The Gift of Trust
by Linda Rex
Last time I ended my blog by asking the questions: Will we allow God the freedom to do as he wills in our lives, believing he will make all things right in the end, and has our best interests at heart? Will we respect God’s freedom to do what he will in our situation, trusting he is a good God, a loving and faithful God, who will never leave us or forsake us?
These are tough questions to respond to because often our response to them arises out of our personal experience and our attachment issues. We may never have had an experience in our lives in which a person was trustworthy and safe in their interactions with us.
Perhaps our only experience with men has been with those who have used us and then discarded us. Maybe our only living parent has always insisted on making every decision for us our entire life, and didn’t stop when we became an adult. It’s possible that the father we adored when he was alive was great fun to be around but never took responsibility for anything with regards to his family. There are many ways in which critical relationships in our lives wound us.
Our view of God, then, becomes skewed and we begin to believe things about God which are not true. Relationships and our relational losses are so critical to our understanding of ourselves and God! The thing is, too often we plant our broken view of humanity onto the face of God rather than seeing God as he really is, and viewing broken humanity in the light of who God is. We get it flipped around.
So it is very hard to trust a God who we believe is like these images in our mind which have been created through our experiences with the people around us in our lives, especially during our formative years. When God said to Israel, “You shall have no other gods before me,” (Ex. 20:3 NIV), he was telling them to set aside all their preconceived ideas of God. They had gathered a God-concept over the centuries which included the worship of things made by human hands as well as those things created by God.
Today we may not have idols in our house we worship (though some of us may), and we may not worship the sun, moon and stars (though some of us may), we do often worship a God of our own imagination—a being who exists only in our hearts and minds, but not in reality. For if we want to know who God really is, we need to pay attention to what God says about himself, and quit focusing on what we or others might imagine God to be.
This Sunday at Good News Fellowship we will be celebrating Palm Sunday. On this day, we are reminded about the enthusiastic welcome Jesus Christ received as he entered Jerusalem before the events of Holy Week. Here he was applauded as Messiah, come to save his people—which indeed he was. Yet within a few short days, he was crucified and he died at the hands of the very human beings he came to save.
The Messiah did not show up the way the people expected him to. Jesus was not the person they wanted him to be. God in human flesh? This meant Jesus had something crucial to say about the status quo, about the ruling authorities, and what it meant to be God’s people. And they all needed to listen and to obey. Israel, and indeed all humanity, was called to see God in a new and different way, and to repent of their wrong-headed view of God. Jesus was, and is, the exact representation, or ikon, of the Father, and he would send the Spirit, who was, and is, the other Helper or Paraclete, just like Jesus.
God had revealed himself to his people through Moses not only as the “I Am”, but also as the God who is, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished;…” (Ex 34:6–7 NIV) Here we see God as a relational God, who loves his people and is gracious toward them. Yes, he deals with the nasties, but all within the context of his covenant love.
God rescued his people from slavery, provided food and water for them in the wilderness, and brought them to a new land. Throughout his history with his people, he cared for them, called them by his Spirit back to their covenant relationship with him. God was who he was. It was Israel who needed to change their view of God—to have a new heart and mind. And God told them he would work this out by sending a messiah who would usher in the age of the Spirit.
The thing is, since time began, we as human beings have resisted the Spirit’s effort to open our minds and hearts about the truth of who God really is and who we are in him. We believe we are on our own, doing everything under our own power. We believe we are in control of ourselves, each other, this earth, and the universe, and at the same time are faced with the reality we really don’t have any control whatsoever.
Fundamentally what we need at the core of our being is a realization we are creatures, who are dependent upon the God who made us and who sustains us. This is a God who wants to live in a relationship with us in which we share intimately all of life. We were meant to walk and talk with God as Adam did at the beginning, and as is described by the apostle John in his gospel and in his description of the heavenly Jerusalem. And this type of relationship requires trust.
To go deep with someone, anyone, in this way requires a level of trust which is very deep. We climb, and climb up our mountain of life, thinking we’ve got to hold it all together and keep moving up to the next level, when what we need to do is let go and fall, trusting in the Everlasting Arms.
We are unable to make sure everything works out as it should—but God already knows the end from the beginning. We are unable to protect ourselves from evil or disaster, but God has the capacity to turn evil and disaster into the best experience of our lives. We feel lost and alone and unloved, but the reality is, we are held, we are beloved, and God never leaves us—he is Immanuel, the God who is present, near and available at all times.
It was this God who joined us in our mess, and walked among us, and was willing to submit to our mistreatment and rejection of him. He was willing to go with us all the way to the cross and to death so we could learn to trust him. There was nothing he was not willing to put on the line, even the inner relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit, so we could not only learn to trust him, but also receive by the Spirit a new heart and mind filled with Jesus’ trust for his Abba.
This is the blessing of the gift of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension, and the gift of the Spirit. This gift is a life filled with trust and faith in God, in which we find ourselves able to know and see God for who he really is, and over time have our mistaken notions about God corrected and healed. This is a relationship which will never end but grow more precious with time, and will include others in joyful fellowship for all eternity.
Abba, thank you for the gift of your Son and your Spirit through whom we might come to know you for Who you really are. Fill our hearts with Jesus’ trust in you, so we might live in true, loving community both now and for all eternity. Through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
“But I trust in you, LORD; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me. Let your face on your servant; save me in your unfailing love.” Psalm 31:14–16 NIV
Our Life in the Trinity 