Trust- Why is it so difficult?

When I examine my life, I find I have had an abiding conviction that Jesus is the son of God, but that is very different as compared to trusting God. Trust requires more than belief, it requires a willingness to demonstrate one's belief. Trust requires you put skin in the game and not just mentally ascent to a belief or notion.


When you trust, you take action. For example, every morning during the week, we awake and go off to work. We commute several miles because we trust that our actions and efforts will lead to a pay check. We expect and trust that a direct deposit will be placed in our checking account. Such actions are in fact, expressions of trust because they are accompanied by action and not mere belief. Belief requires no action but merely agreement. Trust requires a demonstration of action that is predicated on one's belief.


So I know how to demonstrate actions that constitute trust for the belief I will have a pay check every two weeks... even though there are any number of interventions that could potentially interfere with that becoming a reality (I could croak in my sleep, or have an accident on the freeway, or simply get fired for performance reasons, etc).


And yet non of those potential possibilities deter my belief that leads to my actions to get up and go to work because I trust in the outcome of receiving my bi-weekly compensation. I'm pretty sure you do the same thing and the point is we take action based on our trust our actions will result in a future outcome (even though we have no real assurance that it will).


We trust in our money, guns, democracy, military capabilities, technology, etc... Notice that all these things are tangible (IE, they are easily seen, felt, heard, expressed or other wise experienced by our senses).

But then there is this invisible God...who says that He is a rewarder of those believe He is, and who diligently seek after Him...We are told we can access Him through the measure of faith in His son; Jesus Christ and through believing what He died for us on the cross for our sins, and has risen from the grave.


We want to trust in God but why is that so hard for some of us? What does it mean to trust? What are some inhibitors that make it difficult for us to trust God? And is this not our responsibility to resolve? I don't presume to have all the answers for this dilemma (and to be sure there are many more inhibitors). I thought I would offer a few to explore, analyze and propose solutions to:


1) We find it hard to trust because we are fearful.
2) We find it hard because we listen to the voice of doubt.
3) We don't practice activities that instill or build our trust in Him.

1) We find it hard to trust because we are fearful.

Researchers say babies are born with only two fears (1) the fear of loud noises and (2) the fear of falling. All other fears are therefore presumed to be learned. An acrostic for FEAR is: False Evidence Appearing Real. I don't know who originally coined this acrostic (nor is that important) but the implications of it are very significant. Many people in the bible were fearful and they either failed to attain what God had desired for them, or they simply missed the mark of what they otherwise could have attained. 

2) We find it hard because we listen to the voice of doubt.


I don't know why God developed a system that requires faith in Him and that Jesus is His Son, but that is the way it is structured. When you are the boss, you don't really have to explain your rules (not that our tiny minds could really understand them). When you are the boss, you explain your policies and rules and that communicates the expectation for the employees to follow. So much of what the bible states is counter intuitive to our minds because our minds are naturally carnal or worldly. We doubt things that don't make sense to our frame of reference. So when we read about God becoming a man and dying on the cross for our sins, our minds struggle with trying to understand...and we doubt. We doubt that we can accept such an explanation for how the world came to be and it makes no sense to pray or have telepathic communication with an invisible being in hopes that our thoughts, hopes and aspirations would be heard and understood...and yet this is the system God established for us to access Him.


We doubt the things we don't understand, even if those things are true. Some of us struggle to come to a place where we accept what the definition of 'truth' is. Some think its subjective; what is true for you is fine and what is true for me (while it may be different) is fine too. So we rationalize that we can have different 'truths' as it pertains the the same subject. This is the basis for 'all roads lead to the same place' argument. The notion of a single and absolute truth is intuitive up to the point that it does not fit our desired opinion of what we want the truth to be...the bible tells us that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him and those that would worship Him must do so in Spirit and in Truth. This means in order to know God, you must believe and accept there is one version of the truth.

3) We don't practice activities that instill or build our trust in Him.


Have you noticed that even the greatest sports athletes must practice in order to stay on top of their game? They will often practice the fundamentals of their sport until it is second nature and from there, they can improvise having already internalized what they need to do from a foundational standpoint. This allows a basket ball player to step up to the foul line and have greater confidence, or trust that he or she will sink those clutch free throws and win the game. It also allows for their teammates to share that same trust for the game's outcome. You see, it is the practice of free throws that builds the trust that when one needs to make them in a game setting, those shots will be made. I believe there is a correlation between practicing activities that build confidence in sports and doing the same in the 'game of life'. And when it comes to trusting God, we have an opportunity to perform or practice activities that will build our confidence or trust in Him as well. The bible states 'faith without works is dead' which implies that one must perform works to accompany one's stated faith. The works, or the action is the 'active' ingredient that becomes the building blocks upon which greater trust and confidence can be derived.

The Issue of Identity

We all want to be accepted, loved and assured that we belong and have value in someone else's eyes (if not our own). My parents were of different ethnic, cultural and racial backgrounds. They met in what I can only describe as the most unusual of circumstances and married at a time when marrying outside of one's race was still considered taboo. I am a product of the 60's and 70's in terms of social influence and survived through living in inner city, sub-standard housing including some pretty ghetto (oxymoron I know) housing projects.

I grew up in some of the rough areas of Los Angeles in what was once known as South Central L.A. and my parents frequently moved from and to various neighborhoods in an effort to find a safer home for us. Through this transitory experience of constant moving, we were frequently faced with curious, often well meaning but sometimes cruel inquiries as to what we were. 'What are you'? was a frequent question we encountered? Our father was African American and our mother Japanese. So we looked as if we could be Pacific Asian Islanders (Samoans, Hawaiians, etc), Hispanic, and often we were ostracized with slurs and other derogatory labels.

As a child, this had a negative impact on my self perception and although I viewed my self as an African American, I was always acutely aware that I was biracial. Being biracial means you are neither one nor the other but equally both. So after much soul searching (when I was in my late teens) I allowed my childhood experiences in the African American community to shape my views and perspectives on society, American culture and politics. This was a form of self indoctrination that heavily influenced my relational interaction with others. And while I thought I had this together then, I was in fact still growing in maturity and understanding. It was when I entered my early twenties I was again challenged to re-explore or re-assess what I felt was my sense of identity.

I worked at a factory in the late 70s and met a guy who was a Christian. This guy was about 4 or 5 years older than me and he was actually very cool. We worked in a two man set up making resistors (it was an electronics manufacturing company). It was boring and monotonous work, I mean really...making resistors all day, 5 days a week. The highlight of the day was when you had filled the bag and could stop long enough to take a batch to another department for testing.

So this guy, I will call him 'Joe' would work really hard! I mean he put allot of effort into what I thought was a job that, well I couldn't understand why? Like I said, it was really boring so most people would feel compelled to cruise and just get by. Not Joe, he worked hard and on his breaks he read the bible! Now I was no stranger to the bible, I just didn't know why he chose to read it on his break. This combination of bible reading and hard work caught my attention.

One day, I asked him 'Joe why do you read the bible' so much? He said 'I believe in God' (or something like that...keep in mind its been a long time since this conversation so much of this is anecdotal recollection on my part). I then asked him 'Why do you believe in God'? He smiled and said 'Well, when I think about who I know myself to be...how complicated I am as a person...my thoughts and emotions...I just cannot believe that I evolved from a lower life form (like a monkey)...

Now this blew me away because up to this point, I had looked to society to provide me the criteria for what I would use to define who I was and I viewed my identity through the filters of race and cultural heritage. This seemed quite natural as I was a product of the 60's in an inner city environment. During the 60s there was a desperate need in my community (and within myself) to find something positive to identify with. We were fighting allot of negative self imagery, but I never thought about this on a spiritual level because my mind was still very carnal and everything was judged based on appearances sake.

In the 60s and 70s, we were expressing ourselves through our appearance and it was cool to look as if you were a revolutionary! There was only one problem; I was only looking at the external and attempting to use that as a means to define myself. I realize in retrospect that was naive and not unlike so many teens experience today. You have but to look around today and see teens with the 'gothic' look... they are saying 'we are different' and this image is what we want to represent who we are. They hope their appearance will define them to society... but this too is vanity and superficial because it cannot address the deeper aspects of one's identity and being.

So after thinking about Joe's comments, I must admit it forced me to rethink everything I thought about who I was and whether a God was the reason for my existence. And if this was true, how would I process this in terms of my identity? So yes, Joe lead me to question myself and my lack of relationship with this God that he knew so well...and he lead me in the sinner's pray to accept Jesus Christ (right there on one of our breaks)!

So, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and Jesus changed everything. He changed my views on my identity and I learned that God is not a respecter of persons. I realized that I had become a 'new creature' in Christ and that in fact, I had become born again. I realized that the exterior or the outside appearance of a person is nothing more than a shell or a tent and that we are in fact truly spirits. We are spirits (our essence), we have a soul (our mind and emotions) and we have a body (our physical body). We are in fact a tri-part being (three parts make the totality of what we are).

 When I learned that we were made in God's image and that we have his DNA, I began to think about the superficial trappings that society uses to define identity (race, ethnicity, outside appearances, cultural differences, etc) and it dawned on me that Satan uses this to divide mankind. Satan uses tools of race, racial bigotry, racial hatred and racial shame as tools to divide man and to keep him confused as to his true identity. You are not what your parents ethnic and or racial make up would suggest.

You are in fact a spirit and in this sense, we are truly all the same. The only question is do you know that? Or are you still thinking the external superficial appearances define who you are? If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are a child of God and you are not defined by externalities, but rather through your relationship with Him. You are royalty, you are an heir of the most High God, you are destined for greatness because you are a child of God!