I love the simple, unavoidable clarity of the hymn Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. There is one line in the refrain that especially grips me: “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er.”
What is it to prove Jesus? It could sound like a statement of boasting, as if I brilliantly proved the reality of Jesus by argument or intellect. Or maybe it is a declaration how excellently I’ve lived so that I make Jesus look really good.
But this lyric isn’t a boast in my ability or success, as if the Son of God needed me to prove him. “Proving” Jesus is not done through strength and achievement but through weakness and need. So this bold lyric is simply doing exactly what Paul writes about in Galatians 6:14 when he says, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
We “prove” Jesus daily by our dependence on Him and our need for Him. And when we think back on the lowest moments of our lives, the most shameful moments, those are particular proving grounds for Jesus because of the depths from which he rescued us.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe.
