Real Trust
1 Peter 5:7
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
Have you ever lost someone’s trust because of something you did? I have. It is even hard
for me to go into detail because doing so, would reinforce the broken trust. Let me say
that a young adult had shared a very broken area of her life with me. I was overwhelmed
with my own brokenness at the time and asked someone else for advice on how to help
her. Another person overheard my conversation and confronted the young lady with what
I had shared.
Our friendship was never restored. While she certainly forgave me, she did not trust me.
At the age of 19, I learned a very important lesson that day. Broken trust is very, very
difficult to restore.
In looking at our verse for today, the reason we struggle to give our worries and cares to
God is because we struggle with trust.
Trust.
How many times in God’s Word does God ask his followers to trust him? The Israelites
were told to only collect enough manna for one day, but some attempted to save it until
the next day, because they struggled with trust. (Exodus 16) Daniel can you be obedient
to me and trust that I will protect you in the lion’s den? (Daniel 6) Abraham do you trust
me enough to leave you homeland and not have a specific place to move to but rather
trust that I will lead you? (Genesis 12) Noah do you trust me enough to spend the next 80
to 120 years building an ark that will save your family during a great flood? (Genesis 6-7)
It is easy to say we trust God as we lay our cares on the altar in Sunday church. But many
of us begin to pace the halls with worry, then by Tuesday we are trying to figure out the
problem ourselves. Essentially we are taking our burdens back on our own backs rather
than leaving them with God.
Our passage today says “give” your cares and worries. The old version I memorized
when I was a child in Sunday School was “Cast”. The word refers to purposely moving
an object from one place to another. We should hand those things weighing us down to
God. But we should hand it over and let God handle it.
The Bible tells us God’s ways are also different than ours. His ways are higher. That’s
just one of the ways He offers hope when trusting Him is so hard.
Isaiah 55:8-9
8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.
Triple D: Cast your cares on him and leave them there. How can you better do this?