Trust Without Borders

Trust in the Lord forever, For in God the Lord, we have an everlasting rock.
Isaiah 26:4

Trust. Ugh. People have broken my trust and I have broken theirs. Next to forgiveness, trust has been an incredibly difficult concept to work through.

I think there are degrees of trust. There are people I can trust more than others, which makes sense because everyone is different. People are fickle and unpredictable. There is no constant simply because people change over time; it is inevitable.

As I child I had a blind trust of everyone, as I believe most children do. It is basically a sense of safety a child has, until someone comes along and steals it. A safety can be stolen or lost in several different ways that have nothing to do with abuse (divorce, tragedy, etc). My sense of safety was lost with my parent’s divorce and stolen with the abuse, both of which occurred within the same time frame.

I cannot recall ever really thinking about trust until I was around 17. My decisions/feelings were centered around a lack of trust in others subconsciously up until then. I still make decisions on whom I will trust or degree I will trust someone based on childhood events. Even then, the trust almost always develops slow. I give a little at a time, testing the waters, and trust as far as the limitation I have established. There are people I do not trust because of their past behavior with others, what I have seen (heard) them do, and sometimes it is just based on a feeling about them. Sometimes a person I come across gives me a “bad vibe” and is quickly placed in the untrustworthy category. Completely usual for an abuse survivor? Yes. Healthy? Not so much.

Trust issues have the potential to isolate. I keep people at arm’s length a good part of the time, convinced I am the only one who can keep me safe. People in my life are unfairly judged based on my trust issues. They are not given a fair shot and the only person who is at fault is myself. Of course there are those who have broken my trust and hurt me deeply. Whenever it happened my first response was to completely cut them out of my life or put up a wall to prevent that person from hurting me again. Essentially, I would run away physically or emotionally rather than deal with the issues and heal. It can still be my first response at times, but I have learned over the past few years it is not always the best response. I have been forced to recognize my own untrustworthiness and accept we are all human. I can look back now and see how much I would have missed had I continued to kick people out of my life over trust. I continuously fight the urge to run because it is difficult to deal with the pain and put forth the effort to heal a relationship.

Trust issues have also made a relationship with God difficult for me. I have trouble trusting him based on relationships I have had with people. This seems an unfair reaction but all we have to base our experiences on are the earthly ones. The magnitude of God, his powers, and trustworthiness are beyond our scope of total comprehension. It is faith based. When faith in mankind has been squashed beyond recognition, it is hard to accept God. How do you accept a loving, kind, trustworthy heavenly father by faith when your example on earth is the complete opposite? Learning to separate earth and heaven becomes more difficult.

God never has to earn our trust, because he has never given us a reason not to trust him. I have gotten confused about why things happened to me and the motives behind them, but that which is evil does not come from God. He is the savior and the one who sees us through. He has shown us how trustworthy and constant he is, we just have to take the time to recognize it.

By awesome deeds You answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation, You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea; Psalm 65:5

God has never broken his promises or my trust, yet I treat him like he has. I do not bring everything to him. I hide it, trying to take care of it myself, and not surrendering myself to him. I have failed to trust him with my feelings, secrets, and life. I have not trusted his promise to all of us.

Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Matthew 6:26

God has promised to take care of me. We are his choice possession. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures. James 1:18. God sent Jesus to die for our sins. There is no greater love than this. Jesus wiped out our sins and made it possible for God’s forgiveness and through the acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are promised eternal life. This is the ultimate promise, a promise He will never break. God has always taken care of us. We may not always agree with what happens to us. We have found ourselves in horrible circumstances where it seemed God was not with us.

For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. 2 Corinthians 1:20

God wastes nothing. He will take whatever circumstance brought into our life by force or by choice and turn it around. In our worst times, times we think survival is impossible, God was with us, allowing us to survive and providing a hopeful future, if we trust in him. I need to trust God with my future. I love this promise: “For you would forget your trouble, as waters that have passed by, you would remember it. “Your life would be brighter than noonday;Darkness would be like the morning.“Then you would trust, because there is hope; And you would look around and rest securely. Job 11:16-18

People will fail us and our trust will be broken. We will fail others and break their trust. God will not do either. God’s trust is supernatural, never failing. I have to let go of my life and give it to God. Trust him. It is unrealistic to believe I can give it all to him in one fell swoop. I let it go a little at a time. This is more for my benefit because God can handle it all, every bit of it. He will listen to our cries and comfort us without limits. He will always be there and never let us down. And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You. Psalm 9:10

It is a daily struggle and I need to be reminded daily, sometimes every minute, how much God has kept his promises to me and how I can trust him with my heart and life. With full confidence in God’s promises, there is nothing that can stop me. There is nothing on earth that can keep me from the future he has planned for me.

In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me? Psalm 56:4