God, I Trust you. Lord, I believe in you.
Oh, how often we hear these words. Whether they rolled off our own tongue or from the many who claim to be believers of the Most High God. These words are often said as one will speak of all the great things in their life. They are followed by what one “believes” God has done for them or is doing for them. These are too often words only spoken in praise when one is rejoicing because they are in a “good” place.
But
When we say, “God I trust you,” we should mean just that. This should not be a conditional thing or phrase. We cannot TRUST God only when times are good and things are going our way.
Trust is believing in God all the time. Trust is not believing what God can provide, it comes from knowing and understanding who He is.
See, we like to trust God for things and unfortunately, this comes with a false understanding of what our relationship with Him should be like. God is not just a giver of things we celebrate and praise only after receiving something. No, He is my Help and sustainer.
God is always there watching and listening to us. He knows when we are tired and weak. He knows our needs well before we go before Him crying in despair. By the time we have gone to Him, He has already set things in motion to provide for us. See when we really, really trust and believe in God, we can keep our heads lifted up in times of trouble. We do not have to go about “making a way” or “try to figure things out.” It is during those times when we should truly be using the words, “God I trust you. This is when we show that we believe in the one from where our Help comes from.
It is easy to believe and trust when we see things happen, but when the going gets tough…well, these are the times when He wants us to hold true to our words. One thing, I have learned over the years, is that God seems to hold us very accountable to our words. As soon as we go about telling everyone how great He is and all that He has done for us, it seems those are the times “the bottom falls out.” I have been there time and time again. I call it the “Job Season.”
Have you ever really paid attention to the beginning of Job. He was such a faithful servant, strong in his belief. Then one day the adversary tries to tell God that Job only believes and trusts God because God has protected him. The adversary believes that if God did not have a fence around Job, then Job would basically no longer trust and believe in God.
This is much like our scenarios, day by day. As long as we feel protected, we trust, but what happens when we are tried by the adversary? What happens when he comes and rocks our world trying to take everything away? What happens when he seems to destroy everything we worked so hard to maintain or achieve? What happens when things get dark and gray and there seems to be no way out? Will we still say, God I trust you? It is hard. This I know for certain. Yet, I want to encourage you that these are the times when we must trust and believe the most. These are times when we must activate our faith, not in what God can do, but simply in who He is.
When we trust God, especially in times of trouble, we are saying, “I have no idea how things are going to turn around, but I believe that because He is God, I will make it through.” I have no idea what the road ahead will look like, but if He says Go, I will trust that He will see me through this. We will trust God when He says Go, stay, move, or even when He says “No, not yet.”
Whoa, what? God says “No?” Well, isn’t that hard to believe? But yes, we have to trust even when He says, “No.” Remember, He knows what we need even before we realize it. So, that also means that when we believe something may be right for us, He will say, “No.” Why? because for those things, we are attempting or trying to attain, He is letting us know that this is not what He had in mind, these are the things we have tried to makeshift to provide for ourselves.
We have to trust that when He stops us in our tracks of piecing our lives together, that He has our best interest in His heart and mind. He knows more than what we see. Therefore, he knows the turn of events that will come when we are thinking about heading in a certain direction. As our Help, He is helping us stay away from what will cause us trouble.
God our help, keeps us from trouble and restless nights. He protects us from situations that will cause us harm and despair. But when we start leaning on our own understanding, trying to “figure things out,” well trouble and despair is inevitable. Why? because we did not trust Him.
We thought we now had to become our provider. We thought it was time to take control of our life, walking away from what God has set up for us. Then we want to blame God. Well, the truth is we are the ones to blame. We just said we trusted Him, but when we couldn’t figure out the next move…when we could not see the light ahead when we did not understand how things would work…We no longer believed. We took our eyes off God and began looking, searching, and creating a means for ourselves.
It is like when we have an item to put together and it came with instructions. We are so excited to put this together, but because the instructions seem so complex or lengthy, we glance them over and then toss them aside. We begin our project believing we can do this without the very instructions that came with the item. Sometimes, we make it work. We get the item together and perhaps took a few short cuts. “Oh yeah!” We got it together. It is all in one piece and we feel proud as we stick our or chest in what we have accomplished. BUT, how long will that last? How sturdy it is? Oh, and just how many pieces did we have “leftover” because we left them out?
This is like our lives. We skip steps and leave important pieces out when we take our eyes off God, and start “figuring things out” on our own. Yes, things look good for the moment, but exactly how long will this last? We created a temporary fix when God provides a permanent path of safety for us. I do not know about you, but to keep having temporary fixes seems like an awful lot more work. It may be tough to stick out the process, but at least I know I will not be back around this way again, doing the same thing in the near future. yeah…I would much rather keep moving forward, trusting God, than moving in constant circles wearing myself out. I am just not about that life.
So, this morning, as you start your day, I ask, Do you really trust God? Have you been really trusting God or have you been in a state of trust-based only on what you see?
It is time to evaluate what we are saying and believing and take it up a notch. Let’s move forward trusting who God is and not just what He has done for us. God is our keeper, he will never fore sake you nor leave you. Trust in Him and sing those praises of TRUST even when we cannot see the road ahead. Know that, no matter what comes our way, He is there with us, providing our every need, even before we knew the need existed.
