On Trust

How do you trust God when you don’t trust God?

For the past two and half years, I have struggled with spending time with God. Not the kind of struggle for time that I was used to. It wasn’t about finding time to spend time with Him. It was that I absolutely did not want to spend time with Him. I knew it was because I did not want to hear what He had to say to me in those times but for the life of me I could not figure out why I didn’t want to hear from in that setting.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Him at all. I still very much looked forward to church services and worship nights and conferences where I knew His presence would show up. I still received prophetic words from others and clung to those words. I just did not want to sit alone with Him and hear what He might tell me in those moments.



A few months ago I was attending a conference here in town. The first night of the conference a friend of mine who was in charge of most of the logistics asked me if I would be willing to watch the children of one of the speakers for part of the conference. I did not want to do this but I agreed. In worship that night I felt God speak to me and tell me that if I watched the kids, I would not miss out on anything.
The next morning I took the kids back to a Sunday school room and played with them during the second session of the day. We spent most of the time running around and playing silly kid games. After about an hour the older girl told me that she wanted to watch a movie. I put in a VeggieTales I found there that I had not yet seen.

The topic of that one ended up being on trusting God.

Through this and a subsequent conversation with a wonderful woman from my church, I began to realize that the reason why I was hesitant to spend time with God and allow Him to speak to my heart was because I did not trust Him.

When I looked back over the past 5 years, my circumstances told me that God had failed me time and time and therefore I could not trust Him. I could not trust His heart for me.

Having gone through a relationship in which the person I was with cheated on me on more than one occasion, this made sense. When we were hanging out with other people, it was fine. We had fun and got along. When we were alone, however, things were much different. We would end up fighting and we did not enjoy being around each other. When you feel that someone has broken your trust, it is difficult to trust anything they tell you after that point. Everything from that moment on is called into question.

I had felt that God had repeatedly broken my trust over the past several years. Almost every aspect of my circumstances confirmed that feeling as fact.

I also realized that in addition to not fully trusting God, I also did not trust myself. I did not trust that I could hear from God for my life. It seemed as though one of the two things but be correct. Either I could not trust God because none of the things He had spoken to me had come to pass or I could not trust my ability to hear from God and all those things I thought were from God were really from within myself.

This is why I was willing to receive prophetic words. They were coming from someone else whom I trusted to hear from God and therefore I could trust those more than anything I might believe I was hearing from God myself.
I still don’t  understand everything. I am not sitting here with the answers. I don’t know why it seems as though God has abandoned me in this season. I do know, however, that my emotions do not dictate truth.

Through all of this, I can honestly say that I have not walked away from God. Yes, I have made mistakes and given into desires of the flesh, but through it all my heart has still been set on walking in obedience to God and the calling. There is a quote from the Screwtape Letters that says. “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

This is where I have found myself over the past few years. I often feel as though God has forsaken me but yet I know I have no choice but to continue to obey and do the will of God.
I know that I have been marked by God. I cannot escape His calling on my life even when, at times, I want to.

So, how do you trust God when you don’t trust God?

For me, the first step was simply acknowledging that I did not trust Him. Admitting that aloud to myself and to another person was incredibly freeing. Once I finally admitted that was my struggle, the rest came relatively easy.

The second step was declaring that even when I don’t feel like I can trust God, I KNOW that I can trust God.  My emotions do not dictate truth. This is not to say that emotions are bad and never to be trusted when your emotions are speaking something that does not line up with scripture, you can be sure that it is not truth.

The truth is that God has promised that He will never leave me or forsake me. He has promised that all of the words that He has spoken are yes and amen. He has promised that He has good plans for me. He has promised that He will always be faithful.

This is not to say that I now find myself completely trusting. It is still a daily struggle for me but the fact that I am willing to struggle through this, rather than pushing it to the side and pretending it's not an issue, is a testament to how far I have come in the past few months.

I know that God is good and I know that He is faithful. I know that even in the midst of the past several years, He is continually faithful to me. I have not yet seen the fulness of His faithfulness in all of this but as the Psalmist says, I know that I will see His faithfulness in the land of the living.