Unity Seed – Trust in God: Trust

Key Verse

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Romans 3:5-6 (NIV)

Short Reflection

From my very early childhood, Proverbs 3:5-6 made a mark on me. It was the passage my mother wrote with her beautiful penmanship on the inside front flap of the first Bible she gave to me. I knew even then that if my mother wrote those words in such a critical place, they must be very weighty words.

I have spent my life learning how to trust in God. I am so prone to living by sight, not by faith. For some irrational reason, I often choose to trust myself, other people, or my resources – all of which have a horrific track record regarding being trustworthy – rather than God. God has never let me down. Given this, I should be much further down the path of trusting Him given the many years I have tried to walk humbly with Him. 

I am learning to rejoice that God’s ways are not my ways. That makes it easier to focus on the importance of being “All for One” and prioritizing unity in the many times that other people’s ways are not my ways. I used to think, and perhaps often still do, that if others didn’t adopt my way, then they adopted the wrong way. But if, as my mother’s handwriting would suggest, I need to submit my ways to God’s ways, then maybe my ways are wrong on frequent occasion and maybe I need to submit my ways to other people’s ways more often than I realize. And if I did, perhaps we might see a bit more of that unity Jesus prayed for to His Father in John 17.

Trusting God is a huge step we all need to take to pursuing the “All for One” unity Jesus had in mind. Mom – let me do it with all of my heart, just like you wrote those many years ago.

Lord, let this reader and I be “All for One”, and may it result from our trust in you.

This is the first in the “Trust in God” series of blog posts.