God Teaches Us Trust

When someone says, “I love you,” is it fair to assume that they are simultaneously saying, “You can trust me”? I mean, isn’t love just that - a show of trustworthiness? Isn’t that also how our own love for others develops over time? Love in the absence of trust seems incomplete somehow. Is it fair to say, at least, that our greatest love and affection is for those whom we trust the most? Consider what the Bible says about our love for God, for example -  “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We love God so much because we are convinced that He loved us first. This conviction is born of His faithfulness in caring for us, from birth, even.

“He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.

On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.
This passage is so beautiful, especially verse 9, which says, “you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.” As infants, we learned to trust through the care our parents gave us. This system of developing a trust, which became an integral part of our love for our parents is designed by God to teach us about love, itself. In other words, this trust between child and parent is fundamental to how we approach God, as our Father, the One who loved us first.

I often think about individuals who struggle with love. When I get the chance to speak deeply with them, I discover invariably that they have trust issues which most often stem from dysfunctional relationships with one or both of their parents. It breaks my heart because the failures of the parents end up haunting the child for years, if not a lifetime. I understand that God’s plan is perfect and that He ordains everyone’s life, including the painful aspects of it; but in no way does this mitigate the pain and suffering, itself, in the heart of a person whose parents were defunct in their duties.

A parent’s primary duty towards their children is to raise them up in the faith. Integrity to this divinely instituted purpose is meant to glorify God in the hearts of the children. Failure to provide for one’s children (e.g. to love and engender trust in them) is a severe offense to God because His intent is to use parents’ faithfulness to draw His own children to Himself.

Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The key word in verse 8 is “provide.” Love isn’t one-sided. Taking care of a child implies the same application of integrity as we see in Hebrews 4:12, which reads, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Integrity to righteousness cuts in both directions, where the truth is the sharp point of division and thoughts/actions fall on one side or another. For example, for love to be like this, it must not only show tenderness, but also discipline.

Apply your heart to instruction
and your ear to words of knowledge.
Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
If you strike him with the rod,
you will save his soul from Sheol.
What can we say of the parent who fails to exercise integrity for the sake of their children? According to the Bible, that parent is setting up their kids for “Sheol” (death). It is neither kind nor loving to the child to withhold righteous judgment from them just because it demands discipline. While we learn trust at the breast of our mothers, we also learn it through discipline.

To love a child is to exercise integrity over them while they are yours to judge. This is a gift from God to the child, given through a faithful, loving parent. When a child trusts their parents, it engenders trust in the One who gave them their parents, namely, God. God delegates authority to parents for this very reason - to represent Him and His love.

Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
To “train up” a child is to reveal to them that they are loved by God. This is what it means to “provide” for your family (ala 1 Timothy 5:8). This is why whenever I hear a parent (most often it’s fathers) say, “I worked all day and night to provide for my family,” I wonder if they did so at the expense of love in the home. This would be tragic because God isn’t a workaholic. In fact, it seems to me that He provides for His children so that we might enjoy more time with Him, personally. In other words, the fact that we can trust Him implicitly to take care of us means we can relax and enjoy Him for the sake of Him, for the sake of love. He is not simply a provider of stuff; rather, He is love. The details of life are just that - details. He takes care of these details so that we may spend more time loving Him, our “Abba” (aka “Daddy” - Galatians 4:6).

Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
The deepest love we’ll ever know is with God. He teaches us to trust in Him in order to draw us into the sphere of this love. He uses our parents as our introduction to His love for us. This is what makes being a parent such an incredible privilege. God chooses some of us to take on this responsibility knowing full well that integrity to it is like a double-edged sword.

Trust is built on the back of integrity. Give that some thought today. In the absence of integrity, there can be no trust. In the absence of trust, what say you of love? Trust is our introduction to God’s love. God gives us parents as examples of His faithfulness to us, which is why when a sinful parent ruins our trust, it instills a certain distrust in God-given authorities altogether, and it typically implies a long road to recovery. God can, and will, use other methods to repair our trust, thankfully. He might even use an ordained vessel like yours truly to draw upon his own experiences in order to teach you of such things, effectively turning a type of evil into something good. In this we can trust in Him - He will do whatever is necessary, regardless of human failure, to reveal His love to us (e.g. John 3:16).

The consummation of this God-given, God-originated love begins with trust. Trust takes time to develop, as we are suspicious by nature due to the very fact that we know ourselves as untrustworthy, in our flesh. God proves His trustworthiness and therefore His love for us. This is the great blessing of sanctification, of maturing in the faith.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

We love because he first loved us.
What a wonderful reality it is to know God’s love. Looking back at all the ways in which He draws us to Himself is a source of great encouragement. It all begins with trust, something He chose to teach us at the earliest stages of our lives, so that when we reflect like this, our hearts are warmed simply knowing that this love that we share with Him was planned by Him all along. The more He teaches us, the more we trust Him. The more we trust Him, the more we love Him. Teach us Lord!!!

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins