On Trust

One of the longest struggles I have is the ability to just let go and trust people. I struggle the same with trusting God, and I struggle the same with trusting myself. I guess one of the major attribute to this struggle would be from my past experience, where certain betrayals from other people, and certain inconsistencies in my own led me to this struggle.

How this struggle surfaces in reality is I prefer to do everything on my own rather than trusting people on what they say. And when I try to convince myself that I'm gonna change, the back of mind would say "yeah right". The struggle then continues when I'm faced with God's word, who promises the impossible to me...

Proverbs 3:5 says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." The word "own understanding" can also be annotated with past experiences, as most of the times, this is how we understand the world (thru experience). God desire that we trust Him like no one else. He is asking for us to trust Him more than we trust ourselves. And sure, it's a struggle. But the road to trust begins with trusting God first with all our hearts. This means that we are no more fearful of the consequences when obeying Him. We no longer strive to be perfect in men's eyes, but rather, we're only concerned with God's heart and mind. And it's only then, when we've given our very all to Him, obedience in Him will then open the door for us to trust others, and ourselves.

Jesus said that unless we can have faith like a child, we'll not see the Kingdom of God. Our observation of children is that they're gullible, and vulnerable to people that are older than them. They don't question like adults when confronted with doubt, but they just trust that whatever the adult is telling them is true, because all they know is that the adult loves them, and will not lie to them. Of course, in the real world, trust like this have been abused time and again. But when we trust God, we have the assurance that our Father in heaven will never ever succumb to that. He's a good God that loves us and accept us as His children.

It takes a lot to earn some people's trust. And it takes even more to keep it. But here's the easy way: Put our trust in God first. When we trust Him with all our hearts, He will lead us into all truths. He will by His Holy Spirit tell us when a person in our lives are trustworthy or not. He will protect us. And He will also give us the confidence to know that we, no matter what our past may be, can do all things, even things that seem crazy, difficult, or impossible, thru Him who strengthen us...