Trust
Part 1 in series
Relating to God: What We Can Learn About God Through Our Closest Relationships On Earth
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
February 7, 2009
We’re starting a new series today. The series itself has kind of a long name. I’m calling this series: Relating to God: What We Can Learn About God Through Our Closest Relationships On Earth. As I have laid it out, this will be a nine-part series. Today we’re going to look at the foundation of any relationship, which is trust. We’ll follow that up with Commitment, Fidelity, Communication, Intimacy, Role Expectations, Forgiveness, Finances, and we’ll end with Parenting, which of course will wrap itself very well back around to Trust!
I’m really excited about this series. In fact I feel so passionately about this series that when I first started dreaming of writing a book ten years ago, it was a book on this topic. I sat down and wrote out chapter titles and everything, and they were some of the same things I’ll be covering in this series. Eventually it would be awesome to take this sermon series and flesh it out even more and actually end up with the book I’ve always dreamed about – but first things first.
The first thing I want to do is bring you on board with how exciting this topic is. Do you see it yet, or does this seem immensely boring to you? I will admit that simply rattling off the list of sermon topics in this series probably does not sound all that thrilling, unless you are a counselor. But here’s what’s really cool about it. Although at times God is very hard to grasp, very hazy and confusing, every one of you in this room already knows quite a bit about all the topics I’ll be covering in the next few weeks. If you have ever had a friend in your life, or even wished for one, you know something about trust. If you have ever had a friend, you know something about commitment. If you are married, or have been married, you may know a great deal about it. When I will be speaking to you about fidelity and communication and intimacy and role expectations and forgiveness and finances and parenting, every single person in this room will be able to relate to and understand what I am talking about.
Why is that? Because those things are foundational in relationships. You can’t have a relationship without trust. You can’t have a healthy relationship without good communication. You can’t remain in a relationship without fidelity, without faithfulness to that person. And so on, and so on. Now everyone here may not be an expert in all (or any) of these areas, but you already understand and relate to them – they are part of your life, part of your experience, for some even part of your vocabulary.
Now this whole series is based on one very simple idea. A relationship with God may be a lot of things, but it is – first and foremost – a relationship! And as soon as we realize that it is a relationship, then we can look to other relationships in our lives and learn something about our relationship with God. We can say, “What’s so important about trust?” We can make a list of all the reasons why trust is huge in any relationship, then we can begin to understand why trust in God is important. Or we can think about communication. We know you can’t maintain a relationship without communication because communication is huge. So we think, “How can I be in a relationship with God if I don’t communicate with him?” Then we think, “What’s communicating with God?” Then we realize, “Communicating with God is called prayer.” Then we can learn important things about prayer because we can see how it compares to communication with our spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend, or other important people in our life. See what I’m saying? Your relationship with God is many things, but it is first and foremost a relationship. And because it is a relationship, you can use a lot of what you already know to be true about relationships with people to learn stuff about God and about the spiritual life.
Which leads to the next reason why this topic is exciting. It’s exciting because if what I’m saying is true (and it is), then you probably already know a great deal more about God than you realize. The problem is that you have maybe grown up with a view of God that places him so far outside the realm of your understanding that you don’t realize how much of God IS understandable – at least to some degree! We see verses like this:
Psalm 139:17-18 (NIV)
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand…
God seems just completely incomprehensible. And he is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we can box God in, or fully come to grasp him. I’m just saying that somewhere between God being completely off-limits and beyond all ability to relate to on one hand, and God being a puppet that we can manipulate and use for our own purposes on the other, there’s a place where we can come to understand a few things about God with some degree of confidence.
So having given that rather long explanation about the sermons in this series, I wish to actually take on today’s topic, which is the topic of trust. Trust is intentionally located right at the beginning of our series because it is the foundation of relationship. If you don’t have trust, you really do not have much of a relationship. If you do not have trust, then you are either a) dysfunctional; b) moving toward establishing trust; c) on the verge of leaving the relationship. Notice only one of those options does not contain movement. Dysfunction is the state of being stuck. When you are dysfunctional, you keep doing the same crazy things over and over again, hoping for different results. So the only way people live without trust is to live in a state of dysfunction. People who have chosen to be functional will deal with lack of trust in a relationship by either implementing measures to restore or create trust, or they will move out of the relationship. You cannot seriously pursue a relationship with someone you do not trust. I’m not saying you should not, I’m saying you cannot.
Think now of your own relationships. [One of the things I love about this series is that it’s about relationships, but not exclusively marriage. If you’re not married, or even if you are, you may want to think about a relationship other than marriage.] How is the level of trust in your relationships? Do you trust the people close to you? Do they trust you? Are they trustworthy? Are you? Think about a time when you were in a relationship that lacked trust. Perhaps you did not really trust the other person. Perhaps they did not trust you. Perhaps there was a good reason for this lack of trust. Or perhaps the lack of trust itself was a symptom of a deep problem you or the other person had.
To live with a lack of trust is to live with suspicion. If I do not trust you, that means that there is part of me that believes you will harm me – either because you are malicious and want to do harm, or because you are perhaps foolish and will harm me in spite of your good intentions. If I do not trust you, I believe on some level that you will harm me. And if I believe on any level that you are prepared to harm me – emotionally, physically, whatever – I cannot have a functional relationship with you.
I see this all the time with married couples. It is often the case with married couples that there has been so much water under the bridge – so many hurtful words spoken and deeds done – that they eventually come to a place where they no longer simply believe the other person HAS hurt them, but they not believe the other person INTENDS to hurt them. [Those two things are drastically different, aren’t they?] And so trust breaks down. They come to view each other with suspicion, each devoted to looking out for themselves, convinced the other person does not have their interests at heart. You cannot be close to someone you do not trust. You may say the other person is a good person. You may speak well of them. You may even refer to your own trust issues and inability to trust. But regardless, you cannot be close to that person, no matter what you may say.
And there, my friends, is the foundation of one of our greatest problems in following Jesus. The reason many people cannot follow Jesus is because at the very core of their being, regardless of how they may speak well of him, pray to him, profess to believe in him, etc., they do not fundamentally trust him. In other words, they continue to harbor a suspicion that the kind of life Jesus calls them to live is in some way inferior to the life Jesus calls them to abandon.
When I was in Jr. high school, there was one kid who picked on me more than any other. And one thing he would constantly do when I was around him was this [make that “I’m gonna hit you” gesture that turns out to be scratching the head]. Between that and the times he actually did hit me or push me around, I never knew when he would follow through, so I was always tense, always on edge. I had the constant suspicion that he was up to no good. And every time that kid got close to me and made a move, I flinched. It was in my bones.
Of course the huge difference between this guy and Jesus is that this guy really was frequently up to no good. That’s Jr. high boys for you. But the problem is that many of us relate to Jesus that way. We’re gun-shy People really have hurt us and so we flinch habitually It’s in our bones. We may love Jesus and admire him and say we want him in our lives, but we’re fearful about the life he calls us to.
John 12:35-36 (NIV)
35 Then Jesus told them, "You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.
36 Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light." When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
“Put your trust in the light.” Now that has to be one of the most fascinating comments Jesus ever made. Who has problems trusting the light? The answer is we do. We’re so used to the darkness, so used to being hurt, so used to approaching relationships with suspicion that we find it hard to relax in the light. Because even when the light clearly dawns on us, it’s not an issue of what you see, it’s an issue of being able to trust what you see. In this account, there’s Jesus – the light – and he’s standing right in front of them. The light was right there. Yet they were in darkness. Why? Because they did not trust what they saw. I love that line from the Santa Claus, “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing.” In other words, it is not someone proving to you that they are trustworthy that helps you come to trust them, it is your decision to live as though they are trustworthy that will help you see whether or not they really are. And that’s all Jesus asks us to do – trust him enough to see whether he deserves to be trusted. Some people call this “blind faith,” and say it’s ridiculous, but that same blind faith is what they have placed in every person they’ve ever had a relationship with at first. And it’s far from blind faith anyway. God invites us to not believe blindly, but to have an experience!
Psalm 34:8 (NLT)
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!
Taste and see. Put God to the test. Give him an honest chance. You can’t see in advance that God is trustworthy, but you can choose to trust God and see real results in your life.
The problem we have with trust, whether it’s trust in God or trust in other people, is that we’re being asked to believe something we can’t see. We can’t see whether a person is trustworthy. Of course no one can prove that they are trustworthy. And God is a powerful God but something God cannot do is prove to you that he is trustworthy – that ultimately you are better off living for him than living for yourself. That’s up to you. You have to first determine that he is indeed trustworthy, and then declare it to be so, and then learn to live as if that’s true and not be constantly flinching around him.
You cannot serve God if you do not trust him. You cannot follow Jesus if you do not trust him. And another real problem with trusting God is that as much as we can learn by thinking about trust in terms of our human relationships and experiences, at some point trusting God ISN’T like trusting people. Every single person you have ever decided to trust – even the ones who have loved you the most – has let you down. They have done or said something hurtful. Your experience tells you, with every fiber of your being, that sure maybe you can trust somebody, but trust is that thing that is fragile – that is earned slowly, that can be destroyed instantly, must be rebuilt cautiously, and is sometimes beyond all hope to restore. That is trust from a human perspective. Trust in human relationships is essential. Human beings let us down. Trust in God is essential. God will not let us down. Still we keep flinching. We’ve never known any different.
But again and again in scripture, God is referred to as a rock.
Psalm 19:14 (NIV)
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
2 Samuel 22:2 (NIV)
2 … "The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
Psalm 18:46 (NIV)
46 The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God my Savior!
And these verses are communicating exactly the same message as one of my favorite parts of the Psalms:
Psalm 16:8 (KJV)
8 I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
I shall not be moved, why? Because I am anchored to the rock. Jesus said to Peter, “you are the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church.” The wise man built his house upon the rock. And that house was not moved why? Because it was anchored on the rock – it’s foundation was sure. It was completely, 100% trustworthy. It did not flinch when the waters came.
That is God. God is completely, 100% trusthworthy. Anchor yourself to God, build your house upon him, and my friends, I’m telling you, you shall not be moved. God is a rock that doesn’t roll!
Psalm 46:2-3 (NLT)
2 So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea.
3 Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!
You will not know God if you don’t decide to trust him. Here’s what it takes to trust God.
1.You must consider whether Jesus knew what he was talking about. If you doubt that he really offers a better way to live, and keep flinching every time he draws near, you will not be able to follow him. If you are unsure, you must think carefully about it and compare the life Jesus offers to other available options. Jesus said to count the cost (Lk. 14:28) and this is what he meant.
2.You must consider Jesus to be the authority on the best way to live. If you suspect Dr. Phil knows better than Jesus, you will not be able to follow Jesus. If you think Stephen Hawking knows better than Jesus, you will not be able to follow Jesus. If you think that person in the mirror knows better than Jesus, you will not be able to follow Jesus.
3.You must come to believe that the life Jesus offers will not harm you but will enhance you – that under his direction, you will become “free indeed” from the things that now dog you and chain you to the earth.
4.You must determine that for the rest of your life you will move toward becoming a person who, upon finding out what Jesus would have you do, simply does it. The reason so many struggle so deeply to do God’s will is because they have never really decided to trust Christ. Without realizing it, they are trusting Dr. Phil or Barack Obama or themselves. Or maybe they don’t really trust anyone! You must become the kind of person who quietly and patiently does what Jesus would have you do.
5.You must not deny your unbelief and lack of trust. It’s there, so don’t fake it! Take your lack of trust to God, along with your trust in him.
6.You must realize that trust is active. The child standing at the edge of the pool doesn’t really trust her dad to catch her until she jumps, no matter what she may say. Trust God with your fears, your dark places, your dreams for your future, your money, your time – everything!
The last thing I want to say about trust is that trust in God, like trust in human relationships – is cumulative. I trusted Christy when I married her. But after 21 years of marriage where she has been faithful to me, I trust her now a good deal more than I did then. It’s not that I didn’t trust her way back when. It’s that my capacity for trust was smaller! My capacity for trust grows each year, and Christy continues to show me that she can be trusted, and so my trust in her is growing, even though at every moment I have always trusted her as much as I was capable of trusting her. As you trust God for longer and longer, your capacity for trust in God grows.
That’s a little of what I think scripture means when it refers to the idea of “faith becoming sight.” What I used to have to trust Christy to believe I can now believe on the basis of long experience, and based on that long experience it is much easier to trust her for the future. Sometimes people don’t come to God because they have not yet mastered all the steps I just gave you. But if we dealt with human relationships the same way, no one would ever get married. No, instead we choose to step out and trust a person based on our limited experience and our sense of the kind of person we believe they are. In doing this, we give them a chance to be truly trustworthy – and our faith becomes sight. Our head knowledge becomes heart experience!
And as this happens, the years will add up one by one where you will look back and realize how much better your life has been because of your decision to trust God and then obey him (obedience is building your house upon rock – or building your life on God’s Word). Every day that you trust God, your faith is becoming knowledge – what you believe is actually becoming what you have put to the test and now actually know because of experience. That’s what it means to trust God.
Psalm 34:8 (NLT)
8 Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!
Taste and see. This is no blind faith. It means “step out and try it – and you will experience that it is true. The fact of God’s goodness will overflow into rivers of joy in your life. And that’s as real as it gets.
