Relationships can be looked at like a stool that has three legs. One of the legs is Communication, the second is Trust, and the third is Boundaries. If at any time one of these legs is damaged, there is a great potential for your relationship to fall. Last week we looked at communication in relationships so it seems appropriate that we go after trust this week. If you haven’t checked out last week’s post, you can check it out here.
Everyone can probably think of a time when you have been too trusting of someone or haven’t trusted enough. In a world where it seems that corruption and lies live we must find a way to trust others so that our relationships flourish. It is very clear through the Bible that God wants us to trust Him fully with all that we are. One of the best stories that shows trust is about an old guy named Noah whom God told to build an Ark. Now we don’t have Arks floating around in the water today, but the Ark was huge. By the time that it was completed, it was large enough to hold 8 freight trains with 65 cars each! Noah built the Ark because he trusted that God would do what He said, but it was quite an interesting project.
Noah came under huge pressure from his neighbors and his community while he was constructing the Ark, but he continued to put his trust in God and follow what He had commanded him to do. The end result was Noah, his family and two of every kind of animal were on the Ark and spared from God flooding the world, but everyone else was not. Noah’s family was spared because he had spent 600 years trusting in God before he built the Ark.
Noah figured out he had to trust God first, and then trust others. If he had trusted in the people around him who told him that he was crazy, he would have lost out on the reason that God told him to build the Ark in the first place. We so often get this backwards and begin to put our trust in those around us first, and in God second or further. When we do this, we take our eyes off of the one who has created relationships, and then we wonder why our relationships aren’t working out well. We tend to put our trust in things we can see and not in the One who is unseen. If we flip these, we will find out our relationships will begin to flourish.
Trusting in God is hard for the majority of us because when we trust in Him, we lose control over our kingdom. We begin to try to trust in God with some of our self and hold back other areas for us to control. Relationships are an area that we tend to hold on to, but they should be the first we give away. If we want to be blessed in our relationships, we have to trust in God to direct us in the way that we should go with them.
We can’t trust on ourselves and the things of this world, that’s why we should trust God first, then others second. When we get in a relationship with someone at any level, there has to be trust between us. It becomes hard to be in a relationship when you keep secrets from each other, because out of secrets come lies. You will find yourself lying to the other person to cover your tracks, and then you get to the point where the lies overwhelm you and your relationship falls.
There is also a difference between boundaries and trust. Within your relationships before marriage, it’s not the best thing to tell the other person every little thing about you. When you’re married, your trust level changes, and you should be totally open with your spouse. We are going to go more into boundaries next week, so stay tuned for that.
If you find yourself trusting someone else first, then trusting God, it’s time for a change. God is longing for you to trust in Him so He can move in your relationships and in your life. The one thing He is waiting for is for you to surrender your life to Him with no strings attached. This week, take a self-evaluation and look at your relationships to see if you really are trusting God or the other person. If you have any doubt, surrender these areas to God and watch what He will do. You will be free to live better, and He will be able to move in your life in mighty ways. Your relationships will become better over time if you are willing to give up control and be surrendered to God.
There are some pretty cool things that will be happening with Dive Deep in the near future. We will be revealing them over the next few weeks in our blog post and on our Facebook group, so be sure to jump in on the cool stuff going on.
Dive Deep,
KC
This blog’s great!! Thanks
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