Trustability: Remember What Is In You

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

John 2:24-25

In his heart he had often pondered the question he was about to ask. God’s material blessing upon his life was abundant, and he didn’t know why. He openly wondered to a close friend, “I don’t understand why God has blessed me this way.” The friend’s immediate and unhesitating response came, “Because He knows He can trust you.”

He treasured those words, much as he imagined Mary treasured the words of the angel Gabriel. He knew he had integrity, that God could trust him when he was alone. The mistake, though, was to assume that because he could be trusted that his human nature was therefore trustworthy.

Yes, at our core we can have the desire for a pure heart, to be godly, to have integrity, to be trustworthy, but, as Paul says, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:21-23).

Our mistake is to believe that because we can be trusted at all that we are then absolutely trustworthy, as a matter of our nature in Christ. We don’t know ourselves as Christ does. We lose the sense of our own capacity to be untrustable. We don’t understand that in trust, as in all areas, the flesh wars against the Spirit. Our decisions became invincible in our own minds. The result: We stumble. We make poor choices because we think God’s blessing is irrevocable, that our trustworthiness gives us tenure.

When God faithfully inflicts us, we will humble ourselves before Him, and trustworthiness will return. But this new sense of being trustable is mixed together with the absolute understanding that Christ never fully entrusts Himself to any man, because we each always have the capacity to sin at any moment. Yes, He can trust you, as long as you acknowledge that you understand you cannot be fully trusted, as long as you leave a sentinel posted on lookout for self-deceit. Remember what is in you.

I SURRENDER

Dear Father, how I long to be accepted by You, to be acceptable. I have strived to be trustworthy and loyal to You. But I have also become too sure of myself. I surrender my self-confidence to You and pray You will never again allow me to become smug and complacent toward the trust which You have placed in me. Amen.