Building Trust
One of the rhythms we have adopted for our family discipleship is a morning devotion at the breakfast table. It’s been a work in progress getting to this place in our family life. Our three year old usually blows bubbles in his cup throughout the process, but that is leaps and bounds from a few years ago when we would maybe read once every few days in between breakfast eating battles with multiple small kids. God is so faithful to work for our good in His glory, even in the seemingly mundane routines.
This past Sunday trust was the topic of our breakfast table Veggie Tales devotion called God Cares For Me. The title of the day’s devotion was “Trust Only God,” and we read Jeremiah 17:7 together:
“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.”
Those Veggies really know how to get our thoughts going! My ten year old daughter said, “so I can trust that God is going to deliver my costume for my project in time?” My husband and I smiled; truly the faith of a child is a beautiful thing. We talked about how we can trust that God will give her the courage to stand in front of her class, even if the costume does not arrive in time, because we can trust what His word says about Him! That He has given her a Spirit of power and not of fear (2 Timothy 1:7) and that she can trust He is with her so she can be strong and courageous (Joshua 1:9) when she gives her report. We asked her how she knows she can trust God? “Because of what He says in the Bible,” she said.
It seemed providential that guest Pastor Ron Willoughby would later share a message that same morning on trusting God in the 21 Days of Prayer series. Pastor Willoughby took us into Isaiah 26:3-4:
“You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.”
Verse 4 was striking to me. “For the LORD himself.” At the breakfast table earlier that morning, we spoke with our kids about how they come to trust people. We asked them who they trusted more – a stranger or our next door neighbor we have known for 4 years? A classmate’s parent who they have met a few times or their teacher at school with wh0m they spend five days a week? Their teacher at school or us, their parents? What they came to understand was that the people that they trusted were the people that they knew! And that is also how we come to trust in the Lord. We get to know Him, the Lord himself! The knowledge of God comes as He draws us near to Him with our hearts humble. He is gracious and desires a personal encounter with us, an encounter that grows into a relationship built in a trust of His love, provision, character and attributes.
In a recent post about wisdom, I suggested that God reveals His wisdom to us out of a place of worship in three ways: Scripture, prayer, and fellowship with other members of Christ’s Church. I believe that the knowledge of the Lord – His character, His redemptive plan and accomplishment in Jesus Christ for our salvation and sanctification – come from those same disciplines. We cannot fully trust someone when we do not know them. The same can be said about God. In fact, Jesus tells us that we can only come to the Father through Him (John 14:6) and that anyone who knows Him has seen the Father (John 14:9). As the writer of Hebrews tells us:
“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.”
Through reading Scripture, we come to know Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life who was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Through prayer, we can trust that God has and will continue to provide for us the thing that our hearts need the most: Himself. Finally, through fellowship with our Brothers and Sisters, we can grow our trusting relationship with God by sharing our testimonies, walking together in the light and growing into maturity.
And it all starts with getting connected! As we connect to the Lord through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the trust we have in His love for us by the work of Son in our salvation, and the work of the Spirit in our sanctification, we can grow into connection with others in a way that radiates His glory. We can trust that what He said through the prophet Isaiah will come to pass in Isaiah 11:9:
“For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
Until then, we can trust that He is working all things together for the good of those who love Him in Christ Jesus. Praise Him that He is so generous and faithful to us, and I pray that we can all grow in our trust. He is worthy of it all.
KB