Who Can You Trust?

This week I spoke with a woman who is facing a difficult life situation which is challenging her faith. When sharing with her how I find comfort in the Word of God in times like these, she admitted that she doesn't read the bible even though she believes in God and attends church. She explained that there are some parts of scripture that she has a difficult time accepting as God's Truth and so she doubts the authority of the whole bible as God's Word. Its word of judgment is too difficult for her to accept and so its word of comfort and grace must also be suspect. First of all, I commend her for being honest about her doubts. Second, I feel really sorry for her because in her doubt, she is discarding the most accessible way in which God speaks his love and comfort to us.

 

I told her about how I came to know and love Jesus through reading the bible. (To read about how I met Jesus, read this blog from November of 2012: http://mcpfaithwriter.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-i-met-jesus_22.html) It's not like I knew instantly what to do or what all I believed in my first days as a believer. Life had taught me that I couldn't trust anyone and here I was giving my heart and my life to a God I didn't know. In those first months of my young faith, I heard God saying over and over again in His Word "Trust me" and all I could answer is "How? How can I trust you when I don't know you and when I've already been hurt so much by those I am supposed to be able to trust?" One day, the answer was made clear and I prayed: "God, you know I don't know how to trust anymore and that I really want to trust you. So I’m going to trust you as much as I am able to right now and give you the benefit of the doubt while you show me that I can trust you in all things." God is patient and in those first years of my faith journey, he accepted me as I am, trusting as much as I could, little as that was. He was consistently faithful and I began to see I could trust him more and more. He has shown me that he is completely trustworthy even when I doubt or don't understand. I've come to know that I can trust God even when it doesn't make sense.

 

My having doubts and difficulty in understanding and living out God's truth in my life is never a disappointment to him. In fact, he welcomes my questions, my working out his truth in my life even if it takes a really long time. God asks me to give all of myself to him - the sure and the unsure, the polished and unrefined parts of my spirit, and my whole heart including the divided parts. What he will never ask for is more than I have to give. So my advice to the woman I spoke to this week, and to anyone else who is wrestling with doubt, is to keep on keeping on. Trust the Lord as much as you can, continue your earnest search for God's truth in His Word and in your life, and allow God the time you need to show you his glorious love and grace. The evidence will be overwhelming and you too will come to trust God even when it doesn’t make sense to because in the end, trusting God in the uncertainty of this life is the only thing that really does make sense.