A common question that people ask is, “How do I know I can trust God?”
We talk about how to trust God when life falls apart, when the bottom falls out of a relationship, when we hit hard financial times or we get a phone call we didn’t expect.
What about just trusting God each day, whether things are good or bad?
There are promises all over the Bible about God, His character, what He will do and will not do. But how do you know those are real and will not fail?
That’s the question the apostle Paul is seeking to answer at the beginning of Romans 9.
Trusting in God is a hard thing to do, but when we do, it leads to our joy.
One of the things I often encourage people to do who struggle to trust in God is to ask themselves why they don’t trust God. What keeps you from that? Is it something you think God should have done? Is it because of a past hurt or a relationship that fell apart?
Often without realizing it, we don’t trust God not because of God but because of ourselves.
Once we are able to see why we don’t trust God and what keeps us from taking that step, we are able to deal with that.
It isn’t as simple as “just trusting God more.”
The reality, though, is all of us trust in someone or something in our lives.
We trust in people everyday.
Yet the reverse is true, and we know it to be true.
Misplaced trust does not lead to joy.
One of the things that I find most fascinating about Habakkuk chapter 3 is how Habakkuk reminds himself of how God has moved in the past. He recalls how the nation of Israel began, how God brought the nation of Israel out of slavery in the book of Exodus and gave them the 10 Commandments.
What Habakkuk is doing is reminding himself of how God has moved in the past. Often our struggle is with trusting that God will show up. Habakkuk is showing us, “God worked in the past, so I can trust He will work now and in the future.”
This doesn’t mean that God will work in the same way as the past. It doesn’t mean He will work on our timetable, but we do know He is at work.
You may be in a place where you need to remind yourself of how God has worked in the past of your life. Maybe you need to journal or make a list of things He’s done, prayers He has answered. Maybe you need to determine why you don’t trust God, what is holding you back and how to move forward in that. What things are you placing your trust in that will ultimately let you down and take away your joy instead of giving you joy?
