“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”1 That is all God asks of us—to trust, to believe, to have faith in him. Specifically, then we are to trust that God (our creator) loves us (because he created us), and he knows what he is doing (because after all, he is our creator)! And so the command is: Trust God! 🙂 With all our heart! 😀 With everything in our lives! 😁 If only we could do it! 😒
Why do we struggle with this one request? Because we like to understand things. 🤓 And although we believe that understanding is the impetus to trusting, it is actually the antithesis of it. 🤪 We think that if we only understood why God did things, then we would be able to trust him more. Nope! Understanding things negates the need for trust! 🤔 Hmm. If we understood everything God did, we would not need to trust him at all because we would know that he knows what he is doing. (Which he does!) Therefore, it is essential that we do not understand things. 🧐 Hmm. I don’t like the sound of that! Not understanding things makes me feel uneducated and unprepared, even simple-minded and foolish. But not understanding is the prerequisite to trust. Aargh! 😠
Which is why Solomon did not stop with that first thought: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” No. There’s more. He added, “and do not lean on your own understanding.”1 In other words, do not even think you will understand! As a matter of fact—count on it! Bank on the fact that You Will Not Understand What God Is Doing! 😦
But why? Why can I not understand? I am intelligent. I am contemplative. 😏 And what’s more, “God created man in his own image.”2 And “we have the mind of Christ.”3 And we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.”4 How’s that for quoting scripture at God? 😉 Here’s why. God says, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”5 In other words, we do not think like God, and we do not plan things out like God does. And we never will! Why is that? It’s simple: We are not God! 🙄
And although we know that in our heads, we love to pretend we are God! If God were to share with us why he does some of the things in our lives, I am sure we would argue with him on a few points! 🤨 Because we think we know as much as he does. But we don’t! Because we do not think like God!! Paul writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”6
We are, however, not to be discouraged or frustrated by his “unsearchable” and “inscrutable” ways. But rather, this is where we realize that “the depth” of God’s love is unreachable because it is limitless! Paul’s prayer is that someday we may all “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”7
And you know what will happen as we begin to grasp how deep the love of Christ is? We will be able to “trust in the Lord with all our heart.” 🙂
Therefore, even though it makes us frustrated and angry when we do not understand God and his ways, we must get used to it—even become comfortable there! It is the only place we will learn to trust. Trusting is always accompanied with waiting. And waiting is a tricky place. Impatience and doubt hover around us there, ready to poison our thoughts with lies. They are enemies of trust. Here is the perfect scripture to recite when we do not understand God’s thoughts and ways and find ourselves waiting interminably. “I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”8
We need to embrace the times when we do not understand God, for they can become great opportunities to grow our faith, to nurture trust, to discover the depths of God’s love. It is good and right to say to God, I don’t understand! 😠 For when he hears those words, he smiles and says, Perfect! 😉
1Proverbs 3:5 2Genesis 1:27 31 Corinthians 2:16 4Romans 8:29 5Isaiah 55:8 6Romans 11:33 7Ephesians 3:18-19 8Lamentations 3:24-26
