Trusting God

by: Tom Bast

Ronald Reagan was well known for his quips and one-liners. One of my favorites is, “Sometimes in this administration, it seems like the right hand doesn’t know what the far right hand is doing.” He also had a famous political maxim: “Trust, but verify.” Its primary application was to arms limitation treaties, but it is also sound wisdom in dealing with other people. “Yes,” we say, “I will trust you, but I’ll also be checking up on you to make sure you keep your word.”

But what about in our relationship with God? Should we trust him only when we can verify that he will indeed give us the desires of our heart? Here is the crucial difference between trusting God and trusting other people. With God it’s not “Trust but verify,” but rather, “Trust to verify.” The wonderful promises in Psalm 37 add up to this: God will always give us our heart’s desire. Sometimes that promise will come literally true for us in earthly terms. At other times it will seem like it doesn’t. But all of us who “take delight in the Lord” will discover that one day our deepest desires will be satisfied, even if we didn’t truly know what they were. The lesson for us is that it is the very act of trusting God that provides indisputable (and indescribable) verification of his promises in our hearts.