Do you trust God, I mean REALLY trust God? That is a tough question to truly answer. You might be prone to immediately answer, “Sure, I trust God”. But, if you take a moment for further inspection into your every day life and emotions you might very well see a different level of trust than you had first imagined.

My kitty or as I call him, my furball, Reiman, teaches me valuable life lessons. Some days the lessons are because I can see how to live life from his peaceful countenance other days the lessons are because I can see how not to live life from his behavior. I enjoy that God can use his little furry figure to reflect His lessons to me.

I was recently thinking on the subject of Trust. Reiman trusts me and my hubby. He trusts us implicitly. He is unusual in the animal kingdom in regards to his level of trust with us. He will expose his belly to be rubbed at any moment and will stay that way for as long as we will pet him. Exposure of your belly, in the animal kingdom, is one of the ultimate signs of trust. Because an animal’s vital organs are exposed with their belly up, in order for them to open up their belly to you they must trust that they are safe with you. They must trust that you will not hurt them, in fact, by exposing their belly, they trust that you will not only not hurt them, you will in fact bless them with an enjoyable belly rub.

Do you trust God like that? Do you trust Him enough to expose your inner being to Him? Or do you trust Him for the small stuff but try to figure out the “hard” stuff on your own?

God is the ultimate depiction of Trustworthy. In fact, He requests that we trust Him with every aspect of our lives.

Proverbs 3:5-6 
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.

Ol’ Webster’s dictionary defines TRUST as: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. When we choose to trust in God, we are saying that we rely on His character, we rely on His ability and we choose to believe that He is full of truth. So, again, I ask. Do you truly trust God?

In the scripture above God says to trust in Him with all your heart, not just part of it, but ALL of it. He asks that we trust Him and seek Him in every circumstance and situation and promises that when we do, He will keep our paths straight.

Trust is not easy, especially the “with all your heart” kind of trust. I don’t know about you, but I know that I have not always had this kind of trust in God. In fact, for many years and in many ways, I just acted in my best interest and thought that God would “come along” if He really loved me. Well, needless to say, that was not the case and I quickly learned that trusting in Pamela often left me defeated in spirit.  Ironically, it was because of God’s love for me that He did not follow me into my plan for my life. Instead, He stood quietly by waiting for me to finally discover that His plan for me was far better than I could ever manage.  Slowly, I started to realize that looking to God every moment was the wise move. It was the move that would be best for my life plan and bless me deeply.

Let me reiterate that trust is not easy. We live in a sinful world and we have a habit of measuring God’s love and God’s trustworthiness based on our human experiences. Therefore, if you have a father or mother who was wholly trustworthy then it might be easier for you to trust God. On the flip side, if you had an absent father or untrustworthy mother, you may attribute their shortcomings to God and fail to believe in His trustworthiness. Actually, we can incorrectly attribute many human failings in the trust department to God. This is a completely faulty way of thinking and leads to faulty self reliance which, in turn, leads us to make our own choices in life based on what we know or can see.

In the grand scheme of things, that reliance is ridiculous. We know we are limited in our understanding. We know we can’t see the true and full picture of how our lives were created to be. So, isn’t it much wiser to put our trust in our Great Omniscient God? He sees all, He knows all and best of all, He loves us unconditionally and built a special purpose for each one of us, which He knows.

A quick search of “trust” in the NIV on Bible Gateway’s site shows that trust appears in the Bible 170 times. Surely something important enough to make that many appearances in the Bible is something worth exploring in your life. So, what is it that keeps you from trusting God? It may seem like a scary concept at first but once you accept and understand His loving nature, it is the most peaceful move you can make.

I encourage you to ask yourself what it is that keeps you from exposing your soft underbelly to the King of Creation. Ask the Holy Spirit for direct insight into where you struggle to trust Him. Then, when that lie about His character is exposed in your heart, search for the truth about that characteristic of God.

Think of the people in your life that you trust. Why do you trust them? You trust them because you KNOW them. So, if you don’t trust God one could make the correlation that you don’t know Him. That is a good place to start to build your trust with Him. Spend time with Him, get to know His character through the stories in His Word. That would be time well spent and He will bless your searching with knowledge of His trustworthiness. Then you can expose your soft underbelly in full trust, ready for that full belly blessing from your Heavenly Father.

Love and Blessings,

Pamela