3 tips for trusting God (part 1)

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight” (Prov 3:5-6).

Christians can, on occasion, find it hard to trust God in the situations that they face. It is not that God is not trustworthy, more that we can sometimes struggle to look away from the things that make us anxious, to a place where we rest in the peace that God wants to give us.

Today’s two verses from the Book of Proverbs give us three instructions that I believe help us to obey Jesus’ teaching in Matt 6 when he said, “do not worry about your life” (Matt 6: 25).

First, “trust in the Lord with all of your heart”. If you have been a follower of Jesus for any amount of time you will have read many verses that tell us, or encourage us, to put our trust in God. We can speak out our faith in God in difficult circumstances and we can read stories of others who have remained steadfast, hanging on to the promises of the Lord through life’s challenges.

But sometimes the concept of trust stays in our heads (that is, “I know I need to put my faith in God in this situation, so I’ll just keep saying the verses”) but it doesn’t reach our hearts. God wants us – you, to trust Him from the depths of your heart. How do we do that?

I am still learning this, but I find it helpful to think about those attributes of God’s character that particularly speak to the human heart. Here are a couple that speak to me:

First, God is kind. Following the Lords severe judgment of the nation of Israel by way of their Babylonian captivity, He made this promise to His children through the prophet Isaiah,

“In a surge of anger

I hid my face from you for a moment,

but with everlasting kindness

I will have compassion on you,”

says the LORD your Redeemer (Isaiah 54: 8).

God is a God of compassion, and His everlasting kindness is always directed towards His people – towards us. Therefore, He will treat you kindly in your situation.

Second, God is faithful. What does it mean that God is faithful? Deuteronomy 7: 9 reminds us that “…he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”

A thousand generations is a very long time. If five generations is about a hundred years, then a thousand must be at least two hundred times that. As Christians, our spiritual roots come from God’s chosen people in the scriptures, way back in history. And Christ himself. Jesus perfectly loved His Father and kept His commandments. Therefore, God faithfully keeps His covenant of love to Him and therefore, also to us.

In other words, God is faithful to us because He is faithful to His Son and to His people. And so, God will be faithful to you, in your situation. He will not let you down. He sees it all and knows how to work it out.

Therefore, you can trust Him with all of your heart. And the promise is: He will make your paths straight. We don’t need to be zigzagging all over the shop trying to find peace or struggling to make a decision. We can trust Him with all of our heart.