Friday, August 05, 2011

Trust

Trust is a much used word in our English language. In the “Encarta Dictionary” it is defined as “confidence in and reliance on good qualities, especially fairness, truth, honor, or ability”. Having confidence in something or someone is a vital quality for a relationship to exist. When trust is gone, basically the relationship is gone.


Daily, we speak of trusting Jesus. While scripturally it remains true that when we place our trust in Jesus we are sealed with the Spirit of God, it is equally true that the Spirit of God will infuse our heart and souls making our trust level of Jesus grow and expand. It is what the Bible calls “Spiritual Maturity”.

On a personal level, without trust nothing of any consequence gets accomplished, every word gets challenged, and good ideas get derailed. The trust level between family, friends, churches, pastors, and the like constitutes the basis by which life is lived and goals are accomplished.

Sadly, it can happen that an individual can be stripped of his trust through no fault of his own. It only takes a ‘word’ or ‘suggestion’ from someone else and, so it seems, that individual is branded as someone not to be trusted. While this can be called “Character assassination”, the Bible calls it ‘slander.' Peter says, “Rid yourself of it.” Paul gives several thoughts on this subject. He says, ‘slander no one’, ‘it must be removed from you’, and ‘put it away.’ Paul knew what Christ would have us know, “The sin of slander has the spiritual impact of physical murder.’ To slander is to misrepresent which results in the trust of a trustworthy individual being undermined.

Scripture says, “Speak the truth in love”, yet this text has been sorely abused. The ‘truth’ which Paul writes about is God’s truth, not our own version of truth. Too often, as flawed human beings, we begin our search for the truth with our minds already ‘made’ about the end result. Most of the time, we find a way to come to the conclusion we wanted to come to. While it isn’t ‘right’ to do this, too often it is done this way. Also, too often we desire to speak the truth absent the love OR conversely, act in love without speaking the truth. Both of these scenarios have disaster written all over them and candidly, border on abuse.

The result of this type of behavior can be that someone who is trustworthy is no longer trusted, a reputation is destroyed, a life is wrecked, and even a ministry thwarted.

TRUST – we use the word much, but do we realize how easily ‘we’ can be the unwitting culprit to its destruction. “Let us put on the mind of Christ.”

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