Three Reasons You Trust Someone

Watch

Listen

Click here to listen to the episode on our website

Read

Three reasons, and only three, explain why someone will choose to put their faith in someone else. Maybe four. Let's talk about them.

Laying the Groundwork

Before we get to the three reasons, three things about trust and faith need to be on the table.

1. We choose to trust. It's a decision.
2. Trust, or faith, is always in a person. It's not in inanimate objects or some force out there. It's always in a person.
3. Faith and trust are slightly different, but for our purposes we'll use them interchangeably. Faith happens in the heart and in the mind. It's a belief. Trust is when you put that belief into action. Faith precedes trust.

What the Bible Says About Faith

The best place to go for definitions is the Bible. Hebrews 11:1 says:

"Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for and a proof of things not seen."

A proof of things not yet seen. That's a really interesting definition. In other words, it's not blind, hopeful, wishful thinking. There's rationale. There's reason. There's a process behind how we choose to put our faith in someone. And it's important to our walk with Jesus Christ, because that's what our relationship with him is all about. It's about faith in him.

The Three Reasons We Trust a Person

1. They have credentials, or they demonstrate knowledge.
2. They have proven themselves trustworthy.
3. They have demonstrated a deep love or affection toward us.

Let's break them down one at a time, and then we'll look at how Jesus fulfills each one.

Reason One: Credentials or Demonstrated Knowledge

The first reason we put our faith or trust in someone is that they either have credentials or they demonstrate a knowledge of something beyond what we have. Usually this happens on a professional level. We look to people with degrees, experience, or titles, and we say, "Okay, I'm going to trust that person and follow their lead on this particular thing."

Degrees, Titles, and Farmers

The credibility isn't always the same. A degree from MIT and a paper from the University of Granada don't carry the same weight. It's more complex than a framed diploma, but any sort of credential, or any demonstration that someone knows something, will do it.

Look at farmers. They know more about raising crops, milking cows, and all that than we do. So we just trust they're going to feed us.

Experience Counts Too

Experience lives in this category as well, and sometimes it has nothing to do with education. After over 25 years in broadcasting (longer, on and off, about 45 years in radio and other media like film), the question was never about a degree. It was: can you hold an audience? Do you have experience?

That's one of the hard things for radio people. How do you get experience to have an air check tape when you can't get an air check tape without experience? So we used to bring people on the old Chris and Emily show just to give them a shot.

In some worlds you need a piece of paper, a document, a degree. In others you need experience. Either way, you need something on a professional level that gives you the credibility to do what you're called to do.

Achievements and Awards

A lot of people point to achievements or awards, and the list goes on and on. We look at those things and think, "Hmm, that gives them credibility." We tend to trust them more.

Reason Two: They've Proven Themselves Trustworthy

The second reason is a built-up reputation. They have a good reputation, and that develops one of two ways: by observation or by recommendation.

Observation: You've Seen It Yourself

Think of the buddies you grew up with in high school. We always make the joke that they know where the dead bodies are buried. It's not a great phrase, but what it means is that you've seen each other at your best and at your worst, and you've been through trials together.

I've watched a couple of these guys have my back in tough situations, and I know they'll have my back in the future. For them to turn their back on me would be odd.

When you've observed people being trustworthy, and you know they've observed you being trustworthy, you hope that wins the day.

Recommendation: Someone You Trust Vouches for Them

In scenarios where we haven't had the chance to see for ourselves whether a person is credible or has character, we rely on someone else's testimony.

The plumber. Say you need a plumber. Your neighbor, someone you don't know all that well, says, "I know a plumber." You're more likely to call that plumber than some guy listed in the yellow pages. (Yellow pages. Is that even a thing? Anybody under 45 or 50 is going to wonder what we're talking about.)

The radio ad. That's the old advertising advantage of radio broadcasting. You don't run radio ads so people will beat down your door, unless you're making some outrageous offer they'll jump at. What you want is to build a preference at the top of the listener's mind. You're listening on the way to work and on the way home, you're hearing about plumbers, and you don't need a plumber. It's just another ad. Then all of a sudden your sink blows up, and you remember that guy. All the radio ad did was say, "Hey, we know a guy who does plumbing."

The chainsaw. Say you just moved in next door and tell me, "I've got a tree down and I need a chainsaw," and I say, "I know a guy who loans out chainsaws." The chances of you not calling that person are about 0.001%. You're going to call, because somebody recommended him. There's trustworthiness in that, even though the two of us barely know each other.

Marketing. That's why marketing works so well. Get a really handsome man or a really pretty girl to tell people they like this company, and it has an impact. There's a trustworthiness that is just taken by faith.

Margarine. Think about how we got hoodwinked as a culture in the 70s into believing margarine was better than butter. Doctors told patients that. We trusted them because they had credentials, and maybe they'd treated us before and treated us very well. So we put our faith in them. Trustworthiness can motivate us to put our trust in someone.

Reason Three: Deep Love or Affection Toward Us

This, I think, is the most powerful of the three. It's how very intimate relationships are formed. It's how we choose our friends. It's how we choose our spouses, the person we're going to marry.

It's also what separates our mom, our dad, our sister, and our brother from the whole rest of the world. Our mom, our sister, and our brother are probably not a better class of people than anybody else around us. The difference is that they have demonstrated a love toward us. Therefore we stick with our family. We'll stand with our brother through thick and thin, because he has demonstrated a love and a deep affection toward us.

A Sidebar on the Family

There's more to the family unit than that. I believe God, in his infinite wisdom, divine omnipresence, and omnipotence, created the family structure as a direct confrontation against sin, to give us a chance to survive.

We have a default position of sin. We're born sinful. We become a new creature in Christ, and we still try to walk it out and still stumble. But there's a family unit that both the unregenerate sinner and the walking-in-sanctification, saved-by-grace saint all have.

You will choose not to sin so that you don't hurt your family. Now someone will say, "Well, my dad did this," or "my child did that." I'm not talking about individual cases. I'm talking in general terms. The family unit has been there to help us walk out righteousness better. It's God's design. It can be twisted and perverted, but there's something there. Don't embarrass the family.

So it's one of these three reasons, or a combination of them, that we choose to put our faith in someone.

We Live by Faith Every Day

These decisions are made far beneath the surface. We're barely conscious of what's going on in our heads when we make them, and they happen in fractions of a second.

You're drowning, struggling in the water, and someone swims up and hands you a lifeline. You take it. You don't care who that person is, where their life has been, or what their background is. You just take it.

That's because we are people of faith. It's written on our hearts. We were created to live by faith, and we do it every day whether we recognize it or not.

The Restaurant

You walk into a restaurant. (This is happening for some of us fewer and fewer times.) You order food, someone brings it to you from behind a big wall, and you eat it. You take something somebody else has touched, manipulated, and handled, and you put it in your mouth and swallow it.

We know in our brains that people have gotten salmonella because food wasn't handled right. We know people have been harmed because somebody did something malicious with the food. We still go out to eat. That's the faith that keeps driving us. Even if you go to the store and buy a can of soup or a bag of flour, you are trusting other people.

When Trust Gets Shattered

That faith took a hit in the late 70s or early 80s with the Tylenol scare, which immediately put everybody on suspect.

Think about where Halloween went, from the 60s and 70s we grew up in to the insane holiday it is now. Part of it was the packaged candy that came along in the 70s, with the scare about razor blades, poisoning, and grandma's cookies. Based on the research we just did, not one single truly reported, verifiable case of any of that happened. It was all people creating a lack of faith in the door-to-door experience.

The Airplane

You get on a plane trusting that the people who built it did it right, that the mechanics did the right thing, and that the pilots and air traffic controllers are going to do the right thing. Those are the people you're putting your faith in.

Even learning to fly in Western Alaska, out in the Bering Sea and Bristol Bay, meant putting trust in the weather forecast. The wind could be 30 mph or more on the other side of the ridge, and once it was over 10 knots, I was thinking we were grounded. I hated flying that little Cessna 150 in the heavy breeze coming over that one ridge.

But the reality is you trust all these things coming along, as best as you can. You trust the people who built the airplane. You trust the scientists behind "let's put this tonnage of metal up in the air."

The Chair

And speaking of tonnage, I'll plop down on a chair with total faith that it's going to hold me up. But it's not faith in the chair. It's faith in the people who designed the chair, the people who built it, the people who own it, and the people who set it out for you to sit on.

That's who you're putting your faith in. It's always, always, always in a person.

The Lack of Faith Is What's Abnormal

We live by faith. If you didn't have faith in those simple things, those everyday occurrences, and other people, you would go nuts. In fact, the lack of faith is what's abnormal.

We see diagnoses all over the place of people who wash their hands incessantly, every ten seconds. They're germaphobes. Why? Because they cannot see with their eyes that the soap they're going to use will kill the really nasty stuff on their hands. They can't grasp by faith that people designed something, packaged something, and sold it to them, and that if they wash their hands they'll be fine without doing it every ten seconds. When you don't have a normal amount of faith, it can land you at Shady Pines.

Why Faith Is Getting Harder

I don't deny it's getting harder and harder to have faith in the people out there handling your food and providing your transportation. And the faith is being lost because the actual moral compass of the country is being lost. We're turning away from God.

When we were 15 or 16 years old, if somebody did something really gross to your food at a fast food restaurant, the employees would have frowned on it. Now nobody cares. In fact, they'd probably laugh right along with you and egg you on. The culture is creating doubt in the products we used to have faith in.

Salvaged by God Deep Dive: Jesus Fulfills All Three

Here's the good news. I can't think of any other legitimate reason someone would put their faith in someone else. And Jesus fulfills all three so perfectly and so fully that when you take a second look, you realize that not putting your faith in him, not trusting him and putting that faith into action, is foolishness beyond foolishness.

Here are the three reasons we trust, and Jesus fulfills every one:

1. He has credentials and demonstrates knowledge.
2. He has proven himself trustworthy.
3. He has demonstrated a deep love or affection toward us.

If you're feeling dizzy, it's because the tables have turned. It's Jesus we're putting our trust in.

1. His Credentials and Knowledge

This is the one that probably seems a little odd. We know we can trust Jesus because he loves us. We know it because of the other two. But credentials and knowledge call for more of a conversation, so let's turn to God's Word.

John 1:1-5

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it."

He made everything. Everything came out of him, from him, and is for him. That's credentials. He created everything. So who are you going to trust, the guy who bought the car or the guy who built the car? You're going to trust the guy who built the car. He has more knowledge about how that car works, and how we operate in it, than anybody else.

He wrote the world's best-selling book. (I don't know that's the credibility I'm looking for to save you.) But this is a divinely inspired book in which, over the centuries, not one letter has been proven false. Think about that.

Jeremiah 33:2-3

"This is what the LORD says, He who made the earth, the LORD who formed it to create it, He whose name is the LORD: Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things which you did not know."

Imagine if somebody said that about themselves. You'd say, "Whoa, he's arrogant." But no. God created everything. He's in charge of everything. He knows everything. Of course you can turn to him, and of course he's going to show us things we couldn't even comprehend by ourselves. That right there is a knowledge, a wisdom, a mastery far beyond anything any man could ever achieve.

It's not like a human being being arrogant. This is the God of the universe, who created absolutely everything, who knows how many grains of sand are on the seashore, and who knows how many hairs are on my head. (That number's getting lower. Just look at my chin. It's getting more and more.)

And he's got titles, a few of them:

• King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16): "On His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, 'KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.'" That's a little more than "Doctor." It makes every title we hand out here in the world look lame, laughable, next to King of kings and Lord of lords.
• Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23).
• The Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16). Who else can claim that? Nobody.
• Savior (Luke 2:11). We cannot save ourselves.
• Lord and Teacher (John 13:13).
• The only mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2). There is no other. We can't reach God by ourselves. That's a good title to have.
• Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). And that's why I love Christmas.

So he's got the titles, the knowledge of everything, and the credentials.

2. He Has Proven Himself Trustworthy

There were two ways to prove yourself trustworthy: observation and recommendation. Has he ever, on both counts.

Observation

With the resurrection alone, you have the twelve disciples, the eleven plus Matthias, and then he appeared to over 500 after the resurrection. This was not an isolated event.

There's a lot of testimony from people who witnessed him:

• Teaching in the temple
• Performing miracles
• Being crucified on the cross
• Rising from the dead
• Ascending
• Returning and appearing to people again

Witnesses are everywhere throughout history, testifying that this Jesus is real and that he is who he says he is in the Bible. And it's not just the people who gave the biblical account. Countless numbers of people testify to who he is and to his trustworthiness.

I love the movie Risen. If you ever get the chance to see it, it's told through the eyes of a Roman officer who knows Jesus was crucified and then sees him risen from the dead, and it shows what an impact that would have on a human being. And we take that, as the topic of today's conversation says, by faith.

Recommendation

Look at the people who have come to know the Lord since his earthly life. They experienced something you can't unexperience. When you go to the Lord Jesus Christ with a contrite heart, you ask for forgiveness, and you experience the forgiveness God promises in the Bible, you know that you know that you know, and no one will convince you otherwise. Then you go and tell others.

Again, countless numbers of people will give you their testimony. They'll give you examples of how what's written in Scripture is actually still happening today. He's still forgiving people. He's still healing people. He's still speaking to people. He's still saving people. He's still pulling people out of their sin. He's changing hearts, and we see it, and we're told to tell people.

As Christians, we're supposed to share this good news. If you think nobody is out there sharing Jesus, you don't have your eyes open, because the world is angry at these people who just have to go out and tell people about Jesus. The recommendations are too many to count.

3. He Has Demonstrated Deep Love

This is wonderful. This is where it just gets good.

John 15:13

"Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends."

You'll hear that verse quoted often, and it's really true, but there's a key phrase in it: for his friends. Jesus takes it a step further.

Romans 5:7-8

"For one will hardly die for a righteous person, though perhaps for the good person someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

While we were still sinners. Those he came to save were the same ones who reviled him. That is beyond a human being. A human being can't do it unless God imparts that same love he has for us. He gives it to us so that we can love like that toward other people. We can't come up with it on our own.

The Scripture says it right there: one will hardly die for a righteous person, perhaps for a good person, but God did something way more amazing. He died for us while we were still in rebellion against him.

2 Corinthians 5:21

"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

He willingly took on all of our sin. Here's my question: whose sin are you willing to take on, on top of your own? Only God can do that. We've got enough of our own.

Closing Summary

Run him through the three tests.

• Credentials and knowledge: He made everything, and he holds every title.
• Proven trustworthy: Countless witnesses and countless testimonies.
• Deep love: He died for us while we were still sinners.

To refuse to trust him is foolishness beyond foolishness.

The Bonus Reason: Deception

I did say maybe four. There's one other kind of bonus reason someone will put their faith in someone, and it's a bad one: they've been deceived.

Someone has convinced you that they, or someone else they're talking about, fulfills one of those three things. They don't really have the knowledge or the credentials. They haven't proven themselves trustworthy. They don't really have a deep affection for you. They've just deceived you into thinking they do.

There's a lot of deception going on out there that will get people to put their faith in the most silly nonsense, because they're lying to you.

• The con man says, "Hey, trust me, I'm going to take your money and I'll return it tenfold."
• The false teacher presents a false Christ and tells you that you can trust this false Christ. It's not the real deal. It's Antichrist. This is the Christ who wants to make you happy, wealthy, and well.

No. The real Jesus came to give us eternal life while we were still sinners. Much different Jesus, actually.

Salvaged by God Deep Dive: 2 Corinthians 11

How does it all happen? How do we get tripped up? Let's see what Satan's masquerade looks like in Scripture.

2 Corinthians 11:14

"No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."

Satan disguises himself as this Jesus, as someone who says, "Just do it Satan's way. Don't listen to Jesus. Jesus isn't the only way." All kinds of lies come out. Scripture says Satan masquerades as the very light that Jesus is. He tricks us. He deceives us. So how do we know when we're being deceived?

Let's widen the shot a little bit, because the Bible, when you look at things in context, shows us what it looks like when Satan masquerades.

1. The Context

In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is going around preaching the gospel, and he's doing it at great sacrifice. He's being sustained by people who are giving him gifts, many of whom barely have enough to take care of themselves. But the gospel is so important to them that they give what they have so that Paul can keep going out and sharing it.

Here's what he says in the same chapter:

2 Corinthians 11:12-15

"But what I am doing, I will also continue to do, so that I may eliminate the opportunity from those who want an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the matter about which they are boasting. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds."

2. What Paul Was Actually Saying

That's the NASB. In the ESV, I think the beginning of the passage is a little easier to understand. Paul is saying, "I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing. I'm going to keep on going. I'm going to keep on proclaiming, even to my own detriment and even at the sacrifice of the others who are helping me accomplish this. I'm going to keep on doing it in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to boast that they work on the same level as we do."

What's going on there? They're claiming to be apostles, and they are not apostles. The apostles were hand-picked by Jesus Christ himself, but there were a lot of fakers out there. Who were they? They were masquerading as angels of light. Were they angels of light? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is how the deception goes on.

3. Why We Can't Just Be Nice

It's tempting to say, "Who are we to say? Blessed be the nice. The 11th commandment: thou shalt be nice."

But we've just been through Reformation Day and All Saints' Day, and I think we've largely forgotten how the truth of God's Word has been fought for. People suffered and died and were in anguish just to hold on to that truth. That's what Paul was doing. It continued through the Reformation. It continues through today.

People who want to stand on truth and not let it get twisted at all are demonized, persecuted, and ostracized. Nothing has really changed. The truth of God's Word is still hard fought and hard won, and when you just let it go, bad, bad, bad, bad things happen.

Closing Summary

Paul tells us the pattern: false apostles, deceitful workers, servants of Satan dressed up as servants of righteousness. And Jesus gives us the test: you will know them by their fruits. We'll get to that verse in a moment.

Gramster Rant: Who Is Telling You What to Believe?

Can we talk about who is telling you what to believe? Because this is a serious problem, and it's only getting worse.

The News Is Skewed

Look at the news. Politically, we see it very clearly. Mainstream media and social media platforms, with their algorithms and the information they put out there, are skewed. Most of it is not trustworthy, and you've got to really search and be careful about who you listen to for the news of the day and the political things going on.

Fresh out of this political season, the media is just, oh my goodness, you don't even know what to believe anymore. So ask yourself: what goals do they really have? What's their agenda?

The Chicago Reporter

The best illustration I can give you is a story I've used as a sermon illustration on and off for over 25 years.

Back in Chicago, when the Chicago Tribune was the thing and there wasn't a lot of television (there was a little radio, and you had the newspaper), a newspaper reporter was out on the street. He saw a mangy street dog coming up on a little boy. The reporter was too far across the street to do anything. Then a slightly larger boy came around the corner with a stick, shoved it down in the dog's collar, and broke the dog's neck before it could attack his little brother.

The reporter ran over. "That's the most amazing thing I've seen. You saved your brother." The older boy said, "Yeah, it really wasn't that big a deal."

"How about this for a headline? 'Bears fan saves little brother from certain tragedy.'" The boy shrugged. "I don't think that'll work. How about this? 'Chicago Bear fan boy destroys vicious animal in attack to save his brother.'" The boy shrugged again. "Actually, I'm a Packer fan. My family's from Milwaukee."

And the reporter turned and said, "Juvenile delinquent kills beloved family pet."

Do you see what I'm saying? It's your agenda. You can structure the thing however you want, and he's still describing the same event. We get that over and over and over again.

The Same Algorithms, Your Eternal Life

Now think about this. This concerns our earthly life. Do you think those same platforms, those same outlets, those same algorithms are doing something totally different with spirituality, with your eternal life? Absolutely not.

They are pounding you with false teachers. You go to YouTube, and you can't swing a cat without getting a false teacher. And it's going to continue to increase. That's why we can't stop hammering on this.

Felt Needs and Word of Faith

Here's how they do it. They take the "shaken together, pressed down, hundredfold this, hundredfold that" and run it through our felt needs. But Jesus did not come for our felt needs.

Word of Faith is heresy. There's no other way to slice it. Couldn't we be nicer about it? Sorry, it's heresy.

And I always say, listen, come on now. Just open your eyes. The God of the universe, the God who made everything, who knows every cell's condition in my body right now, who saved me as a sinner, who is going to welcome me into heaven as if I'm perfect and never sinned because of the sacrifice of Jesus, and you're telling me that to unlock his blessings in my life, I've got to give you money? Nobody thinks, "Wow, this is just insulting," on the surface of it?

What It Looks Like Up Close

I've been fortunate enough to watch some people surrender their lives to Jesus. I've been fortunate enough to be the one to give them the public baptism, out of good old-fashioned obedience, and then walk with them through the early stages of sanctification.

Many times they'll search stuff on YouTube. They'll search sermons and land on these awful false teachers who sound good to the ear, who seem like they're doing good. And then there are others who start out really well, and then they just sink into the sea of "I've got to use this to line my own pockets and build a bigger house."

The Spiritual Application

When you really understand the true gospel, you'll see how false prophets are masquerading around, and you can be watchful. How do you be wise? How do you really understand things? Lay it down next to Scripture, and not cherry-picked verses but the whole of Scripture, understanding that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, and we're not.

Satan, when he masquerades as an angel of light, uses Scripture. That's what he did with Jesus when he tempted him. And it was twisted Scripture, and Jesus responded with truth. He responded with God's Word. You can have someone use God's Word perfectly, like Jesus Christ, because he is God. He is his Word. But you can have somebody else use that same Word, twist it, and try to accomplish evil.

So we need to be watchful. We need to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and guard our hearts and our minds. And by all means:

Matthew 7:15-16

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?"

Thorns and thistles. That one tripped me up in a couple of different broadcast reads decades ago, and it's still there.

Final Thoughts

Now, more than ever, we need to be really careful about those we follow and those we trust. If you're looking for a good teacher, find a good teacher based on trustworthiness, based on credentials, based on all those things. Be careful who you put your trust in.

But remember that Jesus Christ and his Word are 100% reliable, 100% credible, 100% for you. That's where we can go if we're looking to put our faith in someone who is infallible, completely trustworthy, and completely faithful.

Teachers Who Have Stood the Test of Time

There's also the complete body of work from pastors who have died recently. I know this sounds really bad, but stay with me. Praise God for Voddie Baucham, John MacArthur, and R.C. Sproul. Their works now stand the test of time, and I don't think we're going to get a Ravi Zacharias-style investigation after they're gone on any of these guys. That's three strong teachers we can look to.

I still look at guys like Paul Washer and a few others who have such strong teaching, and I hope they stay faithful to their wives and faithful to their ministry. Todd Friel is another one. Justin Peters is another. And there's the Lutheran pastor up north, Chris Rosebrough. These are good Bible teachers who stick to the Word of God, and they come from all different, credible denominations.

Rescued, Surrendered, and Growing

When it comes down to rescuing us out of our sinful state, to us being saved, picking up our cross daily and following him, the question is whether we really understand what it means to surrender ourselves and pick up our cross every day.

We'll find out that A, we're not all that, and B, we can certainly stumble around, fall, and make mistakes all the time. But at the end of the day, as we keep walking in repentance, Jesus will continue to grow you in your sanctification process.

Write It on Your Heart

So write God's Word on your heart, and consume the good chefs out there: the chefs who make good food with pure ingredients and serve you the spiritual food, like the ones just mentioned. If you're going to be on YouTube, especially as a new believer, search those guys. Don't go for the generic, willy-nilly Word of Faith preacher who's a fresh pop-up.

Give them time. These algorithms are pushing some nope-y nonsense, so hold your water before you decide, "Oh, that's good, because it sounds good." No, no, no, no. Give yourself some time. Look at those three things:

1. Knowledge: Make sure they demonstrate a knowledge or a wisdom of the subject.
2. Trustworthiness: Make sure they have proven themselves trustworthy. This takes time.
3. Love: Make sure they truly demonstrate a love and affection toward the brethren.