Coming Back: Trusting God Again

Let’s be honest from the get-go: we don’t always trust God. We want to control the uncontrollable in our lives, so we plot and scheme and try so hard to keep everything in our power.

It doesn’t work.

We cause ourselves heartache and hurt, making situations worse and bringing unnecessary pain and stress into our lives. For as much as we want power and control of our own lives, we are not equipped to be God.

God can be trusted. We might know this, but often we go for days, weeks, maybe months without turning to him and giving our worries and fears a rest in his sovereignty.

When we realize we haven’t been trusting God, trying to get through everything hard on our own strength alone, we can feel a sense of shame. We feel like God is now disappointed in us, that he is maybe angry at us. How can we come to trust again when we know both our proclivity to wrest control away from God and our tendency to feel like we let God down by not trusting?

Friend, there is hope.

We have a God who is faithful to us, even when we’re not faithful to him. When we don’t trust, God keeps us in his hands. He loves us and is committed to bringing us into the way of love so that we can both know we are loved and that we can love well.

Trust is something that we learn how to do, something we get better and better at. It’s not a once for all choice; trust is a moment-to-moment decision to rest in the heart of God.

When we find ourselves not trusting, we can come back to God and trust again. He’s not disappointed or angry. His grace is higher, wider, deeper, and truer than that.

Coming back to trust can be as simple as a prayer, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9.24). It can be pouring our fears and anxieties out to God through journaling. It can be taking a moment to pause, meditate on the faithfulness of God, and then, with a steadying breath, taking the next step.

There are countless ways to come back to trusting God. It’s not about how you do it; the point is that you do it. Constantly, we all need to come back to trust in God, to rest in him. This is what repentance is. It’s not about saying sorry and promising to never do it again. It’s about changing our minds from thinking that we are big enough, powerful enough, to control our lives and get through the hard things without help from the divine love that wants to empower and comfort us.

God is trustworthy. We can rest on that.

Scripture for meditation
1 Timothy 2.13, “…if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself. “

Discussion & journal prompts
Today, right now, what is one thing you can do to choose to trust God?

Where in your life do you need to trust God?

What is a prayer or verse of the Bible you can meditate on as you choose to trust God?

Share your thoughts on this devotion and discussion questions or request prayer in the Dawn app, located in Resources > Community.