My Struggle Trusting God

I love it when the biblical text takes my sermon to the struggle of trusting God. My love for this topic springs from my own personal struggle in this area. A few years ago, I went through a difficult season of wrestling with doubt. It was mostly intellectual in nature – I had so many questions and I wanted airtight answers that would make my all my questions nothing more than a distant memory. The funny thing was that as I attended seminary, partly in the hope of finding answers, I found that with every answer came new questions. The more I learned, the more I learned how little I knew or understood!

I desperately wanted to understand. I desperately wanted answers to every question about God that begins with “Why?” I wanted perfect clarity, a mathematical sort of certainty. And I began praying that way, asking God to give me clarity, to simply give me His understanding of everything.

Instead, God helped me see that I was praying the wrong prayer. He made it clear that I should be praying for trust and that this was His foremost desire for me. My mind was taken back to the Garden of Eden, to that moment in time in which our parents Adam and Eve fell. Notice where the Fall begins:  

The Serpent suggests to Eve, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Gen 3:4-5 ESV] Eve says He did and that if they ate of it, or even touched it, they would die. And then the Serpent says, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." [Gen 3:4-5 ESV]  

The Fall begins where the trust between Man and God ends. Adam and Eve decided that they wanted to see what God sees, that they couldn’t simply trust God and obey – they too wanted clarity! Launching from this point forward into the Biblical narrative, it is no surprise then that we find God continually putting his people in positions where great trust is required.

We see this with Abraham and Sarah. They were promised a son in their old age, that their family would in fact grow into a great nation, but the great struggle throughout their story is one of whether they would trust God to deliver His promises in the face of bewildering circumstances. This is true for so many others in Scripture and is of course central to Christ’s own life. At the very beginning of his ministry, we find Jesus fasting for 40 days in the wilderness, being tempted by the Satan to break His trust with the Father. He remains faithful and his trust is ultimately manifested on the cross, having been preceded by a prayer of trust in the Garden of Gethsemane (another Garden!) in which he prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." [Luk 22:42 ESV]

Ironically, my prayer for clarity was answered in that I came to clearly see that what God desired most was my trust. In fact, this seemed to explain why God seemed happy to plant absolute mysteries at our feet. I now readily recognize God’s testimony through Isaiah when he says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” [Isa 55:9 ESV]  

Nevertheless, I have not abandoned my pursuit of understanding God. My starting point is simply different now. I now see that I must start with trust. Over a thousand years ago, St. Augustine put it like this: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” [The Confessions] Doing this means I must set aside my Adamic ways, my desire to only trust what I naturally see and understand, and instead trust God to lead me into everything that I need to understand, leaving whatever remains to Him and to the day of Christ’s return.

I leave you with a quote from Proper Confidence by Lesslie Newbigin. This short book was extremely helpful during my difficult season of doubt and may be of help to you. It is in line with Augustine’s notion of “Faith seeking Understanding.”  

 "The phrases 'blind faith' and 'honest doubt' have become the most common of currency. Both faith and doubt can be honest or blind, but one does not hear of 'blind doubt' or of 'honest faith.' Yet the fashion of thought which gives priority to doubt over faith in the whole adventure of knowing is absurd. Both faith and doubt are necessary elements in this adventure. One does not learn anything except by believing something, and - conversely - if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relation between the two cannot be reversed. Knowing always begins with the opening of our minds and our senses to the great reality which is around us and which sustains us, and it always depends on this from beginning to end. The capacity to doubt, to question what seems obvious, is a necessary element in our effort to know reality as it is, but its role is derivative and secondary. Rational doubt depends on faith; rational faith does not depend on doubt." (Proper Confidence, pp.24-25)

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.