Trust Issues

Tough Times

These days have been hard on the church. They have been specifically hard on the little church that I serve. We have lost loved ones—brothers, husbands, uncles, mothers, and friends. We have seen various families touched by tragedy. It has also been difficult for my own family.

For the past year, we have been pursuing an adoption. We have come to love this child deeply. We have come to care for him as our own. But he is not yet our own. We have recently hit a bump in the road that currently feels more like a pothole big enough to total the car. 

It’s not the first obstacle we have faced in this process. It is not the first time that we have felt this dependent on the Lord. We have felt this before. A few of these times were dark. This time is not all that different. 

Through it all, we have had to fight to trust in the Lord. It is not that we have doubted his goodness. It is not that we have questioned his love. But there have certainly been times where it feels like we have trust issues. 

When “trust” is all you have left

I don’t want to come off as being melodramatic. Perhaps we are quite weak compared to other Christians when it comes to suffering. Maybe you can tell stories and show scars that we could not even begin to fathom, but this is our current war story.

We’ve been scarred by some of what has happened, but we have also noticed something beautiful, something grand in all of this: God’s love seems sweeter now than it did before. His mercies have been amplified by our bad experiences. God has used our troubles to draw us to a greater awareness of our dependance upon him. 

The real trust issue was not that we did not trust the Lord, but that we did not yet know how to trust him in these difficulties. It was in love that God brought us through them that we might trust him more! The real issue with our trust is that we didn’t know how much we needed to trust him, mixed with some misplaced trust in circumstances that takes things for granted.

Once you get past your own trust issues—where you have been placing your trust in the wrong things—you begin to trust God all the more. This is not pop-psychology in theological garb. This is just how God seems to have worked in our lives. And I don’t believe that we are the only ones. He is doing all of this for his own glory, purifying a people for himself, that they may rejoice in him and in his salvation; that they may trust and glory in his name!

Why it matters

The ultimate end of your struggles as a believer is the worship of your God. He does that in part by reminding you of past mercies. Yes, primarily in his mercy on display at the cross. Still, he even uses past mercy in similar circumstances to the ones we are facing now so that we can trust him more fully. We can confidently say, “I have been here before. I don’t know how this ends, but I know at least part of what God is doing. He is growing me. He is shaping my heart, conforming it to the image of Christ.”

Maybe you are reading this article and you can’t relate. Are you new to trusting Christ? Keep trusting. Surround yourself with other believers who can share their scars of coming to greater trust in the Lord. Are you not sure you have trusted Christ at all? I have some good news for you.

God has created us to live for him. We are sinners and unable to enter his presence as such. God himself made a way by sending his own Son to die the death we deserve, bearing the wrath for our sin, that all who trust in him alone would be saved through the forgiveness of sin unto eternal life. He proved the eternal promise by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. All those who repent of their sin and trust in Christ alone will stand justified before God because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Do you believe this? Are you trusting in this truth?

We do not often get insight to the outcome of our present troubles. We may not know how this particular situation ends. But we can trust God in the process. Will you trust him with your troubles today?