Trust--in the Right Thing

Before my little devotional on trust was released by the publisher, one-third of the print run had been preordered. That fact revealed something big: trusting God is a struggle for many of us. But the book sales revealed something else: women who are struggling with trust want to solve their struggle. They want to know how to trust God.

The key to trust is simple—it's not always easy, but it is simple. If we want to become women who trust God, there are three things we must do:

(1) We have to let go of our heart's craving to control our lives and the lives of those we love. But we'll never to give up control unless (2) we believe that God is good. And in order to get the truth of God's goodness established in our minds and hearts, we've got to do the third thing: (3) cast ourselves on Christ—for everything—even for the enabling to trust. That's it, the three keys to trust: give up control, believe that God is good, and rely completely on Christ.

A long time ago I loved someone who became addicted to drugs. I prayed for him and poured my life into helping him. I wanted to fix that situation with all my heart. But nothing worked. And eventually I had to give up. No matter what I did, no matter what I forgave—the stealing, the lying, the excuses—nothing changed. There came a point when the godliest thing I could do was to stop rescuing him. Putting him out of my life was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But I did it.

Immediately after I was heartbroken, and I went through many moment of second-guessing my decision, so I asked a friend to come stay with me for a few days for moral support. I remember talking about it with her that first night, and I said, "I just have to trust that God won't let him end up dead in an alley with a needle in his arm."

I'll never forget her reply, because it got to the heart of the matter: "That's not trust. . . . Real trust is knowing that even if he ends up dead in an alley with a needle in his arm, God was still in control."

She was right. It gets to the heart of our problem, doesn't it? We usually believe God is able to intervene in our difficulty and do something about it. What we don't believe is that he's going to work out our difficulty—whether it's a relationship or a money problem or loneliness or an unmet longing--in a way that we're going to like.

So we try to take control of the situation so that we can manage the outcome.Instead of trusting God, we trust our idea of how things should be. Is it any wonder that we're anxious? When we try to take the place of God in running our lives, anxiety is inevitable, because deep down we know we can't really control anything.

Besides, because God is faithful to us, he won't let our efforts at control go smoothly for very long. Oh, we may feel on top of things for season, but eventually something happens to knock down the illusion.

There's only one path to peace, and that is trust—real trust. Genuine trust isn't wishful thinking, hoping that God will work things out in a particular way. Real trust is placing our problem in his hands and leaving it there, believing that whatever he does is good.

He knows our situation inside and out. He is totally in control of our employment status, our marital status, our finances, our friendships, and our health. And his control is governed by his kindness and love. Since this is the God to whom we belong, we can leave the answer to our problems completely in his hands. He will never arrive too late. What does God want from us more than anything else? He wants our trust in his kindness toward us in Christ.