October 2022

King David was a man acquainted with both the dazzling highs and the darkest lows of life. While some of the painful times resulted from his foolish and sinful behaviour, others were simply the result of life’s complexities forced upon him by providential chance and others.

When hurts repeat often, the heart sometimes recoils into distrust of others, and even of God. Add to this condition the heart’s natural compulsion towards self-deception, it easily finds itself unable to trust God. This is fed also by fears, uncertainty, and the ever-present murmurings of others. The result is, belief begins leaning towards disbelief, trust reverts to distrust, and spiritual paralysis sets in. If we find ourselves in this condition, realise that we don’t need assistance, we need a Saviour.

The nation Israel often sank into this empty spiritual condition where all hope of being reconciled to God seemed lost due to their hard-heartedness. Jeremiah lived in such a time of Israel’s history, yet God spoke through him the comforting words of hope and trust that Israel needed. The Lord’s words tell of His provision for a nation lost in the despair of their faithless lack of trust in Yahweh. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built… (Jeremiah 31:3-4).

Spiritual restoration is based upon God’s faithfulness, with His determination providing every resource necessary for wayward people to exercise faith. Earlier Jeremiah told Israel, blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD (Jeremiah 17:7). This uncommon statement shows that for people inwardly lost, they can reach out to the God who will inwardly become the trust they so desperately need. This is a unique work of God’s Spirit in the human heart, providing what we cannot generate ourselves, trust.

Similarly, David reminds us in Psalm 40:4, blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust. Just as the Lord provides faith for the faithless (Eph 2:8-9) and repentance for the unrepentant (2Ti 2:25), so He graciously provides trust for the untrusting. This extraordinary work of God is that He becomes within us the actual heart mechanism which reaches out to God in trust. Therefore, when we trust in God, it’s not for a desired outcome, instead it’s that we are satisfied in simply trusting HIM. The result being that we accept His will in whatever format He chooses to express it in our lives. It could be said, that in this way, from within the believer, God is trusting God and we are simply the vessels through which His trust is manifested. This is where the downcast believer discovers the blessing that both Jeremiah and David spoke of, recognising that we can ask God to be the trust we so desperately lack.

Trust is therefore not measured by its size but by our willingness for God to generate deeper trust in Him. The presence of even the most microscope wish for any capacity to trust in God is evidence of the Almighty being active in our lives. Trust is believing with confidence in the certainty of another.

Armed with the truth of God’s Word we know that through Christ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Peter 1:3-4).