Trust by definition is a firm
belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.
Trust is a simple
word, but it is mankind that makes it complicated. Our trust in things and people is dependent upon
our life experiences. When I go to sit
down on a chair I trust it will hold me up; it will not collapse or fall
over. I trust it will hold me up because
it (and the many other chairs I sat on in my lifetime) has held me up before. So, trust can be built up and strengthened by
previous experience.
If a policeman in
uniform stops to help me change my flat tire on the highway I trust him. I trust him because I have been taught from
the time I was very little that policemen are good and I can always turn to
them for help. That is my life
experience with policemen. I have friends
that are African American and their experiences with policemen are different. They share stories of being pulled over
because they were driving expensive cars or they are told they look like criminals. So, trust can be torn down by
the actions of others.
When it comes to our
view of God, do we trust Him? I have
been thinking about this question a lot lately because of a young couple who mourn
the loss of their little girl. They
asked their church, churches in their community, and believers all over the
world to pray for her physical resurrection.
It did not happen and a memorial service has finally been
scheduled. Many Christians really trusted
God and prayed for her resurrection, I being one of them. So how does this incident color our trust in
God?
Do I trust God? I actually found the answer to this question very
firmly in January of 1988 while I was doing mission work in Jamaica. Our mission team went to a local hospital
near St. Ann’s Bay to do a puppet show and pray for the children in their
children’s ward. When we walked onto the
ward I was stunned. The ward was one
room about 40 by 50 feet and filled wall to wall with beds and cribs. There were two to three children to a
crib. Many of them were crying. We set up our puppet stage (basically two of
us would hold up a blanket on either end and three of us would get behind it
and do our puppet show) and when we started the music and the puppets came up
the whole room became instantly quiet.
We finished the show and went from bed to bed/crib to crib praying for
the children. There was one large crib
with one side down and a girl, about 10 or 12, lying in it barely breathing. She was going through what the medical
profession calls Cheyne–Stokes. This
kind of breathing often happens when someone is dying. My heart was filled with compassion as I
recognized her symptoms and I prayed for her healing fully believing God would
heal her. She died later that day.
I was devastated and
angry with God for not healing her, especially after I fully believed He
would. My trust in Him was eroded. Later that day, as we were working on
scraping and repainting the inside of the Brethren Church in St. Ann’s Bay I got
off by myself and cried.
Letting the tears
fall freely I asked, “Father God, didn’t
You say You were the God of miracles?
Where’s the wisdom of letting that little one die? Are you really real or is the Bible just full
of made-up words?” I cried out these and
many more accusations against Him.
When I finally cried
so much that I felt exhausted and spent I became quiet enough to hear His
response, “If I fail you, will you still trust Me?” We have been taught in Sunday school and church that God will never fail us so my automatic response was, “You never
fail us.” God quietly repeated to me, “If
I fail you, will you still trust Me?” He
then had my attention. I thought, “Would I, would I really trust Him if He
failed me? Would I trust Him if he let
me get deathly sick, like that little girl?
Would I?” I thought about my life as a Christian. I thought about how I had trusted Him through
thick and thin from when I accepted Him as my Savior in 1973 and then up to
that point in 1988. I asked myself that
day, “Would I trust Him”? Then I told
Him, “Yes, Lord, I will trust You”. I
sensed a great yielding in my spirit as I did this. That day established a rock-solid trust of
God in me that has been the foundation for how I respond to everything since.
When I was fired
from my job I was frustrated, but I still trusted Him. When a Christian girlfriend died I grieved,
but I still trusted Him. When I became
very ill and my heart was failing, I still trusted Him. When I had to move away from all my friends
and church family I became homesick, but I still trusted Him. Now, when I need to live in assisted living
and am dependent on others for transportation and other needs, I still trust
Him. I look at all these negative milestones
in my life and I have grown through them BECAUSE I TRUSTED HIM. I made a CHOICE to trust Him no matter what I
went through: happy, sad, or
failure. Like the Twila Paris song says,
“I will trust You, Lord when I don’t know why; I will trust You, Lord, till’
the day I die; I will trust You, Lord when I’m blind with pain; You were God
before and You’ll never change; I will trust You, I will trust You, I will
trust You, Lord…”
My encouragement to
you today is to CHOOSE to trust Him no matter what happens. He has great things in store for you!
(Next Week continues the
series, “The Battlecry”)
