Trust is the center tent post in life; it holds everything up. I trust that my grocery store is going to have food, so I don’t have to grow it myself. I trust no one put poison in my toothpaste or nails in my bread. The motorist driving towards me will stay on their side of the road. My secretary will smile at me and not punch me in the face. My car, computer, phone, furnace, and national grid will all work without me having the slightest clue how. I depend on them to behave today the way they behaved yesterday. Nobody knows everything. We are all leaning on someone else’s knowledge and someone else’s expertise. Trust says, “you can lean on me.”
Our relationship with God is built on trust. Time and experience and truth are essential ingredients to us learning more and more how to lean on him; “trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” The deceiver’s first attack in the garden was to erode mankind’s trust in our Heavenly Father. “Did God really say”—so goes the serpent’s lie. Ground zero of his warfare against us is to disrupt our trusting relationship. To not trust in the Father is to drive a wedge between us and cause us to lean on something else for a solution: our own strength, our own ingenuity, our own financial portfolio, and others who can make us happy. This is a misalignment of God’s sacred order.
God is inviting us back into a relationship of leaning on him again, “Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved” (Song of Solomon 8:5)? Especially when my mind can’t see through life’s puzzles, I have to trust in God’s solutions, God’s provisions, and God’s methods. I don’t have to take matters into my own hands. I don’t have to manipulate people or resort to blackmail to get what I need. I don’t have to live in anxiety or hide secrets. I can pray and ask God to provide solutions, and I can experience his peace. Listen to a few of these verses from scripture and see how we can grow in trust.
Psalm 9:10: Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Principle 1: Learn to call on his name—he does not fail us.
Psalm 28:7a: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.
Principle 2: When my heart truly trusts, he gives me power, protection, and help.
Job 8:14: What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web.
Principle 3: Alternatives to God (career, social status) are unreliable.
Deuteronomy 9:23: But you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him.
Principle 4: It requires trust to adhere to God’s ways even when we don’t understand or think we know a better way.
Psalm 20:7: Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
Principle 5: We rely on God, not our personal ability, strength, or cunning.
Psalm 46:10-11: “Be still, and know that I am God…The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Principle 6: Stillness trains us to calm our anxiety and trust in God.
It’s not that we sit around doing nothing and God does all the work for us. But the more we learn to slow down and lean on God in all things, the more we live in a dynamic partnership with his life-giving presence and power. And that makes all the difference.
Tags: trust, power, partnership, strength, faithful, reliable, be still, leaning
