In God We Trust

No doubt about it, God wants us to trust him. We are to trust in him, not in ourselves. We are to trust that he is good, that he loves us, that he is full of mercy. Our faith is to be in him. He is trustworthy, absolutely reliable and faithful.

Trust, or faith, is a key ingredient of our new life in Christ. We are justified by faith (Romans 3:28), sanctified by faith (Acts 26:18) and saved by faith in Jesus Christ. We live by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7), stand in faith (Romans 11:20), work in faith (1 Thessalonians 1:3) and pray in faith. We cannot please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6). It is absolutely essential!

When we put our trust in God, we are trusting him to be our very life (Colossians 3:4). That means that when we first put our trust in God, we are taking the first step toward learning to trust him for absolutely everything!

Trust, by nature, is active. We do not merely accept that God took care of our salvation from sin and death and then go on our way with no further thought about it. Trust in God cannot be a passive thing—by its very nature it has to be active. Faith generates action. It is far more than just believing a set of facts about God (see James 2:19)—it is trusting God to be and to do everything he said he will be and do for us. And when we trust God, we are committed to everything he is committed to.

That is why worship is so important and meaningful to us as children of God. Worship is a means God has given us of rehearsing and remembering who he is and what he has done for us. Through worship, God helps us more deeply understand and value who he is and what he has given us. Worship helps us commemorate and celebrate his love for us and the good things he has done for us.

When we trust God, we don’t want to hide any part of our lives from him. We want him to make us into the person he wants us to be, and we trust him both to know what to do and how to do it. The Holy Spirit leads and empowers us to love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30), and to adore him, desire him and delight ourselves in him (Psalm 37:4).

In worship, we praise God for his power and love. We express and act out our faith that he will always be the most important reality in our lives. Our praise helps us put life into its real perspective.

When we trust God, we realize he is our greatest priority. He is more important to us than anything else—more valuable than possessions, money, time, reputation and even this mortal life. He is our all in all.

The greatest commandment, Jesus said, is to love God with all that we are. That means we orient our lives around him, around his gracious will for us. When we trust him, we believe he knows best for us, and we want to please him. He is our point of reference, our definition of a meaningful life.

When we trust him, we do his will not out of fear, but out of love—not begrudgingly, but with joy. We trust his judgment, his word and his ways. We even trust him to give us a new heart, to make us more and more like him, to lead us to love what he loves and to value what he values.

We would never be able to do any of this on our own, of course—we must trust God to fulfill his promise to do his work in us from the inside out, by the Holy Spirit transforming us. To trust God is to let him have his good way with us. It is to believe him, to desire and to take his advice, to seek to follow him wherever he leads.

When we trust God, we trust him with all that we are—our past, our present and our future combined. Like a toddler resting fearlessly and contentedly in its mother’s arms, we rest securely in the love of our heavenly Father.

Joseph Tkach, 2002