Trust

Trust is an intriguing issue, particularly when it comes to trusting God. Many of us hear about trust daily. The people I work with, for example, don't trust one another and make no bones about that. They stand around in their free time, talking about who stole (is stealing or will steal) whose sale. Those of us who share secrets think long and hard about who needs to know. There are some friends with whom we don't share secrets until the secret is about to be made public. (Often, the secret is made public, in part, through that friend.) Then there's the old Trust Fall. In a Trust Fall one person stands on something at least three feet in the air, facing away from a small group of people. The group divides in two, and the two smaller groups stand facing each other, arms extended toward one another. The person facing away from the group says, "Ready?" The group responds, "Ready." The person announces, "Falling!" The group says, "Fall away!" The person keeps their body in a "standing" position and falls backward from the pedestal, trusting that the group will catch them.

Can we really apply any of these scenarios to God though? I suppose that we could trust God to be a team player if we were in sales with Him, and we can certainly trust Him with a secret. He catches us when we fall into the unknown. Is this it, though? Reading 1 Chr 5:20 in its context causes me to question that. The verse says that the tribes of Reuben and Gad, along with the half-tribe of Manasseh, cried out to God during their battle against the people living east of the Jordan River. It says God heard their prayer because they trusted in Him. What was the nature of their trust? It must have been more than the kind of trust we're trying to build at work. After all, fighting a battle is much more serious than achieving a sales goal. A battle is much more important than a secret, too. (Although some secrets have been the initiation of some battles.) Moving blindly into battle could be akin to the Trust Fall, but the person falling is only falling three feet, and there's an entire group of people waiting to catch the friend. God is unseen (usually) and has been known not to be pliable to human will.

What, then, is trust? This morning my mind immediately recalled the heart of the psalmist in Psalm 31, whose trust is obvious and whose words were partially repeated by Jesus in His Passion:

"In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge; ...In Your righteousness deliver me.... Be to me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me.... For Your name's sake You will lead me and guide me.... Into Your hand I commit my spirit."

This is one among many passages like it that really schools us about trust. Often, we think trust is identified by following God blindly into a new ministry position or taking on a project with shaky funding and staffing. We think trust is going out and getting groceries, wondering how a bill would be paid. (You can insert your own trust assumptions here with mine, if you want.) What Psalm 31 teaches us about the trust exhibited by the warriors above is threefold:

1) Trusting God is about who God is. He is our refuge. He is our deliverer. He is our rock of strength. The righteous run into Him as a stronghold. His name is powerful. His arm fights our battles for us. His mighty chariots are the ones that rout our enemies' armies. He alone has authority and power to save anyone.

2) Trusting God is not about us. Note that the psalmist wrote, "For your namesake." Other places in the Psalms (and throughout the Old Testament) one can read phrases like "because of Your lovingkindness" or "because You are merciful." When we pray in trust, we pray along with Daniel in Dan 9:18: "O my God, lean down and listen to me. Open Your eyes and see our despair.... We make this plea, not because we deserve help, but because of your mercy."

3) Trusting God is eternal. For the warring Israelites, it is easy to see the life-and-death consequences of trust. Even for them, though, their trust involved more than a hope for survival. They understood that their battle wasn't against flesh and blood alone, knowing that the victory won that had eternal implications between God and His enemies. They knew that some of them would die, but they trusted that those deaths would lead to the victory of the group and life in Paradise with the Lord. The psalmist wrote, "Into Your hand I commit my spirit." In other words, "Into Your hand I entrust my eternal well being." Trusting
God isn't about picking the right project, moving to the right place, paying bills, winning arguments, or maintaining a good reputation alone. Trusting God is ultimately about believing that we can relinquish control of our present and eternal destinies because God has our best interests in mind. Like Psalm 31:1 says, God will not shame us. We can trust Him!!