Learning To Trust God Completely

After two divorces, I wasn’t sure if I could trust again. You see, we had promised at our wedding that we would be faithful to each other.

Trust and faithfulness go hand in hand.

Being the recipient of unfaithfulness will program most people to distrust others, sometimes even God.

So if you are one who has experienced heartbreak from a spouse, parent, or friend, how do you learn to trust God completely?

What does it mean to “trust” someone?

When we “trust” someone, we believe or have confidence that they are:

• Reliable
• Dependable
• Responsible
• Good
• Faithful
• Believable

There is a story about a man who walked a tightrope across Niagra Falls. He then pushed a wheelbarrow across the tightrope. People were cheering with excitement.

When the man asked several of the onlookers if they believed that he could push the wheelbarrow across the falls with a person in it, everyone said “yes”.

But when the tightrope walker asked someone to get in the wheelbarrow, no one trusted him with their own lives.

Two or three times across the falls on a tightrope was not enough of a track record for him to be believable.

Furthermore, it was not responsible of him to want to risk someone’s life for his own fame.

The bottom line is that we trust people who are looking out for our best interests.

What does it mean to “trust God”?

When we trust God, we believe that He will :

• Protect us
• Love us
• Help us
• Guide us
• Keep His promises to us
• Do what is best for us

In the Book of Proverbs, it says that when we “trust God” He will direct us and guide us.

Have you learned to trust God?

How do we learn to trust God completely?

So even though our spouses, parents, or friends are unfaithful, we can still trust God.

But learning to trust is a process. It is the result of experiencing and observing God’s reliability.

So let’s take a look at God’s faithfulness down through the ages. He has an amazing track record!

Abraham and Sarah learned to trust God

In the Old Testament, God made a promise to Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son.

Having a baby seemed to be a physical impossibility since they were old, and Sarah was infertile as well as past menopause.

In fact, it seemed so ridiculous that Sarah laughed in disbelief when she heard it.

But God kept His promise, and Sarah did conceive and gave birth to a son.

Of course, there is much more to this couple’s story, but this part alone shows the faithfulness of God. What He says can be trusted.

We can learn to trust God from Old Testament prophecies

The Old Testament is full of prophecies or predictions about the coming of Jesus, His birth, life, death, and resurrection.

These prophecies were written hundreds of years before Jesus walked this earth. Yet Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies, which is almost an impossibility. According to mathematicians:

And just in case we are a bit skeptical, there is plenty of physical and historical evidence to substantiate all of it. (2, 3, 4)

We can learn to trust God from our own experience

It is important to keep a journal or some other record of the ways that God keeps His promises to us or answers prayer.

Otherwise, it is all too easy to forget if we don’t have reminders.

Here are a couple of examples.

God gives peace just as He promises

I remember a friend sitting in our community group saying that her job was in question. It would not surprise her if her position was cut and she would be without a job.

She went on to say that “a year ago I would have been panicked. But now since I have a personal relationship with Jesus, I have this peace that I can’t describe.”

A year prior she thought we all were faking it when we talked about having the peace of God when life was hard.

My friend’s experience is something I have written down because I don’t want to forget it.

God makes something good from the bad things in our lives

At the beginning of this discussion, I shared that I had been divorced twice. I wondered, “Can anything good come from this?”

After years since the divorce, I was given the opportunity to begin sharing:

• How God can sustain us even when life is hard
• How we can be fulfilled even when we are single
• How we can trust God even when others are not faithful

Yes, this website, The Creator’s Classroom, is the good that God promised.

I don’t know what you might be facing today, but God does give peace.

Additionally, when we love God, He makes something good from the difficult things we go through.

Can we trust God? Absolutely.

References:

1. Christian Broadcasting Network
2. The Case For Christmas
3. The Case For Easter
4. Evidence That Demands A Verdict