God wants us to trust Him even if we don’t understand everything. This devotional reading looks at gaining enough trust to accept God’s salvation and to live for Him daily.
Nuggets
- Trusting God is relying on Him instead of our own understanding.
- We cannot separate God from His salvation, so must trust the whole package.
- Confidence is a synonym for trust.
We must commit to trust God. Yes, it is a choice.
However, some tend to think we can’t trust God until we understand Him and His actions. That isn’t the case.
We have to accept God’s Plan of Salvation by having the confidence to trust Him without worldly understanding.
Let’s see how that shakes out.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Commit to Grow Our Habits study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
Trusting God without Understanding
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Prov. 3: 5 ESV)
Trusting God is relying on Him instead of our own understanding.
Trust has an element of hope entwined in it. Trust is assurance that the promises of God are true. Hope is the expectation, also called a living hope, based on the confidence that, because of our relationship with God, our names will be found in the book of life.
The first thing that jumps out at me is we have to know what God has promised so that we can trust and hope in them. If we don’t have even an elementary knowledge of His promises, there is no way we are going to trust them to be true. We would have no reason to hope that they were.
Another thing that I see is obedience is also a major element. Trust God, not yourself, is written as a command. Do it. Do it now.
That is the command, but we have to choose to be obedient. We have to choose to do it now.
It is easier to rely on God when our relationships with Him are right. The farther we drift from Him, the less likely we are to trust and hope in Him.
Jortin said something interesting that should help those who struggle with submitting to God. Because we rely on God and are obedient to Him, we can ask for Him to bless us. Blessings are in the obedience.
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Also, we have to be diligent in trusting God. We can’t pick and choose the times we will or won’t trust Him.
We have to totally trust God 24/7/365/eternity.
We were created to depend on God. Barker told us why it is our duty to trust God. Just as God does not want a divided heart, He does not want partial trust.
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Thomas expanded that to include one thing we are to do and one thing we aren’t. We are to fully love God and not doubt.
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We can fully trust God because He has given us access to Him through salvation. Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
Glossary
God wants a relationship with us.
I have said several times that I have to process things. I have been batting it back and forth whether that is really a sin or not.
I know I am the one who has to make the decision, but is that a form a not fully trusting God?
I came across what Dennen said that applies to this. To me, processing is the same thing as reasoning. He wrote,
“The question is, not whether we shall use reason, but what are its limits? Shall we accept only what we can understand and explain, and refuse all which does not quadrate with our reason? Is Faith, with her delicate ear, her quick sensibility, and wondrous prescience, to have no place? In the power of modern reason can we know every inch of our way?”
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If it takes six months for me as a disciple to process and put my trust in God, yeah, that is a sin. If it takes six minutes, maybe – maybe not.
God wants us to reason out some things. We know God wants us to make plans — even when He knows He is going to change them. “A person’s heart plans his way, but the LORD determines his steps” (Prov. 16: 9 CSB).
There are some things we just aren’t supposed to understand, and no amount of reasoning is going to change that. Those might be more of the six minute type than the six month type.
However much we process/reason, we have do it in faith, not doubt. We have to totally trust God.
Then we have to know God’s advice is the best for us. Accordingly, we have to let Him tell us what to do – without talking back.
We have to depend on God for strength. “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4: 13 ESV).
The “… do not lean on your own understanding” (Prov. 3: 5 ESV) part also shows that the good must replace the evil. That shows us that we cannot only be a good person. We must be a good person who is a disciple of God’s.
Trusting God for Salvation
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation” (Isa. 12: 2 ESV)
We cannot separate God from His salvation, so must trust the whole package.
Salvation is free. We can’t buy it or earn it.
But we are expected to submit to God when we accept salvation. That is hard for some people.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. They want the blessings. They like the fact that they would be in His favor.
But they don’t want the salvation part. They don’t want to give up sin. They don’t want to think they can’t rely on themselves.
They think they can get the salvation without the sanctification. They can’t.
Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
Glossary
Walker explained it this way. He wrote, “The privileges of a believer are unspeakably great, but they all are founded on that change which the grace of God makes in his nature, here called salvation.”
Grace is a free and unmerited gift of love from the Heavenly Father, given through His Son, Jesus Christ, that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
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Glossary
Let’s try it again. Parker came at it another way. He wrote,
“The true meaning [of emancipation] is — you are invested with all the responsibilities of [organized] liberty; you have conferred upon you an opportunity of developing your whole manhood; you may now show the very best aspect of your character, and unless you do it, then slavery were for you better than freedom. It is so with the fullest meaning of this word salvation.”
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God’s salvation opens up a variety of opportunities that come with specific responsibilities related to that freedom.
But having specific responsibilities takes the focus off us and puts it onto God — where it should be. When we perform those responsibilities, our trust in God grows.
Ooo, this is neat. Parker brought this up in one of His sermons. Let’s implement it.
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- “Behold, God is my [Jesus] …” (Isa. 12: 2 ESV emphasis added).
- “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of [my Jesus]; for you I wait all the day long” (Ps. 25: 5 ESV emphasis added).
- “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of [my Jesus], and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1: 13 ESV emphasis added).
- “Therefore let it be known to you that this [Jesus] of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen” (Ac. 28: 28 ESV emphasis added).
- “For so the Lord has commanded us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring [Jesus] to the ends of the earth’” (Ac. 13: 47 ESV emphasis added).
God sent Jesus to earth to be our salvation. The New Testament — in fact, all Scriptures — teach this fact. He didn’t come to bring salvation only to the Jews but to everyone.
Now let’s look at what Isaiah was going through when he wrote this. The Israelites were in exile. Their freedom had been taken away.
But God was telling Isaiah that things were going to change. Salvation was coming.
Israel just had to trust in God.
What we can’t do is shut down. We have to trust Gods for the whole package, but we have our part to play in life.
Remember, we have responsibilities.
Trust Equals Confidence
“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man” (Ps. 118: 8 ESV)
Confidence is a synonym for trust.
Sometimes, trust is translated as confidence. Well, maybe. Maybe not.
Both definitions talk about belief in something or someone. It also talks about reliability.
When we look at the other synonyms for the words, those listed for trust tend to focus on God things – faith, belief, etc. Those listed for confidence tend to focus on us – self-assurance, self-reliance.
We need to put our trust and our confidence in God rather than man.
- Why wouldn’t we put our trust in the all-knowing rather than those who “… “lean on [our] own understanding” (Prov. 3: 5 ESV)?
- Why wouldn’t we put our trust in God Who has us in the palm of His hand (Jn. 10: 29)?
Fiddes told us the foundation of our trust must be built on God’s laws. There are a couple of reasons.
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- God is the only One we can trust.
- God’s laws show us God’s character.
Making the Connections #1
I had this thought. We are spending the year on the topic of building our habits. Read Scriptures more. Pray more.
What if that is missing the boat?
That would be making it a doing relationship. It makes it about us.
Don’t get me wrong. We need to up our communication with Him. The doing is a part of sanctification.
What if it is really about trusting more? Submitting more? Loving God more?
Trusting and choosing God more?//
Making the Connections #2
We just finished looking at the Lord’s Prayer. Slide made an interesting comment. He wrote, “Prayer is unavailing if unaccompanied with any trust, any abiding trust, in God.”
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Elaine-speak. Our prayers are useless if they aren’t back up with trust in God.
Think about it. Why are we praying to God if we don’t trust Him? Are we really expecting Him to answer them if we don’t trust He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present God?
Making the Connections #3
After we realize that we can trust God for an important matter like salvation, we know that we can trust Him for other important matters — like living.
Yeah, it is hard, especially when we take our focus off God and put it on ourselves and the situation. We have to choose daily to trust Him.
How Do We Apply This?
- Choose God in every situation.
- Don’t sin by not fully trusting God.
- Approach God for direction and guidance in our lives.
- Be smart in trusting God.
- Don’t limit God by limiting our trust in Him.
- Don’t limit God by only trusting Him sometimes.
- Totally surrender to Sovereign God.
- Always obey God.
- Believe there is a God Who is Sovereign God.
- Pray to God in difficult times to show we are not leaning on our own understanding.
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Father God. We choose to trust You more. We don’t need to understand everything – forgive us when we think we do. We need to accept Your Plan of Salvation and ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer. We place our focus on You. Amen.
What do you think?
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