Trust The Lord Sunrise

Trust is a very fragile commodity.

If your trust has been betrayed, you may never let the person off the hook who violated your trust.

If you violate the trust of people who trust you – like your spouse, or your employers, or your church – you may find it extraordinarily difficult to earn that trust back. 

Trust is most easily and naturally granted when you have a degree of history and familiarity with the person or persons. The longer and more intimately you know someone, the stronger the amount of trust.

The depth and quality of trust is situational and circumstantial. Some personal examples:

  1. I trust my wife with my whole heart, as I’m sure she trusts her whole heart with me. After 33 years of intimate relationship “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”, our trust is battle proven.
  2. Recently I literally had to trust the medical staff at the hospital with my life. They had authority and credibility as credentialed experts in the field of medical care. I had to choose to trust their knowledge and training, and believe they were acting in my best interests.
  3. My first full-time church staff position was not as a worship leader, but as a youth pastor. Why? Because after 20 years of proving myself capable and trustworthy as a volunteer leader in that community, when the need arose, I was asked to apply for the position. (And that’s another God story.) So I started as a youth pastor with a great amount of trust from the stakeholders.

One of the most important lessons I learned as a youth pastor was that trust is not to be taken for granted. It was our responsibility as we served parents and students to continually act in a manner that would build their trust. Trust may be given at first, but it must be earned to be retained.

Trust can be lost in a moment of bad judgement, and take a lifetime to rebuild.

Yet, as humans created in the image of God, we are designed to trust. We are inclined to trust. As children, we naturally trust adults. Trust is essential to healthy relationships.

But we learn not to trust. We get burned, or hurt or traumatized and we get conclude we have to look out for ourselves, cause no one else will. Our hearts get hard.

So the wisdom of this Proverb to “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” may be a little tough to swallow. You may feel you’ve endured too much suffering for God to be trusted.

If that’s you, the real question is this – how’s that working out for you?

The writer of Proverbs is offering supernatural wisdom – skill for successful living – in these words.  As Matthew Henry says in his commentary, we have to believe that God is wise and acting in our best interests.

We must trust in the Lord with all our hearts, believing he is able and wise to do what is best. Those who know themselves, find their own understandings a broken reed, which, if they lean upon, will fail.

For some of us, to act as if God is trustworthy, may take a leap of faith. But if you choose to believe, you will find the richer reward.

Nobody is smarter than God. Test Him in this. Commit today to wholeheartedly live God’s way. He promises it will work out for your very best.

Proverbs 3:5-8

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all.
Run to God! Run from evil!
Your body will glow with health,
your very bones will vibrate with life! The Message

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About Season Of Light

I am writing a devotional series called “Season of Light” (#SeasonOfLife) during the beginning of 2016, focusing on the 40 day season of Epiphany (from January 6 – February 10). We’ll explore the major biblical themes of the beginning of Jesus ministry, and I’ll comment as the Holy Spirit inspires. This is for the purpose of growing in our relationship with the Lord. My desire – my hope and prayer for you – is that your heart may expand and your spirit grow brighter as we seek to be filled with the knowledge and presence of God. So, I invite you to join me on the “Season of Light” journey!

Often I’ll be inspired by a scripture from the Daily Audio Bible readings and use that as a writing prompt. Here’s today’s DAB readings for January 10:

Genesis 23:1-24:51; Matthew 8:1-17; Psalms 9:13-20; Proverbs 3:1-6