Trusting God- How (Bible Study Lesson on Queendom Peak Facebook Page)

Trusting God. Simple to say, and to understand from a conceptual aspect. But when we really stop and think about it, what is trusting God? Well, trusting God simply put is leaning and depending on God to do what you can not, to provide and take care of you, and to lead and guide you as you walk out this thing called life.

More pressing that the question of What is trusting God, is the question of How to trust God. We have such a difficult time with the How part. Relinquishing control of your life to One that you can not see, is mind bottling to most. They figure, I want desperately to believe in God and to trust in Him, but I just don't know how to let go and let Him lead.

A struggle all too familiar to me. But what I discovered in trusting God is this: He will never ever lead me astray. He has my best interests in heart. And His plans for me will always be greater than any plan I could ever have for myself.

Bearing that in mind, I'll share a few of the steps that I took in learning to trust God.

1. Give Up on the Idea That You Can Do It Alone

This was always difficult for me. I struggled with always needing to be in control, and needing to be the one to fix whatever was wrong. But what I had to learn (and it took me far too long, and many years of pain), was that we have to accept that we are human, with human limitations. And so, the thing that we have to eventually come to terms with is that in our own power, there is absolutely no way that we can do anything alone. 2 Scriptures that I had to learn and meditate on as I began to understand this were John 15:5, and Exodus 14:14. In John 15:5, Jesus says "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." And what He was saying is that He is the source from which all of our needs are met, our resources flow, and our strength and help come. And it is in Him that we must abide and dwell in order to have access to what we need, and that it is by His blood and His power that we are able to attain the mercy and grace of God that we need to get through life, day by day. Exodus 14:14 says that "The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still." This is one of my favorite scriptures because it really is a testament to the love that God has for us, and His willingness to protect us BECAUSE He loves us, and BECAUSE we belong to Him. And so for me, this scripture is one that I have to repeat almost daily to myself because it reminds me that God loves me so much, that as my Father, anything that I can not do He is there to do, anything that I can not protect myself from He is there to protect me from. He is there always ready and willing to fight for His children. The question is, when will we get out of His way, and let Him? We have to understand that God is our Father, and because we are His beloved children, He will fight for us. But we must first step outside of ourselves, and understand that we have to ALLOW God to be God in our lives. He does not force us, but rather He waits for us to finally get tired enough of trying to do it alone, to seek Him.

2. Find Out Who God is, & Begin to Build a Relationship With Him

If you don't know Who God is, then you can't even begin to understand what He can and Will do for you, because you don't yet understand what He thinks of you, and how much He loves you. Think about this; How many times do you trust people who we haven't taken enough time to get to know? How does this usually end up? More often than not, we find ourselves let down, betrayed, and broken by people that we trusted too easily and without knowing if they were truly qualified to be trusted. And most likely, in some way they let your down or disappointed you because you did not know them as well as you thought you did. And so consequently, somewhere along the way, you begin to question and doubt the trust that you had for that person because you realized, "I really don't know them like I thought I did." And then from there, you begin to withdraw your trust, you become protective and watchful over yourself, and you find yourself unable to rely and depend on them because you are now unsure that you can trust them. Well, if you never took the time to get to know them, then you never really knew their capabilities and commitment to the situation, thus you never really knew that they were trustworthy. How can you trust someone that you do not know? So, the same is true when you're learning to trust God. If you are not committed to spending time in The Word of God getting to know God, then how will you ever learn to trust Him? How will you ever truly know WHO God is and not just OF Him. You have to be diligent in seeking God, and you have to have a true desire to know Him in all of His ways, and to know what He thinks of you so that you know that you can trust Him. You have to know that He won't give up on you because Jeremiah 31:3 says have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore will I CONTINUE my FAITHFULNESS to you." You have to know that He will never leave you nor forsake you because "Deuteronomy 31:6 says "The Lord will never leave you, nor forsake you." You have to commit and be willing to sacrifice time to spend with God and get to know Him, so that you can build a foundation that is strong and stands on the fact that you know WHO God is.

3. Re-define What Trust Means

Once you find out Who God is, it's time to redefine trust. What I mean by redefine trust is this: You have to put your trust in perspective according to Who you are giving it to. So many times, we've trusted the wrong people, and so we take our experience of trust with regard to those people, and then put it on everyone else. We place limitations on our trust with everyone just because one person had betrayed or misled us. We fear opening up and letting people in because one person has hurt us. So we carry those stings with us, and we say that we have to safe guard trust with everyone else. But the truth is, you've got to know how to trust according to where you're placing it. So when dealing with God, there should never be any kind of rationing of trust, there shouldn't be any trust issues, and you should never feel as thought it's unsafe to trust God. But so often we take our definition and experience of trust with others (humans who fail) and we try to place God in that same arena. But what you need to know is that God is God and God alone. He is not a person, He does not have to earn or deserve your trust. Just based on the fact that He is God, merits your trust in Him. But if you've know Who He is, and you know what His Word says about Him, his attributes, His thoughts of you, His love for you, and what you mean to Him, then you begin to understand just how safe and sensible it really is to trust God, Your Father. Numbers 23:19 says "God is not a man that He should lie." And I love this scripture, because the truth of the matter is, we are not so much unable to trust God because we don't believe He is able or because we don't know that He is God. We are more times than not unable to trust God because we are afraid of failure, disappointment, and of betrayal. We have such a hard time putting our trust into proper perspective when it comes to trusting God because we keep trying to put God in a box with people. We keep comparing our experiences with trusting people to trusting God. But we need to take God out of the "trust issues box" because as the scripture just told us, He is not a man that He should lie. God is not going to betray you. He is not going to disappoint and let you down by betraying your trust. He is not going to ever deceive you, and mislead you. If God says that He will do it, you can trust that He will do it. If He says He will never leave you, you can trust that He will never leave you. If He says that He loves you, you can trust that He loves you. God is not a man that He should lie, and so you can rest easy in your trust for Him knowing that He will NEVER let you down, lie to you, nor fail you.

4. Adjust Your Perspective

So many of us have such a difficult time trusting God because we want to badly to be in control of our own lives. We want so badly to hold on to control because we are afraid. We are afraid of what God might remove, afraid of what He may ask us to give up, afraid of changes that He may ask us to make, and sacrifices that we may have to make. But we have to adjust our perspective. Because the fact is, not only does God know what's best for us, but He loves us so much that He WANTS what's best for us as well. But because as Philippians 2:14 says, we live "in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation", we have tyrannized God, and made Him out to be some villain Who won't let us have our way, or is constantly taking things from us. But the truth is, most of our mess we cause. And so in His grace and mercy, God will remove things from our lives, and clean up messes that we caused, in order to save us. So when we adjust our perspective, we can see that it's not so much as God just taking and removing things and people from our lives with no intent, or with malicious intent. It is actually God loving us so much, that He wants to help us clean up our lives. And this is why we must trust God, because He ultimately knows and wants what's best for us, and because He sees and knows what we do not. He tells us in Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper and not harm, plans to give you a future, and plans for and intended end." What God is saying here is that He knows us. He knows the things that He has planned for us and that He wants to give us. He only wants us to have His best. And if something or someone is in your life that does not fit into God's plan for His best for you, He will remove it. We have got to be grateful for that! We have to be grateful for God's protection from the things that we never knew were coming for us. Isaiah 55: 8-9 says "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith The Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." God is saying, I know the things that you don't. I can see what's coming your way, what would have destroyed you, who would have hurt you, and I'm saving you!

5. Be Willing to Submit to God, & Know that He is Able

This right here, was THE hardest part of learning to trust God for me. You see, learning to submit to God's will is the hardest part because of the "what if's." And the sad part is that our doubt in God really only comes from the fact that we fear God not giving us our way. It's not that we are afraid that God won't take care of us or get us through. It's more than anything we fear most that God won't give us our way. "What if God's will is not mine? What if God's plan does not match mine? What if God asks me to sacrifice some things that I don't want to?" We fear that God will do it, but that He will do it His way. We fear that it may cost us, or that we will not get our way. But I have news for you. You will not always get your way. And we have to understand that because God is God, and He knows and sees all, that even if we don't get our way, it is because God know's what is best for us. That is so essential to understand because it enables you to submit to God EVEN WHEN it's hard, or when it's not what you want or had planned for your own life. The Bible says in James 4:7 to "Submit ourselves unto God." And submission is not easy but it is necessary and key in our relationship with God, and to live the abundant life that Christ died to give us. We have got to get to a point where we can say "God I don't like this, and I don't want to do it. But You know what's best for me, so I submit my will under Yours and even if what I want is not Your will, I will trust You." And God understands. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that "We do not serve a high priest Who has not been touched with the feelings of our afflictions." And so we can rejoice because we know that even Christ struggled with the same things that we do. Frustration. Hurt and despair. Submission. We see even up to the time of the resurrection Jesus was STILL struggling with doing what He was sent to do, and He was perfect and without sin. He still struggled with doing what it was that God had purposed Him for. And He did what we do so often. We go to God, knowing that He is sovereign and that His will prevails, and we ask Him to change His mind, or to change the circumstances to fit what we want. And in Luke 22:42, Jesus prayed "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done." The awesome thing about this, is that in this moment we see Jesus's humanity. In this moment, we see that Jesus was afraid, He was weary and suffering. Yet, even when He prayed for God to remove the burden of the crucifixion, He was STILL able to submit and say "but never the less Lord, THY will be done." And that's what we have to learn to do. We have to learn to trust God enough that we can say Lord even if I don't get what I want, if it doesn't work out how I planned, have Your way Lord and Your will because I know that You are my Father and that you love me and only have the best for me.

Trusting God can be so difficult. but it's possible and it's the best choice we could ever make. You've given so many of the wrong people your trust, only to be left broken and disappointed. It's time to give God a chance. Trust Him. All of God's best for you, is just on the other side of your willingness to trust Him.

Trust Him!

-Amanda Hill, Founder of Queendom Peak