Trust Trumps Understanding

Who do you trust? Why do you trust them? We trust what we believe to be true, right? If something or someone is true, then they are worthy of being trusted. This is not complicated, and most people would agree to this without an argument. Another way of saying it, is that we trust truth because we understand that truth is trustworthy. Truth then becomes connected to our desire and ability to understand.

Understanding has at its center, information; the more information we can access, then the more we can understand. I believe that the instantaneous availability of information has made us way less trusting as a rule. Most of the time if someone says something we doubt, all we have to do is Google it, and instantly verify the validity of the claim being made. This is great access to information, but debilitating when it comes to trusting what people have to say. I believe that because we can verify so much we are beginning to trust very little: in other words if I can’t verify it to be true then I have reason to doubt whether or not it is true in the first place – making truth subject to our investigation and subsequent understanding.

What about God? For some people, the inability to understand rationally, who God is and what God has done, seemingly gives them permission to claim that God does not then exist. As if God’s existence depends on our understanding. Struggling to understand God in order to believe in Him is like telling God that if He proves He is God, then you will believe. God is perfect, and has no need to prove anything to anyone for any reason.

God did not create you for you, or even for your part, like we are in some cosmic balancing act, where we do our part, then God does His. God has always done all the parts, and our existence is evidence of His glory not our greatness. In other words God did not create you because He needed a relationship with you. He created you because He’s God and He does not need anyone or anything, He is God remember.

Listen to the words of the prophet Micah:

“But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

So you don’t understand everything; that is good. It is only in trusting God that we can grasp an understanding of peace. Peace that we do not have to know it all to understand, but that we can know the One who does.

…just sayin’

In His grip,

Pastor Pat