If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
2Kings7:4
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Trust requires not only the profession of it, but faith, and perseverance. What you hear, and what you know are very important in the person that you are trusting. Even so, your knowledge may fail you because the thing you are trusting for, and what you must persevere through are weighty. When your pain seems to cast doubt on what you know, and what you’ve heard, and your faith is failing you, what keeps you holding on?
Trust. You trust but there is no evidence for what you are trusting for initially. There is no evidence of the fruit that is promised. They that trust in the Lord are like Mt Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever (Ps125:1). Admittedly, I’ve been shaken many times in the course of believing God, because reality can mock one's faith that you begin to question the soundness of your sanity. I’ve felt disoriented because I could no longer tell what is it that was a good intention and God intention, God’s voice, my voice. There were too many voices shouting. And that’s the thing; God is present, passing by but he was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire. Good intentions often sound like the wind, and earthquake and fire. Instead, he was in the still small voice, and I heard him. He brings you out on the mountain, but you must hear him. Ask him: are you in this advice, are you in this situation, are you in this offer? Is this coming from you?
You have to learn to see what God sees and believe what he says. You can’t see yourself from the eyes of man, or your own eyes. You have to come up a lot higher than where you are, and where you are used to, and see what heaven is seeing. A man thought himself as least in his tribe, and insignificant, but God called him a mighty man of valor. God doesn’t look for his word to be affirmed by a crowd. It’s only in hindsight that people laud you for being faithful to God, when amid your troubles, they were casting stones, reviling you, discouraging you, criticizing you.
Your own perspective and the perspective of those around you is limited to their eyes, their ears, and their experience, reasonings and calculations. If you were just an observer as you watched Jesus getting crucified, would you not also have mocked him? That he could raise men and children from the dead, yet he permitted himself to die like a common thief? Would your faith not have plummetted to the abyss?
Our lives are not group projects. God himself doesn’t bring us in the discussion; he’s looking for our trust. Can we trust him? You must step out and recognize God is not writing your life according to a specific script; he’s not rinsing and repeating what he has done before. Your case is for the purpose that men may know that He alone is God, and no one dictates times and seasons except him.
In any case, trust requires honesty. Honesty about expectations, about fears and concerns. Over the years I’ve had to face the fact that I did not wholly trust God in certain things because of what I perceived his hand had done. But the decisions that we often take, although his hand is not in those decisions, his mercy is beyond comprehension. He can take the chaos we've created and work it out for our good. And because of this, I’ve learned that trust is not just hearing that still small voice, but it requires boldness, otherwise you'll end up enduring life, and being accompanied by regret to your grave. God speaks but we are afraid of the road ahead; of what people will think, what our loved ones will say; we’re afraid of people withdrawing their love, their support.
If you are praying “Lord let your will be done” that has to mean something to you. What is his will? What has he revealed to you in secret? It must be worth standing for. Sacrificing for. Waiting for. It must be a cross worth carrying.
