Monday Morning Devotion-November 18, 2019
A Matter of Trust
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6
Ever heard the statement: "I could trust him/her about as far as I could throw them?"
How many times have you run across someone that you were unsure if you really could trust their information or the things they were doing? OK. Sorry to start off this devotion with such a negative slant but let's face it. The truth is that being able to trust someone is valuable.
There are times when all you have to go on is someone's word. You have to trust them. We have all experienced a letdown when another person, whom we trusted, is unable to live up to their promise. And if we are honest I'm sure each us can recall, as painful as it might be, a time we failed when someone was trusting us to do something.
Yes, trust is important. Let's start with the bare bones. Basically, what is trust anyway? Webster says that trust is a bunch of things. Perhaps the easiest and simplest definition to grab hold of is that trust is "confident expectation, anticipation or hope."
The dictionary also defines trust as: "a firm belief or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability, justice, etc. of another person, or thing."
We all have people that we trust in our lives. But, since there are no perfect people there are times you will feel let down by that person. Maybe it's a simple feeling of something not working out as you had hoped for. Certainly, you have been on the other end of that spectrum also where you were the let-downer instead of the let-downee.
Pastor/author Joyce Meyer writes: "For a long time, there was so much turmoil in my life. It really saddens me to think about all the years I wasted living this way.
I was a Christian and went to church, but I spent a lot of my time being upset about things I couldn't do anything about and had continual feelings of guilt and condemnation much of the time. As a result, I had no peace and just didn't enjoy life.
But thank God, I've experienced radical transformation in my soul. And the answer was developing a habit of learning to trust God at all times, in every area of my life."
For trust to be real and warranted it starts with putting our trust in God. And what does it mean to trust God?
Meyer says: "Trusting God is simply believing that He loves you and knowing He's good. He has the power to help you, and He wants to help you."
Continuing, Meyer explains: "Christians are called believers, but many times, we are more like unbelieving believers. We trust our friends, the bank, the stock market or the government more than we trust God and His word."
In John 15:5, Jesus says apart from Him, we can do nothing. We need to lean on Him for help with everything in our lives.
Ryan Maher (www.ryanmaher.net) puts in everyday language as to why we need to put our trust in God. "This isn't God's 'first rodeo.' He has been in the business of helping His people since He first created people. As humans, we are all alike. We are unique in our own ways, however, so much of our lives are exactly the same.
* We have insecurities.
* We eat
* We must sleep
* We breathe
* We go to the bathroom
* We strongly desire love
* We sin.
* We get cold
*We love Doritos (okay, maybe not all of us)
You get the point. God is not surprised by our behavior. Mankind has been acting these ways since the beginning.
The takeaway for all of this is that God is on your side and He is worthy of your trust. He has proven Himself and He wants to help you. "
We often solve our problems by simply using common sense. Does trusting God mean ignoring our own common sense? The Quest Study Bible answers this way:
"God's wisdom is not at war with common sense. But often common sense alone isn't enough to give the needed direction for a particular decision. That's why filling our minds with the perfect Word of God is so important. Psalm 18:30 As for God, His way is perfect. The word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield. By grounding our common sense in God's Word , we rely on faith not ourselves."
When we search the scriptures for advice about trusting God we find that the word "trust" occurs 134 times in the Old Testament in the King James version. But if you count variations of it such as; trusted; trustedst; trustest; trusteth; trusting and trusty, this bulks the number of times you'll find info about trust or it's variations to be 190 times. Obviously, the writers of scripture felt like trusting God was a very important concept. (www.quora.com).
In the closing pages of his acclaimed book on trust "Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts" by the late Jerry Bridges, which I read years ago on the recommendation of FSU baseball coach Mike Martin, has this important information to consider:
"To trust God in times of adversity is admittedly a hard thing to do. I do not mean to suggest in my emphasis on choosing to trust God that the choice is as easy as choosing whether or not I will go to the store°Trusting God is a matter of faith, is the fruit of the Spirit°The whole idea of trusting God is, of course based upon the fact that God is absolutely trustworthy.
In the United States of America our country was founded on faith that speaks of our trust in the Almighty. We have only to look at our money to verify that. On the back of any coin we read these words:
"In God we Trust."
Prayer: Lord may our trust in you be our guide as we lead our lives. Amen!