“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…” Proverbs 3:5
When times are hard and life appears to be uncertain in the midst of your current circumstance, being told to trust and hold on to faith, just seems easier said than done. But why then if it is so difficult to trust in trying times, are we called to do so with even greater faith and motivation? I suppose the more appropriate question is, if we are to trust during the dry seasons of our lives.....how are we supposed to do it and what does fully trusting look like?
Lets take a look at what it really means to trust and then dig deeper and look at what God really means when He asks us to trust Him.
According to Webster’s dictionary Trust is defined as:
Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something or one in which confidence is placed.
So what does God mean when He asks us to trust Him? Essentially, if we use the definition above, God is asking us to rely on His character, His ability, His strength and His truth to bring us through whatever circumstance we are finding ourselves in.
What do we know to be true about God’s Character? According to John W. Ritenbaugh author of The Covenants, Grace and Law (Part 20), “God is not merely eternal. He is supreme in every quality of goodness, and in Him absolutely no evil dwells. In the Bible, this goodness is called holiness, which is transcendent purity. It permeates every aspect, every attribute, of God-life. God's character is holy, and it flows out from Him in acts of love, making it impossible for Him to do anything evil. This is the state towards which He is drawing us.”
Here we learned that God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love. What about God’s ability? What do we know to be true about God’s ability?
Paul in his letter to the Church in Ephesus writes this about God’s ability, “ Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all the generations, forever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21. God is God. He has no bounds or limits, He can do all things. Lets look at some specific things that have been noted in the Bible that God is able to do:
God is able to turn bad news into good news as he did for Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died. Jesus came and said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23). God is able to turn disappointments into divine appointments as He did with Mary Magdalene when Jesus appeared to her in the garden where Mary came to grieve the loss of Jesus who had been crucified three days before (John 20:11-18). God is able to turn nothing into something or little into plenty as He did with the two fish and the loaf of bread when Jesus used that to feed the 5,000 men and their families (John chapter 6). When times seem hopeless and there seems to be no help, God is able to heal and bring hope just as He did when Jesus healed the bleeding sick woman that touched his cloak (Matthew 9:18-26). God is able to transform our lives if we allow Him. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God is able to make us able to do and handle all things. “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phillipians 3:14).
It appears that God’s ability is not the issue at hand, rather, the issue lies in the mere fact that many of us have faith and believe God was able in the “biblical times,” but for some reason we find it difficult to believe this very truth in the present day. Faith is what puts God’s ability to work in our lives.
This then brings us to what we have found thus far: God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love and He is able to do all things as He has no bounds outside of our free will and can even move and work through us if we have the Faith that allows Him to do so. What about His strength? What do we know about His strength and how does it pertain to putting our trust in Him?
According to gotquestions.org “The word “strength” and its derivatives are mentioned over 360 times in the Bible, applying to both natural and supernatural strength. The Greek word katei means power, strength, might. Paul tells us to “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10). Paul is telling us that the unlimited power and strength of Christ is the source of strength for those who belong to Him.” This then means that the strength we have seen exemplified in the New Testaments through the life of Christ Jesus is the same strength we who believe and belong to Him attain within us! Now that is a powerful revelation!
Lets recap once more, God’s character is holy and it flows out from Him in acts of love. He is able to do all things and can even move and work through us if we have the faith that allows Him to do so. God is strong and powerful and we who belong to Him attain this same source of strength because of Christ who lives within us! This now brings us to His truth. What do we need truth for in terms of trusting?
In John 8:21-32 Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Later in the book of John, John records the time that Jesus comforted his disciples prior to His crucifixion and he tells them, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). So here we gather that Jesus is the truth and we get to the Father through Him and truth sets us free. Jesus sets us free. He sets us free from the bondage of our circumstances, He sets us free from the bondage of our sin, He sets us free from the troubles we are in, He sets us free from the patterns we often repeat. Why, how you ask? Because He can do all things and He has already given us the strength to endure all things and all of this is His way of loving us by giving us the free will to chose to believe that God is who He says He is despite what curve balls life throws our way.
It seems that to fully be able to trust we must first have a better understanding and knowing of who it is that we are trusting or what it is that we are putting our trust into. So when people tell us the cliché “Trust in the Lord and all will be well,” that may not be so “cliché” anymore now having acquired a better understanding of who God is and what He is asking to put our trust in, which is: His firm never changing, mighty character, His ability to work in our lives, His strength which He freely gives us and in His truth which sets us free from the very thing we are seeking refuge from. Let your hope and your faith rest in this understanding as your trust begins to grow and your troubles begin to fade.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.”- Jesus (John 14:1)
References
http://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/3388/Character-Gods.htm#ixzz1Pw2FIV51
Websters Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/definition
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