Trust Jesus?

I was recently listening to someone speak who urged the listening audience to "Trust Jesus. Just Trust Him. Trust Him and He won't let you down." Now, all of that is true. People should trust Jesus and He will not let you down, but this was done in an evangelistic, or at least a potentially mixed audience, setting. I hate to say this, but it dawned on me that we have become slightly like used car salesman, politicians, and ad agencies.

Now, I don't want to be offensive. Consider, though, what it sounds like to someone who either doesn't know Jesus or has a negative impression of Him. You aren't explaining who He is, what He has done, why He is trustworthy, or even why we should care about trusting Him in the first place. You're trying to sell an unknown "product" to a world that doesn't know they need Him. It's one thing to do this in a Christianized society - though I wonder if we were really as thoroughly Christianized as some histories say - but it's another to do this when the average person has no experience learning about Jesus.

There is nothing magical about the words "trust" and "Jesus" - they may mean different things to different people, anyway. The words only communicate when people know what you mean by them. Now, I'm not getting postmodern - those words have real meanings, and they are not so malleable that they mean anything you want them to - but we need to have more than a missile oriented approach.

People need to know who Jesus is and why He came. If they don't see their need, Jesus is at best, a secondary life issue - and perhaps no better than other religious leaders. If they understand who God is and who they are, their need will, or at least should, become the most pressing issue in their life. If they understand their dire situation before a Holy God, only then will they see Jesus as the solution and treasure of their life.

Trust Jesus? Absolutely. But tell them what you mean by that. It's not a 10-second conversation, though, and you must genuinely care about the person in front of you ...