“Trust in the Lord with all your heart”

Why is it hard and what about trusting people?

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” 
Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart” Here we have maybe one of the most well known and quoted Bible verses. It encourages us to trust in God, not sometimes or when it feels good, but with all our hearts. It also calls us to a life of not trusting only in what makes sense, what we can figure out with our own understanding, but to anchor our heart to God and trust Him to direct our paths. 

In the Bible we can clearly see that God is someone we can trust. He promises big things, that maybe in the moment feel impossible but we can also see that He is faithful to complete what He has promised. One example of this is when God promises to Abraham that his descendants will be many, we can read this story in Genesis chapter 12.

“I will make you into a great nation,  and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing!”

Genesis 12:2

At this moment both Abraham and his wife are already old and have not had children yet, so when God speaks this it seems impossible, but He is a God that keeps His promises and a couple chapters later Isaac, their son is born. 

“Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” Genesis 21:1-2

God proves his faithful character again and again in the Bible, and we can clearly see that even in shaky times, He can be trusted.

But why is it then sometimes hard for us to trust in the Lord?

We established in the previous paragraph that God is trustworthy, and that is true. What is also true is that we at times struggle to trust Him, and I think that’s something we’ve all experienced. 

It can be that our circumstances have been difficult, an example could be that we are in a season of financial difficulty and we have not seen the breakthrough that we had hoped for. This situation can easily create a belief in our hearts that God doesn’t keep His promises and that He can’t be trusted, and understandably so. 

If we have many situations like this in our lives this belief that God can’t be trusted can become more and more like a stronghold in our mind and put a filter on the view of God that we have. What is important in these situations is to not just try to force ourselves to trust in God, but to ask for help – from God or from other people. To let God and the truth He has touch those parts of our lives where things got twisted, to let Him heal us and re-establish truth in our lives. 

The enemy wants more than anything to stop our relationship with God and will do everything in his power to destroy the trust we have in God. He will also attack us when he sees that we are weak, and help build the lie about God that a situation can teach us. 

This is why it’s especially important for us to stay close to God in difficult seasons and spend a lot of time with Him and His word that leads us into truth. He is close to the brokenhearted. 

And what about trusting people?

So God is worthy of our trust, but what about people? Can we trust people and is that even something we are supposed to be doing? People, even though they are created in the image of God, and not a perfect reflection of Him and will, contrary to God, again and again prove to us that they are not trustworthy. 

We are not supposed to be doing life alone and we belong together with the body of Christ, which means that we need to have relationships with other people and relationships require trust. 

How to trust people

But how can we trust people when they prove to us that they aren’t worthy of our trust?

This question can be answered in many ways, but this time I will choose a simple answer; because God trusts us. He has every reason not to, but he trusts us to represent Him on this earth and to share about Him to other people. Or maybe it’s like this: When we become saved God himself starts to live in us, through the Holy Spirit. So maybe He is not trusting us but Himself in us and that is enough.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Gal 2:20

Not the people, but God in them. Through the hurt and the times of forgiveness. We are created to be together, and then it has to be not just possible, but also something that is good for us and something He will guide us through. Isolation and mistrust because of past hurt is not going to help us, and through choosing forgiveness and letting God heal us we can ask God to renew our ability to trust the people we have in our lives. 

Remember, God trusts you, Himself in you. What a crazy thought that is. Let’s mirror Him in this area as well! To trust other people yes, but also to trust the Lord.

Prayer:

God, help us to trust you with all our hearts. Remove anything that hinders us to do that, every lie and experience that speaks against this truth. Renew our trust in you. Help us also to trust people, and to choose to forgive and keep loving also when it’s difficult. We commit to not isolate ourselves, but to remain close to the body of Christ. Keep renewing our hearts and minds in this area. We love you. Amen!