Uproot your mistrust

When you look at any relationship, whether it’s between siblings, spouses or colleagues at work, you will see that it can only develop and grow if a bond of trust is established.

Trust is earned only if one is open towards the other person. There should be no disguises, no secrets and no unexpected reactions.

When one knows the other person inside out, there is little to surprise one. You are often able to complete a sentence not yet finished by the other.

Two people, involved in any kind of relationship, can reach this point of connection through long hours of conversation, of sharing, of identification in many aspects of life.

You cannot fully connect with someone who does not share the same principles and values important to you. You cannot become intimate with someone with whom you do not identify.

Now, one of the things that most Christians struggle with is trust -- not particularly in relation to another person but towards God.

We use this expression “Trust in the Lord” a great deal because we read, pray and often talk about it. But do we practise it?

To trust in the Lord requires a close relationship with Him. You need to know Him so that you could trust Him fully.

And there comes the root of the problem I have discovered -- many are not able to trust Him fully, although they say the right words, because they do not have a relationship with Him.

They pray for this trust, they know they need to trust but they simply cannot. In any situation, they always depend on their own understanding and they pray for God’s response to be in line with what they want, subject to what they think is right or wrong.

They believe they are trusting just because they are placing that problem before God but they are not prepared to trust God’s decision in that situation. They are not prepared to let go of their own gut feeling in the situation.

It gets worse when we realise that God’s way of dealing with certain situations seems to be so different from ours, especially when things do not follow the path we believe they should have.

The solution is not to confess that you will trust in God from now on. You are dealing with the consequence of it. By investing in your relationship with God, you will know Him and then you will be able to trust Him fully.

This root of mistrust will be up-rooted from you.

Paul said “For if the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root is holy, so are the branches”. (Rom 11:16/b)