abraham at some point.  And yet...God did not disappoint him ---- or Jacob, for that matter, either, when he fled from his brother's wrath and encountered the God of his forefathers on his way to Haran.  

When we study Scripture, we find that God answered not only Jacob's prayer on his journey, but the same is true for Moses, Joshua, David, and the prophets:  If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's house. then Yahweh will be my God (Gen. 28).  And the story of Jacob, whose name means "cheater, grabber, usurper," reveals a "covenant" God who was with him along the way, doing just what Jacob asked of Him.  And so, eventually, Jacob becomes Israel, who has contended with God and with man.  Maybe the word translated "contended" might be better as "engaged with."  Those who "engage" with God, even "wrestle" with Him, are not disappointed.  That is the meaning of covenant:  I am with you!

At one point in my life, I refused to ask God anything, either because I did not believe He cared about my "small" life, or because I didn't think I was worthy to receive anything "small" from such a big God, or who knows why?  I hoped He was there, but I refused to engage/ wrestle with Him for what I needed or wanted.  I was very much like king Ahaz in the book of Isaiah (chapter 7), who, though terrified at the threat of invasion from the surrounding nations, refused to ask God for anything:

....the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest were shaken by the wind.

[Isaiah was sent to tell Ahaz:] be careful, keep calm, and don't be afraid.  Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood.....it will not take place; it will not happen....Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.

But Ahaz said, "I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test."

Then Isaiah said, "...Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also?  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign....."

Ahaz did not want to engage with Yahweh; he refused to enter into any kind of relationship with God, under the pretense of "not putting God to the test."  Yes, I get that.  I refused to ask myself, not knowing Scripture at all and thinking it was virtue to not ask for anything.  But as I engaged with Scripture and began to read passages like these in Isaiah and else where, I began to tentatively "engage" with God, and I was never disappointed:

the Lord longs to be gracious to you: he rises to show you compassion...
Blessed are all who wait for him!...How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.  Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it"(30).

I am the Lord you God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea. ....say, "The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob." They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and water gushed out (48).

So my answer to "Why do you believe/ trust in a good God who is close to you?" is based on two things: Scripture and experience.  Scripture gave me the courage to ask or engage with the living God.  Experience taught me that I did not ask or engage in vain.  As soon as I asked, He answered.  And so I asked again.  And I was not disappointed.  

Does that mean that I receive everything I ask for?  No, but I still engage.  Here is the best answer I have seen to that question:

If fear is the root of all evil in the world, religion's role is the overcoming of fear. But the overcoming of fear cannot be illusory.  Religion must not become the opium of the people.  In a remarkable aphorism, Macmurray contrasts illusory religion with real religion:

The maxim of illusory religion runs: "Fear not; trust in God and He will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you"; that of real religion, on the contrary, is "Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of" (John Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 1991), quoted in William A. Barry, S.J., Spiritual Direction and the Encounter with God, 1992)

The takeaway here is that in all of Scripture, as in all of our experience, terrible things indeed happen to people who have engaged with God, and yet....they all discovered along the way that God was and is greater and more faithful than the terrible things that happen along the way!