Our Trust Fund in God

What does it mean to truly trust in God? Have you considered this question?

My grandfather, a great man of God, once noted that ‘Every time we worry about something, we are showing God that we don’t trust Him.’

To trust God means to not only believe in His goodness, but to believe that He knows what He is doing, that He is in charge. This is not easy. When we, like Peter on the Sea of Galilee, look at the troubles of the world, our faith in God’s authority over everything begins to waver. It is admittedly difficult to observe a world filled with tragedies and murder, rape, corruption, and pedophilia, and truly trust that God is in control. It is even more difficult to trust when we realize that everything happens either by His active will or His permissive will.

How do you trust a God who allows such evil?

The truth we must grasp is this: God’s ways are not our ways. ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts,’ Isaiah 55:8-9.

In today’s society we are bombarded with propaganda against God’s goodness. We are told that a truly good god would not permit evil in his world. We are indoctrinated with the lie that because evil exists God must either not exist, or that He must be a vicious, vengeful being bent on our destruction.

But the simple truth is that we do not understand the problem of evil, and that God never intended that we should. People are not comfortable with the idea of not knowing why terrible things happen; we do not want to accept the truth that God’s understanding is beyond our own. That we are not meant to completely comprehend His ways. But His ways are beyond us. Personally, I would not want to worship a God I fully understood. I want my God to be beyond me. I would not worship a God whose thought processes were no higher than those of corruptible men. I take comfort in knowing (trusting) that even though I do not understand why tragedies happen, God does, that, somehow, in His infinite wisdom, everything is working according to His plan (Ephesians 1:11).

To live a life free of worry (Matthew 6:25 and numerous other passages) is not easy. But, if we can learn to trust to God that He knows what He is doing, that His plan is at work in our lives and in the world, then we might just learn the godly art of contentment (Philippians 4:11).

Perhaps I am naïve. But the disciples trusted Jesus, and they certainly did not understand everything He said—not until He rose from the grave, anyway. Belief, trust, contentment. These things sound better to me than worry and fear and confusion. If this is naive, then I revel in my naivete!