What is Trust in God?

Matthew 6, I believe, contains the clearest synopsis of what it means to trust in God:

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:25-34).



Note how this verse is prefaced by the words,

“No one can serve two masters…” (Matthew 6:24a).

When we do not trust God for present direction and future outcomes, I believe we serve the master of self: our wanting to be in control so as to ward off disappointment, frustration, failure or missing out.

This isn’t to say we don’t take a thoughtful approach to interactions and decisions. In fact, it is a more thoughtful approach, I would submit, to trust God than it is to just plunge ahead out of our own personal (or someone else’s) anxiety, impatience, excitement, fear or impulsiveness.

The Matthew verse says to trust God first, and only then…

This gets to the crux of it: our motivations.

Because if we aren’t trusting God, we are automatically trusting something else, and that something else is our motivations.

We live in the default mode of always putting our trust and faith in something or someone, be it ourselves, our friends and family, our boss or co-workers, our government, or God.

To trust parts of each of those, here and there, or to be fair-weather trusters—trusting God when things go well but taking the reigns when things get dramatic—we end up all over the map: one step forward, perhaps initially, then one or many steps back eventually.

It is true God gives us wisdom, but we often interpret that to mean,

“Look, I’ve been a mature Christian for many years now, and have advised other people and know my Bible well. I’ve overcome many sin tendencies and have mastered the art of forgiveness and loving my neighbor. I’m ‘good to go.’ I am able, in the experience and knowledge God has given me, to make these decisions on my own, certainly understanding all the while that ‘God is in control.’”

But that is not fully trusting in God, and it is a very easy mistake to make, especially for those who are used to, or in a ministry position of, providing Godly counsel on a regular basis to others.

Never forget that we all need God's counsel, all the time. No-one ever graduates from heart, mind and body reliance on God’s perspective and leading.

The Matthew verse also talks about being consternated.

“Do not worry,” it says.

Worry is the clearest indication that we have not truly put ourselves in God’s trust. And we put ourselves in God’s trust through being strong in Him; not vulnerable to our inner emotions.

This brings us to humility: submitting ourselves to God to take every thought captive unto Him (2 Corinthians 10:5), waiting on His insight, and only then going forward in the peace of all He has shown us.

This will include His warnings and corrections of wrong motivations so that we can then re-evaluate and re-consider the decision, problem or situation in front of us.

So trust in God is not “let go and let God.”

Trusting in God is active: an alignment in what's driving us so that whatever we do and say is now brought under His will, assuring us that we can then be at peace with any outcome.

This is what creates Godly confidence that in turn breeds patience and joy, whether our questions are answered and problems resolved quickly, or not.

Trust in God takes the intentional approach that we will give everything to Him, not just first, but entirely, throughout.

We will be active in continuing to live out our faith as called, staying the course of Christ in us, even when facing difficult circumstances.

As we trust God in Christ Jesus, in full awareness of His care, we can smile in satisfaction that He is, indeed, Lord of our life, and we are beyond blessed to have Him be so.



copyright Barb Harwood

TED Talks, Best Practices and the Stumbling Block of Lack of Respect

Achieving inter-personal influence and “success with people" has risen to the level of frenzy without much improvement in the decorum of the social sphere.

Buzz words of the day abound: “process,” “best practices,” “evidence-based,” and “soft skills,” not to mention the obsession with concepts such as “continuous learning,” “learner-experience,” “user adoption,” “user experience,” “user-generated content,” “personalized learning,” and “mobile learning.”

Seems everyone wants to become better at something and someone, somewhere, wants to capitalize on that.

A list of the most popular TED talks of all time include:

“Do Schools Kill Creativity?”

“Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are”

“How Great Leaders Inspire Action”

The Power of Vulnerability”

“How to Speak so that People Will Listen”

The Puzzle of Motivation”

“How to Spot a Liar”

“What Makes a Good Life”

The pathway to happiness is also a recurring topic, no surprise there.

I have to say, I don’t get it. 

Probably because I am a child of:

—"Interpersonal" grandparents, meaning old people who interacted with me and my siblings on a one-on-one basis and weren’t micro-managed by my parents.

—Gifted and dedicated public school teachers who were hired because they were competent to teach—in their own way according to their own “best practices,” which usually meant common sense coupled with mastery of the subject and a sincere love of teaching and students. 

—Parents who matter-of-factly put a roof over my head and food on the table and who subscribed to a no-nonsense parenting style (which generally agreed with 99% of all parents at the time). 

If I got in trouble at school, the way the school handled it was right. My parents sided with the teacher.

If I sassed back to my parents—attempting to stage my own little coup of family operations—I was quickly short-circuited by DAD and never attempted it again.

If I was mean to or fighting with the neighbor kid, that kid’s parents put an end to it shortly and sweetly by admonishing both of us—not calling the cops on me and not complaining to my parents. Adults in my day were the adult, and they corrected the child. As it should be. 

I could go on and on. I fear that these things I am talking about are going to become so rare as to evaporate into non-recorded history, lost forever at great social cost to people everywhere.

All the TED talks in the world cannot bring back disciplined, no-nonsense parenting. 

All the “best practices” in the world cannot steer and keep a child on the right path. 

All the "soft skills" we long for in our millennials will never take root in this new era of “every individual is right” (even if they aren’t) and "every person’s voice is a worthy one" (even if that voice is one of chronic complaint, eternal whining, and voracious victimhood that begs “look at me”). 

We have gotten to the place in time where, if there’s a TED talk on it and a “best practice” for it, then that alone makes what is said and practiced legitimate. Even if it’s pablum. Even if it’s silly. Even if it’s shallow trendiness. 

Common sense—having a gut for what is right and wrong; polite and rude; self-centered and other-centered--can only be developed into a person over time, from people willing to model and encourage it. 

We are losing the ability to own this common sense because nobody wants to follow common courtesies anymore: the common courtesy of respecting privacy, revering social protocols (like holding the door for someone, talking in a low voice and not cursing in public), and sincerely “celebrating diversity” by not having a melt-down the minute we come into contact with a person who might see things a bit different than us. 

We are so bombarded with “better” ways of living that we have lost the foundational best way: simple respect for others. 

dictionary.com defines respect as “esteem for or a sense of the worth” of a person; “deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgement.”

Respect. By losing it for others through personal narcissism, we lose respect for ourselves too. 

We crave kindness but have disconnected it from the very respect necessary for it’s existence. 

We so want “love” and “inclusion” to be our personal calling card but completely miss the fact that without a foundational respect for others, we can never value them and therefore never love or include them. 

We go around saying we are all about “Kumbaya” until we run into someone who thinks and acts opposite.

Just take this quick test: how would any of us react to someone who takes a varying stance than us on the following:

Global warming

GMO’s

Organic eggs

Chickens

Meat

Electric cars

Ford Trucks

Republicans

Democrats

Vaccinations

Walmart

Black Friday holiday shopping

The saddest part of the above is the narcissism, self-righteousness, and personal identity attached to each (and just about any other topic one would encounter nowadays). 

We are so entrenched in "me" that we have completely lost our sense of “you.” 

And yet we scramble to and gobble up incessant TED talks on “kindness” and how to be happy; how to make friends; how to lead. 

How about this for a TED talk: 

Forget Yourself Long Enough to Engage with Someone Else in Humility and the Ability to Listen, Hear and Play Back What was Said. 

In this TED talk, we will decide beforehand that we don’t already hate or dislike the person we are about to converse with, and that we will withhold formulating an opinion on anything until at least we’ve done the playing back part (hearing and understanding). 

In the age of either hitting the “thumbs up” key on Facebook (or unfriending someone), and anonymously hammering out sarcasm on the internet in response to being offended, we have trained ourselves in the ugly paradigm of not thinking, not respecting, and not conversing. 

We as a people have become a bunch of noise going up to space, with nobody seriously hearing and nobody sincerely caring. 

And then we kick back at the end of the day and watch a TED talk on “What Makes a Good Life.”  

The problem is, these TED talks and “continuous learning” attempts merely bounce off of a hard heart. Which is what many of us have had. And do have. And will continue to have. 

And that’s the point. We are becoming a world of hardened hearts, cordoned off at the boundary of, and thinking only to protect, one’s self and one’s individual perspective. 

In this is the inability to ever live in any semblance of community and inclusiveness and diversity. 

The more we strive for “loving kindness” from a place of self-centeredness, the more inevitable it will be that life is hindered by an obstruction of platitude that says one thing but lives out another.

The sound bite of “nice” is swallowed up in the reality of a general lack of respect for other people. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Bible's Credibility Remains, Regardless

A great quote from God Under Fire contains a terrific insight about Scripture and people's reaction to it:

"Scripture never is credible or authoritative for anyone until God's Spirit has worked in that person's heart (1 Cor. 2-16; Eph. 2:1-10). The Scriptures are indeed objectively sufficient to give each of us a proper knowledge of who God actually is, but their objective sufficiency is undercut by our sin. The fact that theological Constructivists do not find the language of Scripture credible or authoritative does not tell us anything about its actual credibility or authoritativeness; instead, it tells us something about them. Thus, we should feel free, with Christians of other ages, to turn to the Scriptures to understand who God is."
Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson, writing in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God