INTRODUCTION
• Your relationships are only as strong as your trust.
• Two things make trust hard, what you see and who you are.
• Believers are taught to trust in spite of what we see or who we are.
• Sounds dangerous, but all the material we have today validates trusting gives life.
I Corinthians 13:4-7 NCV, “4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. 5 Love is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. 6 Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. 7 Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures.”
• I Corinthians 13 - The love chapter
• Love doesn’t delight in evil. Trying to catch someone doing wrong.
• It always trusts…always? You say, “You haven’t heard my story!”
• Love tries to catch people doing the right thing.
• There is nothing gained by refusing to trust. Suspecion is a rejection of trust.
• We are all drawn to environments of acceptance, not rejection.
I. THREE THOUGHTS ON TRUST
• First, love gives the benefit of the doubt.
• Second, love looks for the most generous outcome. The gap; what do you put in the gap?
• Third, love chooses trust over suspicion.
First:
• When we communicate, “I don’t trust you,” you are choosing to close down the relationship at some level.
• When you are struggling to trust say so!
o “I really want to trust you” - when you’re struggling
• The last thing your partner wants to do is disappoint you.
• No one wants to be a disappointment.
• Asking them to perform higher isn’t the answer.
• Believing the best about them is.
• This creates margin, space for the person to be ok.
• They are afraid of you. They don’t want to fail again. No one does.
Second:
• You express trust when you believe the best. I accept you, I accept you.
• Say what’s real, but then next time don’t keep a list of wrongs but believe the best.
• Our hearts are drawn into environments of acceptance. They may come home late but their heart won’t.
Third:
• When you can’t trust you must chose to confront.
• Matthew 18:15-17 - This is the only time Jesus laid out steps for something. He lets you chose, but here He says confront.
• Don’t gossip, don’t have imaginary conversation, confront!
• Ask for information and assume the best even then. I am going to bend.
• When I don’t know I confront, not walk.
• I am not a confronter. 90% of us don’t, but it is a good thing.
• Don’t hide behind your fear of confrontation or you will destroy the relationship.
II. FIVE COMMITMENTS FOR BUILDING TRUST
1. When there is a gap I will believe the best. I am deciding beforehand. I am going believe the best.
2. When others assume the worst about you, I am coming to your defense. “It could be…” Practice this the next time your friends dump on the other political party. It could be another reason.
3. If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I will come to you.
4. When I am convinced I will not be able to deliver on a promise I will tell you ahead of time.
5. When you confront me about the gaps I’ve created I am going to tell you the truth, no excuses.
• I want to trust you. I want to be trusted.
• Tell people, I want to trust them. Trust them and find out if they are trustworthy.
• If you have difficulty trusting people;
• What can you do to break that? Sit down with them and tell them, “I want to trust you and I am struggling.”
• Finally when there is a gap, trust. Extend not what they deserve, but what you would want them to do for you.
III. FILL THE GAP WITH TRUST
I Corinthians 13:7, “Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures.”
• All relationships have expectations and reality = The gap
• Verse 7 - Paul uses a little Greek phrase that blows you up; sounds pretty idealistic.
• NASB - “Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
• Word pas = all things - means all, the whole, everything
• This is probably where we got the idea that love must be blind.
• What does Paul mean? No accident here.
• He is getting into the guts of relationship building here.
• See all deep relationships are built on expectations.
• And expectations will almost always get dashed.
• There is a gap between what we expect and what the person does.
• You said you would be there at four and its four thirty. You said you would mow the lawn and it’s still not mowed. You said you wouldn’t do that again and now you’ve done it.
• This happens in all relationships especially romantic ones.
• This is the reality of relationships.
• Sometimes these things are unspoken sometimes deep, sometimes not.
• Here is the choice we make all the time, when there is a gap what do we put in there?
• We either believe the best or we don’t.
• This will determine how you do in your relationships.
• What you put in the gap in your heart. Believe the best - “I am sure there is a good reason she’s not here.” Believe the worst - “She’s not paying attention again. She always treats me with no respect. Probably on phone with her sister again.”
• Believe the best - “He’s done it again, he overspent the budget” or “He’s been busy, he may have forgotten to tell me.”
• In every relationship, we put something in the gap. What we put in the gap begins in minds and hearts and comes out of our mouths.
IV. TWO KEY THINGS THAT FILL THE GAP
• What we see.
• Who we are.
• What we see determines how we think the thing through.
• Harder is who we are. We all bring baggage into the relationship.
• How many times were you disappointed before?
• Which way do you go in your mind?
• Where do you go?
• To fill the gap between expectation and behavior.
• People who stay in love are blind!
• They learn to believe the best. They decided and make it a habit to fill the gap in a positive way.
• They are generous to their partner.
• I am horrible at this!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• A group of researchers found couples that had been together ten years or more had a common thread.
• The one thing that made this work…
• In an unhappy relationship there was complete misunderstanding of the other person, a disconnect.
• So they thought if they asked healthy couples they would find the opposite. Understanding of the person and realistic expectations.
• But they didn’t, they found the opposite.
• They found that they overrated each other, consistently. The conclusion was that love was blind.
• “A spouse’s positive outlook of allusion created an upward spiral of love. The allusion created a conviction that they are really this way and the conviction led to security, “I can trust myself to this person.” Security fostered intimacy and the intimacy fostered love. A husband and wife that assumes their spouse possesses strengths that they don’t have will end up with a strong marriage…”
• Their advice, “Find the most generous explanation for each other’s behavior and then believe it.”
• Their examples, “She’s not impatient she’s just intense. He’s not insensitive he’s just focused.”
• See we have all done this when we dated. People said beware and we said, oh its ok. Ya but we were blind!
• In every relationship there is a gap between expectation and reality. What you put in will determine how your relationship goes.
CLOSE
• Paul said love, “…always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
• Happily married couples choose to assume the best.
• Where do you go? Quickly go negative? We all have a story, a reason but where do you go?
• You get to be right most of the time, but are you happy? Yes, they are late, can’t manage money...
• You love to discover they are wrong, so you can be right.
• But it is your choice.
• “Love always…always protects (I am looking for a way to cover her), always trusts (I am looking for a way to believe in him), always hopes (I am hoping for a good explanation, always perseveres (hanging in there over and over).”
