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Do you trust God? Of course!

Anyone who is a born-again Christian trusts God. Still, do we trust Him as much as we are capable of? As much as He wants us to? As much as we want to be able to?
Let us look at it first from God's perspective. God tells us in the Bible that He created us to be His friends. Friendship is based on trust. Damage or destroy the trust, and the friendship is damaged or destroyed.

But God planned a way to reestablish our relationship when we break trust. To be reconciled to God, we must acknowledge our breach of trust and ask His forgiveness.

God is willing to forgive, restore and trust us again and again. We eventually may be unable to trust other human beings if trust is broken too often. But God is different. He never gives up. He never says that we cannot restore our trust in His eyes. In fact, He continues to encourage us to do exactly that.
 

Trusting Through Obedience

If God can continue to trust us, though we continually prove untrustworthy, why is it so difficult for us to trust Him? We know that He is more trustworthy than any of us. Furthermore, God tells us to trust Him. He pleads with us to trust Him.
We want to trust, but somehow we cannot. How do we reach a place of trust? The answer is simple: Step by step.

Trust is directly tied to obedience. As we obey God and He proves faithful, trust is strengthened. So we build trust one step at a time. The more we trust, the more we are able to trust. And the more committed we are to being obedient, the more able we will be to trust Him.

We must change our attitudes as well as our conduct. We must open our hearts to whatever areas of disobedience God would show us and commit ourselves to change whatever God says must change. Of course, as long as we harbor areas of conscious disobedience, one of them may prevent us from trusting God in an apparently unrelated area.

Trusting Amid Failure

Recently I was asked by Mary Jones, widow of my old friend Don, to preach at the funeral of Don's friend, Bill Smith. Apparently Bill had often talked of the message I had given at Don's funeral five years earlier. Now funerals really are not my forte, but I promised to pray about it.

As I prayed and reflected on this request, I came to believe the Lord wanted me to preach Bill's funeral because Bill must have accepted the Lord as his savior during the altar call I gave at Don's funeral. I knew that God was up to something, so I agreed to preach. Little did I know that what God was up to was a test of my ability to trust Him.

Two days later I preached at Bill's funeral at a funeral home where I guessed that most of the congregation was unsaved. I presented the gospel, and I was sure God would bring unsaved family members and friends to Him through it. Nobody said very much after the service, but I figured they were all dealing with Bill's death and would not really reflect on what I had said until afterward.

On the way back home, I glanced at the card the funeral home director had given me when I arrived. Then I looked again. I could not believe my eyes. Bill's name was not Bill. It was Horace! I had spent more than a half hour in that funeral service talking about Bill and how Bill knew Jesus, and Bill's name was not Bill. It was Horace!

I did not even go back to the office. It was only 2:00 p.m., but I was almost physically ill. I went home and tried to forget it. Fat chance. I could think of nothing else. On the one hand, I knew that I had only agreed to do this funeral because I felt that God wanted me to. I had been obedient to God, and if I had gotten the name wrong, it was up to Him to solve the problem.

For the next two days I worked on trusting God. On the second night the dead man's daughter called me for my address. I did not even ask her what her dad's first name had been. If I was wrong, I never wanted to know, and if I was right, God would show me.

In the next morning's mail there was a note of appreciation from a friend of mine who had been one of the pallbearers. He thanked me for the nice job I had done at Bill Smith's funeral. His name was Bill! It was obviously a nickname, but that is how the family and his friends had known him.

God had delivered me. I had achieved a level of trust in God that I had not had before, and after I achieved it, He showed me that He was worthy of that trust.

Trusting Through Death

Even more importantly, we can trust God in the tragedies of our lives. A.J., our only grandson, died of crib death when he was six weeks old. We were grief-stricken.
After the memorial service, my wife Pat was a different person. Why would God let a little baby die? Especially her little baby. Her first grandson. The minister did a wonderful job of describing how heaven was just full of little ones whom God had called home without their having to experience all the pain of living a life on earth. But it did not seem to help.

It took a year or two for Pat to regain her trust in God. She began by not spending any time with Him. She stopped reading her Bible. She stopped having her regular quiet time. I saw it happening, but there was nothing I could do about it. Pat had to rebuild her relationship with God, and I could do nothing but pray.

I began to trust God for Pat. I prayed every day that she would return to an intimate relationship with Him. I knew she would. She was not rebelling. She was not turning her back on God. She was not even mad at Him. She just could not understand.

Slowly, very slowly, she began to renew her faith. She joined an accountability group. They began to encourage her to do little things. Now Pat has her time with the Lord again. God has healed her of her distrust of Him. She still does not understand, but she trusts God again.

Strengthening Trust

Do you trust God? In every area that He wants you to?

Sometimes it is a matter of turning from sin to righteousness. Sometimes it is a matter of just persisting in your belief that He will not let you down. And sometimes trust is just waiting on God to restore your trust in Him.

Wherever you may be in your relationship with God, allow Him to help you trust Him. There is really no other way. Remember, as painful as it is for you to be unable to trust God, it is just as painful to Him to be without your trust. We will not always understand why certain things happen, but we can have the confidence that God is sovereign, even in the worst of circumstances
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NOTE:  All articles © copyright 1997-2007 by Christian Stewardship Ministries. Any portion of the Principles in Practice articles may be downloaded, quoted or reproduced without further permission, provided excerpts are in context, by adding the following credit line: "Reprinted from Christian Stewardship Ministries' Principles in Practice, Fairfax, Virginia," and furnishing a copy to: CSM, 10523 Main Street, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 Phone: (703) 591-5000.