How Can I Trust?

 

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31 ESV).

 

I know if you read yesterday’s devotional you may have come away with a sincere question of how you can trust the Lord in times of difficulty. After all, most of us have been in such dire circumstances that we only have the Lord left as an option and that may have felt like a failure to us. If you’ve ever thought, “Will God really come through for me?” you’re not alone. We’ve all been at a place where it seemed as if God was simply silent. The prayers that we pray for years, over and over, followed by what feels like silence are the times that nag at the corners of our trust. Our humanity wants to know. Our quest is to understand life like God does. And that leads us to struggle with trusting God’s plan and purpose in our life.

 

Let me make a few suggestions why God’s worthy of our trust. It really can be reduced to the simplicity of the truth that He’s proven Himself many times over to be trustworthy. The fact that He’s treated us well and shown us honesty over and over is the basis of future trust. He’s proven it through the revelation of His character in the Scripture. When you read God’s story in the Bible you see the character of God and how He cares for His people. The psalmist puts it this way: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8). However, there is much more. We can see God’s trustworthiness in the way He has cared for us in our lives. Even the very breath we take is from the Lord, yet we find these common gifts of grace to be somehow less than miraculous. The intricacies of our bodies are a testament to the love and care of God. If nothing else, the cross is more than enough proof that God has proven His trustworthiness. He will was willing to die so we might live. There is no greater love!

 

Perhaps we simply need to be quicker to trust God in every circumstance in life and then we may never come to the end of our rope. After all, hasn’t He promised to bring us to eternal life where nothing can interrupt His goodness towards us!