Building Trust

When we think of trust, we think of a lot of things: friends, promises, maybe even the concept of a trust fund (I mean hey, I don’t understand money yet, but some of y’all do), but what exactly is trust, and how do we go about building trust with the Lord?

Trust is defined as reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence; confident expectation of something; hope. Trust is the confident expectation of something that leads to a place of hope. Trust isn’t just a desire for someone to keep their promise; it’s not just a likelihood that someone comes through for you. Trust is confident. Trust is surety. Trust is hopeful. So, what does it look like to trust, and how do we build that with the Lord? To trust in the Lord is to believe that He has our back, like, literally to believe that we can trust Him to watch out for us. Think of a trust fall (I’m aware it’s a commonly used example, but just roll with me). In a trust fall, you can’t see the person who is going to catch you. Your circumstances say that you’re going to fall and hit the ground. However, you choose to confidently believe in what you know to be true, despite what you can see around you. The same applies in our everyday lives with the Lord: believing that He is who He says He is (Healer, Redeemer, Father, Love, Friend, etc.) even when all of your circumstances scream that He’s not who He says He is. To choose truth over what you can see and feel is humility, and it’s the path to hope, which leads to a place of intimacy with the Lord.
 
To build trust with the Lord looks like us coming to Him from a place of humility. What? To trust God looks like us approaching Him and first and foremost admitting that we don’t have the ability to control or fix the things going on around us. It looks like surrendering that desire we have for control. That idea is radically countercultural. We are taught that we need to have ourselves together, clean up our mess (or at least hide it so no one else can see it), and take charge before we involve someone else. To be blatantly honest, that’s pride. To live under the belief that you have to clean up yourself and everything around you before going to God is counterintuitive to the gospel. Instead of inviting Him into your problems, you’ve just isolated yourself and thrown up a wall from the very God who is Healer, Redeemer, Judge, and Love. That doesn’t foster trust because you aren’t allowing Him to have any part in what you’re doing, what you’re feeling, or any part of you.

First and foremost, to build trust with God, you need to have enough humility to admit that He is in control and you are not. Do not hear me say that humility means degrading yourself or that you’re allowed to be lazy. No. Humility is simply acknowledging who God is, and allowing Him to be exactly who He says He is. It’s radical the number of things that change when you begin looking upward instead of inward. If you feel hopeless, don’t look inward at your inability to change your circumstances or your inability to change yourself because that just creates a downward spiral; look to the God who is Himself hope. When you begin to look at Him, your heart and eyes start to adjust, similar to how they would if you turned on the light in a dark room. Your situation starts to look different, even if nothing has physically changed at all. In looking at Him, you begin to see your circumstances through the lens of hope, of relationship, of intimacy, and of love. It’s terrifyingly humble to admit that God is bigger than our feelings, but in choosing humility, you’re building relationship with Him by choosing to believe that He is exactly who He says He is. The more you trust Him, the more intimacy you foster as you know Him more. The more intimacy with Him you gain, the more hope begins to flow inside of you because you are able to step outside of your circumstances and actually encounter the God of love. Simply put, when we live out trust, we are empowered to hope.
 
“Now may God, the inspiration and fountain of hope, fill you to overflowing with uncontainable joy and perfect peace as you trust in him. And may the power of the Holy Spirit continually surround your life with his super-abundance until you radiate with hope!” - Romans 15:13 TPT

He is good. He is for you. You are called to live in the confident expectation that He is exactly who He says He is. So, humble yourself to a place of believing Him for who He is and step into the hope that He brings. You were created for it. All of this, the trust, the falling into His arms, the humility of accepting who He is despite your circumstance, is surrendering our flesh to what our spirit was created to do; the more you do it, the more it makes sense.
 
Author | Garner Gay