Is anything stopping you from putting all your trust in God?
One of my longtime favorite Bible passages, and one that I hear quoted very frequently, and I know you know it, is
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. Proverbs 3:5, 6 NIV
These two Bible verses, on many occasions, encouraged me to turn to God in challenging situations or when I didn’t know what to do.
When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my dad became concerned that I was not developing properly and that I might not be able to have children when I grew up.
So he took me to our family doctor for an examination. The doctor confirmed my dad’s concerns and there was talk about procedures and operations to correct what they thought was the problem.
It was pretty terrifying to me and, mostly out of fear, I absolutely refused to go along with an operation or anything else they suggested.
When I got home that afternoon, I remember going to my room, closing the door, and plopping down on the bed in despair.
The first time I really trusted God
But then I started having a conversation with God. Well, it was actually me doing the talking. I don’t remember anything God said to me. At the time I didn’t really think I was praying, but looking back on the situation, I was definitely praying one way or another. It was kind of like a declaration of my faith and trust in God.
I told God I didn’t want to have an operation and that if He wanted me to have kids when I grew up, I would trust Him to make it happen. But if not, that was okay too. I just wasn’t going to worry about it. I turned it all over to God.
In my mind, I felt to some degree the problem was resolved. I did wonder from time to time if I would ever be able to have children, but I remembered that I had put the whole thing in God’s hands. And that gave me a lot of peace.
And fast forward to today, I have three grown children, who are each a gift from God.
As far as I can remember, this experience was the first time I trusted God in a situation that was beyond my control.
Over the years, there have been many, many more times when either by choice or sometimes in total desperation, I put all my trust in God to direct me, to protect me, and to heal me.
Sometimes putting all my trust in God has been my first approach to solving a problem or finding an answer. But there have been many times when I only turned to God completely after I had tried everything I could do or get others to do, that I finally surrendered to God and put all my trust in him.
People in the Bible who trusted God
The Bible is full of situations when people either trusted God and prospered or didn’t trust in God and eventually suffered the consequences.
And sometimes people who didn’t believe in or trust God, tried to convince others not to trust in God.
Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.
Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the LORD and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses. And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. 2 Kings 18:5-7 NIV
Unfortunately, the King of Israel, in Samaria, and the people there had not been faithful to God.
In King Hezekiah’s fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and laid siege to it.
This happened because they had not obeyed the LORD their God, but had violated his covenant—all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out. 2 Kings 18:9, 12 NIV
Well there’s a whole lot more to this story, which you can read in 2 Kings, Chapter 18.
Hezekiah kept trusting God
But then, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, was beginning to conquer some of the fortified cities in Judah and had his eyes on Jerusalem as well.
Put yourself in King Hezekiah’s shoes for just a minute. All your life you’ve been faithful to God. When you became king, you got rid of the pagan practices that had crept into the culture. But now a the mighty army is at your doorstep threatening you and your nation and has already conquered part of your territory.
It was a frightening situation. And Hezekiah continued to put his trust in God.
Sennacherib sent his chief commanding officer, with a huge army, to persuade Hezekiah to surrender his sovereignty or be destroyed in battle.
Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ 2 Kings 18:28-30 NIV
The king of Assyria, through his commanding officer, made a blatant attempt to discourage Hezekiah and his people from trusting in God.
As Hezekiah continued to receive letters trying persuade him to not trust in God, he turned to God more earnestly than before.
That’s a good lesson for us.
The prayer of Hezekiah
And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God. Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God.” 2 Kings 19:15, 16, 19 NIV
If you are ever not sure of how to pray in a life-threatening situation, just spend a little time with this prayer of Hezekiah. It begins the same way the Lord’s Prayer does, praising God and acknowledging His kingdom and glory and power. And it has the same request to deliver from evil that the Lord’s Prayer has.
The rest of this story is in 2 Kings, Chapter 19, but the upshot is that Jerusalem was not conquered by Sennacherib because Hezekiah trusted completely in God.
Putting all your trust in God
Have you ever been in a situation where you were at the end of your rope, so to speak, and there didn’t seem to be any solution? The only thing you could do was to trust God. And because the situation was so bad, you turned to God with more trust, hope, and expectation than ever before.
Whenever this happens, you have won a moral and spiritual victory.
Now, this may sound a little odd, but sometimes it seems almost easier to trust God completely when things are hopeless. There’s nowhere else to turn.
The real test of how much we trust God comes when things are not life-threatening, but we just need to make a decision, make some changes, or when everything is going really well in our lives.
Trusting God with decisions
Several times when I’ve had to make a very important decision, I’ve tried to figure things out myself. I’ve made lists of pros and cons for all the possible options. I’ve changed my mind several times about what would be the best option. But I was going round and round in circles in my head and not really trusting God. I was trying to decide what I wanted instead of what God wanted.
And that is one of the most important aspects of trusting God, honestly and earnestly desiring to know and do His will, instead of your own.
Several years ago I had to decide between two very different but equally good paths for my life. After weeks of trying to decide what to do, I finally realized I needed to let God in on the decision.
Oh, I had been praying about it, and I had been asking God to show me what to do, but my motive was really about what I wanted, what would make me look good in the short term. When I finally surrendered to God, I simply prayed: God, what will bless the most in the long run?
I had no way of knowing the answer to that question, but when I put things in God’s hands, asking for His perspective of my whole life, the answer came instantly.
The interesting this is, the answer was one of the options I had been considering. But when I gave up the need to control the answer, the answer came effortlessly. I trusted God’s guidance completely and had no more doubt or debate on the matter in my mind.
I did what God directed me to do, and it’s been an immense blessing to me.
What does it mean to trust someone or something?
So, what does it really mean to trust in God, or in anything?
It really comes down to believing in something you know to be true. It’s solid conviction.
I may not personally understand all the details of the laws of aerodynamics but I when get on an airplane to fly somewhere, I trust those laws and the engineering of the plane to work together to get that gigantic structure up in the air and take me where I’m going.
Every day, we put our trust in all kinds of things that we usually take for granted. Like trusting the mail to be delivered. Trusting the water and electricity will come on in your house, or that there will be water in the well if that’s how you get your water.
I could list hundreds of other similar situations, but the only problem here is that many of these types of things sometimes do fail. What if a power outage knocks out your electricity that you trust will always be there to light and perhaps heat your home?
That’s actually happened to us. A couple of times we’ve been without electricity for about a week, either because of a hurricane or a snow storm. It forced us to trust more in God.
What are you trusting?
You may trust in your job to provide enough money for your family, but then you lose your job.
My point here is that all too often we put our trust in things that are not 100 percent trustworthy.
Let’s come back to Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, for just a minute. He put his trust in his great army and the ability of his commanding officer. He put his trust in his ability to intimidate Hezekiah into not trusting in God. But he was putting trust in things that, ultimately, weren’t 100% trustworthy.
It reminds me of this verse from Psalms.
Psalm 20:7 NIV
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
You can paraphrase that verse lots of ways: Some trust in money. Some trust in their social status, some trust in their own personal abilities, or fill in the blank with whatever it is. But we will trust in the name of the LORD our God.
Where do you put your trust?
Putting all your trust in God more consistently
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s important to keep track of how much money you have and live wisely and accordingly. It’s good to use your education and position in society to accomplish God’s purpose for you, and the talents you have are a gift from God that allow you to do amazing things.
But ultimately, our trust needs to be in God, the source, not all these people, places, and things.
The book of Psalms has a wealth of encouragement to always put your trust in God. If you want to do an interesting word study, just use a concordance and look up the word “trust” just in the book of Psalms, and maybe Proverbs too. There are some really, really helpful, encouraging verses there.
I love this verse from
Psalm 9:10 NIV
10 Those who know your name trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
How to put your trust in God
Have you ever not been sure how to put all your trust in God? This verse actually hands you the key to being able to trust God. It’s to know God’s name.
What is God’s name, anyway? Well, the Bible gives lots of names to God. They all tend to reveal a particular aspect of God’s nature. In fact, the word “name” in Hebrew and Greek means the nature, character, or essence of someone.
So we could paraphrase this verse in Psalm 9 this way: Those who know God’s true nature are able to trust in Him.
If you think God is capricious, plays favorites, and takes pleasure in punishing every tiny mistake you make, you don’t know His name, you don’t understand His nature. And you really don’t know that you can trust Him because you don’t know when He’ll change His mind.
But when you know God as divine Love, always ready to guard, guide, and provide for you, it’s easy to put your trust in Him because you know He’s trustworthy.
As I said, there are so many times in the Bible when someone trusted God and were delivered from their problem.
Trusting God when you’re afraid
Here’s one more example from the Old Testament. At one point, David fled from King Saul and ended up in the land of Gath. He did not feel safe there and wrote Psalm 56 as a result. And it speaks to us today as well.
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? Psalm 56;3, 4 NIV
I love that. Even though David was in a threatening situation and was afraid, he trusted God. Whatever “mere mortals” could do to him could not compare to or dilute his trust in God.
How did Jesus trust God?
One of the main things I like to focus on here on The Bible Speaks to You Podcast is how Jesus thought about things, how he prayed, how he loved.
So I been thinking about how Jesus trusted God, and how you and I can tap into how he trusted God?
The answer to this question really comes back to that verse from Psalm 9:10, Those who know your name trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Jesus knew God’s name. He knew God’s nature. Jesus knew God more intimately than anyone else ever has. Because of this he could trust God for everything he said and did.
Now, if you’ve been listening to The Bible Speaks to You for a while, you’ve heard me quote these verses I’m about to several times, but they bear repeating here. And remember, this is Jesus, not just explaining how he was able to do and say all he did, but he’s also setting an example for us, pointing the way and enabling us to follow this example.
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will.” John 5:19, 30 NIV
“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.” John 12:49, 50 NIV
Your relationship with God
Think of having the kind of relationship with God where you knew beyond all doubt that whatever happened, you could trust God to tell you what to say and show you what He was doing so you would know what to do.
I know, that’s a pretty high standard. But we can always take that one next step to follow Jesus in this way. Jesus didn’t trust in his own personal abilities. He trusted in God to direct him, to show him what to do and to put the words in his mouth.
It all starts with knowing God, letting God reveal to you His true nature in all its many aspects and facets.
Jesus’s whole life was an example for us of trusting God, but the supreme example of Jesus trusting God came just before and during the crucifixion.
Jesus knew what was going to happen. And he knew God had promised him he would be restored to life. He even told his disciples he would rise from death. But he still had to put all his trust in God.
In the garden of Gethsemane, when he asked his disciples to pray and they all fell asleep, Jesus realized he could not even put the slightest bit of trust in anyone or anything but God.
And that’s exactly what he did.
Jesus trusting God on the cross
Even during his agony on the cross, he never surrendered his complete trust in God. In fact, his last words were a verse from Psalms expressing this trust that God would do what He had promised.
Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. Luke 23:46 NIV
Jesus is actually quoting the first part of
Into your hand I entrust my spirit;
you have redeemed me, LORD, God of truth. Psalm 31:5 CSB
The word “redeemed” in this verse is in the perfect tense in Hebrew. That means the action is already complete.
Jesus could see that God had already redeemed him. Even though Jesus was on the cross, his victory over death was already assured. And Jesus trusted this.
Putting all your trust in God
So how can you and I approach this same level of complete trust in God that Jesus had?
Well, it starts with humility. In other words, quit trusting in yourself, your abilities, your wealth, your own power and influence. Surrender your will, your plans, your preconceptions and opinions of how things should be. In short, surrender your glory, your kingdom, and your power to God.
Pay attention to people, places, and things you put your trust in, even in small ways, other than God. Once you’re aware of what you’re doing, you can transfer all this trust in other things back to God.
Now I know what you may be thinking: Hey James, does that mean I shouldn’t put any trust in my friends and family to be honest and always do the right thing, or that I shouldn’t trust the orderly systems and operation of things at work, at school, at home, or at church?
I certainly hope you have people in your life you can trust and that there are trustworthy and orderly systems in your life. But this is not always the case. When you are trusting these trustworthy people or systems, go a little deeper to the real source of your trust, which is God.
Knowing God intimately
The reason you can trust these people and situations is because you’re really trusting God to govern them. If someone or something is not trustworthy, this is a wakeup call to put your trust in God instead of people, places, and things.
To trust God completely requires a conscious choice to know God more closely than you ever have before. Jesus could trust God in every detail of his life because he knew God so intimately.
The better you know God, the more you will hear His voice, and the more you will trust and obey Him in every circumstance.
_____________
James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
Make a donation to support the show
_____________
Bible References
Proverbs 3:5, 6 NIV
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
2 Kings 18:5-7 NIV
5 Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
6 He held fast to the LORD and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses.
7 And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.
2 Kings 18:9, 12 NIV
9 In King Hezekiah’s fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and laid siege to it.
12 This happened because they had not obeyed the LORD their God, but had violated his covenant—all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out.
2 Kings 18:28-30 NIV
28 Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!
29 This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand.
30 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
2 Kings 19:15, 16, 19 NIV
15 And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
16 Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God.
19 Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God.”
Psalm 20:7 NIV
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
Psalm 56;3, 4 NIV
3 When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise— in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
John 5:19, 30 NIV
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
30 I can do nothing on my own. I judge as God tells me. Therefore, my judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the one who sent me, not my own will.
John 12:49, 50 NIV
49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.
50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.
Luke 23:46 NIV
46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Psalm 31:5 CSB
5 Into your hand I entrust my spirit;
you have redeemed me, LORD, God of truth.
