Trusting Him For Love

By Rose H.

What is trust? Trust is having faith in something and living it as a reality.

Recently I was challenged by Brennan Manning in his book The Signature of Jesus, not to pray for trust unless I was willing to take the consequences. “Trust” The author stated, “is always grown in the times of doubt and hardship. If you pray for trust be prepared to go through dark times*” When we are at the end of our rope, God holds out a hand of love and entreats us to take hold of it, trusting that He will see us through this hard time.

The author is right. I have never grown in trust sitting comfortably in front of my computer screen. It has always come as the result of being in a situation where there was nothing else to hold onto, nothing else that I can see, and nothing else that worked. It’s in the midst of these dark times that God works in our hearts. Growing in them a deep trust that transcends circumstances.

I know that there have been many times when I have doubted God’s love for me. Feelings were gone, the world seemed dark and scary, and my life was messy. How could God love someone as messed up as me?

This is where trust came in. In another of Mannings books I was challenged to my core of how I look at trust. In Ruthless Trust, I found a new view of God and His love for me. In this book Brennan says that trust is essential. “It takes ruthless trust to believe that there is a God who loves us completely.*”

I know from personal experience this to be true. As I described, when I feel down, it attacks my trust with a vengeance. My outward circumstances are all of out of whack and my heart is so far from home.

But it’s in these times that God grows ruthless trust in my heart. A trust not based on feeling, circumstance, or the way things look, but on the unchanging nature of God.

God is love! God is true! God is unchanging! It takes ruthless trust for me to say this. I have to trust in a God that I have never seen, nor touched. I have to trust that how He has revealed Himself to me is truth.

It’s even harder to say these things in the dark of night. When you can’t feel Him. But praise be to God, He is helping me to be able to say just that. When He feels far away, I can say that His love endures forever. When He feels near, He is faithful and true. When I am down and sad, God is still on His throne. When the world falls apart, God still loves me.

This takes trust. That’s a simple fact. I can’t say “God loves me” unless I have trust in Him. And I am so grateful that God is growing this kind of trust in me.

Trust isn’t something that is grown overnight. It’s something that God grows in us through the most painful and hard circumstances of our life. As you walk through life God will help you to trust Him in ways that you can never imagine.

This post is based on lessons from life and from Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning. If you still have questions, I would encourage you to pick up this excellent resource and read it. It’s one of the best books I have ever read.

*Roughly translated from The Signature of Jesus and Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning. Publisher Harper San Francisco