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She jumped only after she was convinced. Her dad caught
her, and he continued to every time she jumped. After a
few minutes, she started jumping with more abandon and
more delight. She stopped checking to see if he was
ready. He’d caught her enough times that she knew
he’d be there. She became fearless. He never let her
down.
There is a bit of that little girl in all of us. The one
who wants to leap into the awaiting arms of someone we
trust completely, knowing it will fill us with joy and
delight.
But too many of us have experienced someone turning
their back on us. Instead of
resting in safe arms, we’ve found ourselves flailing in
the deep water.
We stop jumping.
It makes perfect sense that people who have experienced
betrayal will stop trusting. But without trust, we don’t
get to delight in relationships with others or
experience the fullness of love, which is what God made
us for.
How do we regain our ability to trust after it has been
broken?
I once dated a man who cheated on me. I thought the
relationship was headed toward marriage. Now I thank God
that it did not. The relationship is over and I’ve
learned to trust again. What did I learn?
The worst thing about the betrayal wasn’t that I stopped
trusting the other person. It’s that my trust in myself
and my trust in God were damaged. Rather than start with
rebuilding trust with another person (which is where we
naturally expect to begin), we have to work first on
rebuilding those other two trusts.
Trust in God
We all know we’re supposed to trust God above all
things. But in the face of betrayal, faith is shaken.
When you are let down by another, you also may feel like
you have been let down by God. You may feel
that way, but you haven’t been let down by God. God
doesn’t ever let you down. People do. That’s easy to say
but harder to believe. How do you rebuild trust in God?
When I was
going through the aftermath of the break-up with the
cheater, I was devastated for a long time. I felt as if
I were in a pit. A whole network of people pulled me out
by listening to me, caring for me, and tending to me.
Though I felt abandoned by God, after I was out of the
pit, I saw that God was taking care of me through other
people all that time. (Continued
on next page.)
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Visit the
study
page for ideas for discussion and further
reflection.
God is trustworthy. That’s a fairly fundamental part of
our Christian faith. When things are going well, it’s
easy to believe. But when things are going badly, God’s
trustworthiness becomes more difficult to grasp.
When it feels as if everything we depend on is falling
away, we sometimes test God in order to see if God can
be trusted. We say things like: “Ok God, if you really
love me, take away this illness;” or “Hey God, I’m just
going to throw myself off this emotional cliff right now
and if love me, I’m sure you will catch me.”
Sometimes we take it a step farther and reserve our
trust until after we’ve gotten proof: “Dear God, if you
take away this illness, I’ll believe that you love me.”
Such bargains mask our fears. Fear is the opposite of
trusting God. Think about when Jesus was tempted by the
devil. Jesus’ trustworthiness was put to the test.
If you are the son of God, throw yourself down from
here; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels
concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands
they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your
foot against a stone.’ (Luke 4: 9–11.)
This
temptation hinges on an “if.” It would have been a totally different
story had the devil said “because you are the Son of God, throw
yourself down.” The word because indicates that trust is
present. The “if” reveals that trust is lacking. The devil wasn’t
interested in learning whether or not Jesus was the Son of God. And
the devil wasn’t interested in developing trust in Jesus. Rather, he
was interested in drawing out Jesus’ fear and exposing him as a
fraud. What a perfect temptation.
If Jesus didn’t jump, it would show that he didn’t trust God to
catch him. And if Jesus did jump? Even worse. It would have revealed
that Jesus had something to prove. The Son of God should trust God
completely. But he should also trust himself enough to know that he
has nothing to prove—not to the devil, and not to anyone.
Continued on next page
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