UnashamedSample

Trust Takes Time

Learning to truly trust God has been one of my greatest challenges on my way to shame-free living and freedom. When you’ve lived in the prison of shame for as long as I had, you’ve developed many broken defense mechanisms—such as never being truly vulnerable to anyone, or controlling everything you can in your life so that you will not be hurt again. These mechanisms provide a false set of comfort that you cannot fathom letting go of for an unknown future. You cannot imagine that there is security and safety “out there” in which you can actually rest. And you cannot possess the promises of a God you do not trust.

Learning to trust takes experience. Lots of experience.
Learning to trust takes repetition.
Learning to trust takes failing.
Learning to trust takes challenges, trials, and tests.
Learning to trust takes risking—following God in the face of our fear.
Learning to trust takes time—lots and lots of it.

Trust has to grow. And in my observation––and personal experience––for those who’ve struggled with shame, trust grows slowly.

But here’s the great news. God knows how to grow trust. He knows how to plant it, how to nourish it, how to repair it when it’s been broken, and how to restore it when it’s been lost. God is in the trust-growing business!

Do you know what He uses to grow our trust? He uses the very tool that the enemy uses to try to stop us. He uses our fear. Fear exposes the limits of our present capacity––but not our potential capacity.

Think about this: When you come face to face with fear, do you know what you are looking at? You are looking at the very next place where God is preparing to build your trust.

Trust-building is a process. A journey. For all of us.

We must put more faith in what we do know about God than in what we don’t know about the future. We must walk in obedience, trusting that God is good and there is no darkness in Him at all (1 John 1:5). God doesn’t have a dark side. He can only do good, and only good will come of the things He asks us to do.