It’s not easy to trust once you’ve been hurt.

We all carry our scars, our bruises, our bitterness, and our tears: we tend to see the trustworthiness of others through the lenses of our personal baggage. When it comes to trust in God, it’s hard on our broken spirits to be “doers of the Word and not hearers only.” We can say that we trust God with all our heart, but when the hard times come, is our first reaction to trust Him or to doubt Him?

I struggled with differentiating the type of love I received from the men in my life when I was younger and the type of love I receive from Abba, God the Father. I wanted for so long to trust Him the way many of my friends did — wholeheartedly with no looking back, no question in their eyes. But I couldn’t. I associated my Heavenly Father’s love with the broken, selfish love of mere humans: incomplete and distant.

I read verses like Psalms 37:5, “Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in Him; and he shall bring it to pass,” and found myself thinking it was nice that people felt they could trust their way to a God who seemed so distant to myself. My head was there: I knew God was trustworthy. But my spirit doubted.

There was a brokenness in me that couldn’t allow myself to be that vulnerable. There was this questioning inner voice that came from my experience with men who hurt me that projected itself into this huge doubt that stood overwhelmingly between me and true faith in God’s ability to love me and to care for me. I knew something needed to change, but I didn’t know how.

So one Sunday morning a couple of years ago, I asked Him to show me how to have real, trusting faith in Him. I admitted that I could not trust Him on my own and needed help.

Since that time, my father has nearly died three times, my uncle who grew up as a brother to me passed away from heart complications at the age of 33, my husband was layed off, hired by a good-paying company, and quit that good paying job to go full-time in the ministry, we had a baby who had to be delivered by emergency c-section, that baby stopped gaining weight for several months, and God called my husband and I two thousand miles away from most of our family and friends to a different type of ministry position with no guarantees that I (the main breadwinner in our home) would be able to find another job.

I know: it’s a long list of things I could have (unsuccessfully) tried to handle on my own. But rather than feeling my body overtaken by panic and my days filled with stressing over figuring out how I (key word: I) would be able to fix all our problems, I found an abundant peace and trust in God that I never experienced before.

Did you know God glories in showing His strength in our weakness? He loves providing us faith we cannot muster on our own. Have you been struggling with faith lately? Do past hurts make it hard for you to really, knowingly, and completely trust in His ability to love you and care for you? Do you want to have complete trust in God but just don’t know how?

1. Admit – You need to admit that you can’t increase your faith on your own. Ever heard someone say you can’t fix a problem you don’t admit you have? It’s true. You cannot ask Him for help in increasing your faith if you’re not ready to admit that you honestly have a problem with trust. I think of the man who approached Jesus with his son who had a “dumb spirit” and asked Jesus to heal his son. When Jesus told him it was possible if he would believe, the man replied, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” This is really the hard part: I spent years denying that my past hurts were affecting my relationship (or lack thereof) with my Father.
2. Ask – Ask Him to show you how to find complete faith. Jesus tells His followers, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” We cannot be given until we ask, we cannot find until we seek, we cannot have complete faith opened until we knock.
3. Live — Don’t be just a hearer: do what you just asked. The panic and stress will be right there waiting to return if you let it. Keep living a life by choice in faith. Psalms 4:5 tells us, “Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD.” If I continue to live a life surrendered to Him (aka doing the right things that I know I should be doing as His child) then I’ll be able to put my trust — my whole faith — in God. If I live my life unrighteously, I’ll be putting that doubt right back where I asked God to take it from. You have to live right to have the right kind of trusting relationship with Him.
4. Remember – Remember what He’s done. If you find yourself struggling again or still feel that distance between you and your Father, go back to admitting and asking, but then follow it up with writing down or saying out loud the things you know in your recent history (since first asking God to help your faith) when He’s lived up to His promises.

There’s nothing greater than having nothing between you and your Father. There’s nothing better than trusting in Him. Complete faith in God is absolutely possible for His daughters who struggle with trust, if we’re willing to admit, ask, live, and remember.

Love, Meghan