Trust
Trust.
Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability and/or strength in someone or something.
Trust is very important to me. I want to disclaimer that as I talk about this topic and what it means to me, etc. that I KNOW I am not perfect and I have broken trust more than once in my life - I am sure of that. I am not proud of those things and my bad choices in those times have shattered me more than I can explain.
I am a firm believer that everyone deserves to be trusted until they have done something to not deserve it. I also believe that it can be earned back by the behaviors and actions that happen after. I also believe that everyone has a threshold of how long they can give back trust. I have worked hard to try to have a constant mindset to give someone all the chances I would want in my failings, but I have also learned that in that, as trust has to be constantly rebuilt, that what I share and where I allow someone in gets smaller. Betrayal is something that I really struggle with - when it has happened to me, it has been deep and personal and it makes things very difficult for me emotionally. When I love, I love hard and when that gets broken or fractured it hurts me extremely deep (I have learned more and more about this as I study my enneagram number and try to work on these parts of myself).
In saying all that, I broach this topic because, first of all, I have started a new study called "Trustworthy" by Lysa Terkeurst. I chose this study with a lot of intention. See, I trust the Bible. I don't doubt it for one second and I believe it - cover to cover. That is who I am.
BUT....yes, unfortunately, there is a BUT. As I have walked my walk with Him, the person inside of me has STRUGGLED with letting go of control. Many times I have laid things and people at the altar, just to panic when things are not going the way I expected or asked Him to handle (with explicit instructions of course and pick them right back up and try to fix what He didn't do. Over and over I have done this. And over and over I have found myself more hurt and more in a mess than I was to begin with. It is such a double standard to trust and then not trust and to then trust again...over and over and over.... I can't imagine how much I have hurt myself and others because I could not just be obedient.
In the study, Lysa says something that completely resonated with me. She says:
"Pursuing answers to why God allows hard things has never given me the peace I want. Honestly, even if God did tell me why, I probably wouldn't see enough go His big picture to agree with Him. I don't think answers to our "why" questions would make our circumstances better to give us a peace in the midst of them. So, I have to pursue something different. I'm choosing to pursue learning how to daily rely on God in the midst of circumstances that make me resistant to trust."
Rely on Him. Day by day. Moment by moment. This is where I find myself now. I step at a time. I have too many times but my human experience with trust into my relationship and trust in the Lord. My human experience has taught me that the amount of people you can trust with the deep stuff of your life is immeasurable smaller than the ones you can. That people will fail you over and over. In the same way, it is my human experiences that I have allowed my control issues to become out of control issues and in that, I began to fear His plans, timing and purpose in all things and that anytime I saw something I wasn't expecting, I began to doubt Him. Human emotions began to override the biblical truth. Plain and simple and even though Jesus was a human who walked the earth, He was a perfect and sinless human as He walked this earth. To put Him in the same category as a human with free will is not only wrong, but damaging. Damaging to me and to others because I was reflecting a life filled with doubt to the one thing that I outwardly said to believe beyond a doubt. The silent hypocrisy in that area of my life as recently in the past few years become a glaring issue. I have been intentional on working on it, but unfortunately, my human emotions have overriden that trust and I found myself again sliding into a bad place in my own life. That is why I picked up this study and that is why I am again focusing on learning to let go.
I am not capable of fixing everything. I am not capable of controlling everything. Most of all, I am not capable in my own strength in doing a lot of things - I need Him. I am weak, emotional, and incapable of doing everything and fixing everything I wish and want to. It is exhausting. BUT He is. He is more than capable and He is strong enough. His plan and timing may not be where I want it to be, but He knows way more than I do and I can no longer accept the lie that I can do it all. I cannot. BUT He can.
It is my prayer that in this time I am taking to really learn more about myself and learn to replace the lies I have taught myself with the Truth of His Word that I can begin to breath and spend more time talking to Him and leaning on Him instead of being the control freak that I have seen in the mirror way to many times.
Trust. It is paramount in our walk with Him. We may not be able to trust people all the time, but we can always trust Him. I have put Proverbs 3:5-6 into a daily reminder. It is a verse that most know, but I no longer want to just know it. I want to live it and I want to walk a more straight path in my trust in Him because the one I keep laying for myself is to messy, confusing and painful.
