Faith When Trust Seems Impossible

I have to admit some guilt at sometimes making faith out to be a simple thing. On the contrary, when we find it difficult to trust, perhaps because few have earned it and some have even damaged it, expressing faith in the movement of life can seem impossible. This is particularly the case when life becomes confounding in its busyness. When we are continually befuddled we don’t have much of a chance to be settled enough to trust.

Faith is all about trust.

So there are many people, in many understandable circumstances of difficulty and despair, that find having faith seemingly an impossible task. When we are plagued with spiritual fatigue, when we may be too tired to doubt, the challenge is to rest. We must find rest for our souls.

Rest For Our Souls

Of course, Jesus is rest for our souls (Matthew 11:28-30). If we struggle to trust because we are too tired, getting physical, mental, emotional and spiritual rest is important. Unfortunately, we are most apt at trying to find rest in the wrong things.

The best rest is afforded through simple self-discipline: to get our sleep, to eat properly, and to exercise. Rest is also needed through what our minds consume: devotional reading, meditation, and walks in nature are better by far than worldly TV, video games, and lots of social media. The latter types often compound our problems.

Allowing Ourselves To Trust

If it is not fatigue that we are battling we may find it beyond ourselves to trust; to truly trust God. Again, this is a lack of ability to trust, presumably because our capacity to trust has been damaged. This will be due to abuse or neglect or both.

It is a difficult road to learn to trust God out of such circumstances, but it is far from impossible. Psychology studies have proven that the brain can unlearn the damage that occurred to it through abuse and neglect. This means we can learn to trust, and achieve spiritual freedom, at any point in life.

When we comprehend that God is perfectly worthy of our trust, because he gave up his Son, Jesus, so we could have access to eternal life, we understand just how much God wants to reach into our lives to save us.

When we realise how much God wants us, and he knows how much we need him, we are motivated to trust. All God seeks is our willingness to trust.

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Struggling to trust God is one of the hardest lessons of faith. Nobody gets to a mature faith without such a struggle. When faith seems impossible we must simply trust, even beyond what we feel is reasonable.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.