WHAT IS TRUST?

What is trust?

Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord, have never abandoned anyone who searches for you. 

Psalm 9:10 NLT

Trust involves letting go and knowing God will catch you.

James Dobson

Why Not?

Something is holding us back. Perhaps it is a fear that maybe we are wrong about God. Maybe we feel presumptuous. It is possible, if we have been disappointed in the past, that our misunderstanding is haunting us. We hear a voice in the back of our minds that says, "What if God doesn't come through? What if he makes it more difficult than I can handle? What if all my hopes are illusions?" So we hesitate to trust God. We pray and we hope, but faith remains incomplete and doubts linger. We'll ask Him to help us, but we withhold judgment until we've seen His response.

We are called to believe God with reckless abandon — not just believe that He is there and that He is involved with us somehow; but that He is actively, personally seeking our good and answering our prayers. We are to give up our own strategies and ambitions, to relinquish all "Plan Bs," to recklessly, irrevocably cast ourselves completely into His arms.

God called Abraham to leave Haran and go to a place to be revealed later. Jesus invited Peter to step out of the boat and walk on water. That kind of call is scary, though typical in God's Kingdom. But why is it scary? Where could He lead us that we'd regret? Would He ever lead us into danger but not out of it?

God calls us to "reckless" trust, the kind that prepares no safety net and reserves nothing for a spiritually rainy day. Try to find someone God had forsaken, observe His faithfulness, and ask yourself: "Why wouldn't I trust Him wholeheartedly?" Think about it. Why not?

Adapted from The One Year® Walk with God Devotional by Chris Tiegreen, Tyndale House Publishers (2004), entry for May 12.

Content is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale Publishing House