It’s easy for us to say that we have our trust firmly placed in God when everything in our lives is going the way that we want it to. However, when things change and life gets hard, it becomes much more difficult for us to maintain the hope that we once had. Today, discover what it means to have your trust firmly rooted in God’s promises and His provision, even when you’re facing some of the hardest times of your life.
Psalm 62:1-2 (NIV)
Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Trust is one of the most fragile things that we possess. Consider the trust that you have in other people in your life. When you trust someone with a deep, personal secret, you do so under the assumption that they are not going to tell anyone else the secret that you’re sharing with them. Additionally, you only share the deepest secrets in your life with people who you trust to not use that information against you later on.
There are also times where we trust someone else to have our best interests at heart. When you were a child, you trusted the adults in your life to care for you, be honest with you, and keep you safe. When you laid down at night, even if you didn’t think about it, you did so with the understanding that the adults in your life would protect you from any sort of danger. That allowed you to sleep well.
Tragically, there are times in our lives where those levels of trust are damaged. For instance, if you trust a close friend with a personal secret, that person may decide to tell someone else who tells someone else, resulting in broken trust. Maybe the person you’ve trusted with a secret turns against you and uses that information against you.
Perhaps your issues with trust date back to your youth. While we’ve discussed what the adults in your life should have been trusted to do, there are tragic instances where children don’t receive the kind of care and love that they need and deserve. If you were one of those children, perhaps you find yourself struggling with trust because you didn’t see any benefits of trusting people during your formative years.
It’s not uncommon for our trust struggles to lead us to a place where we struggle to trust God. While we know in our hearts that our Heavenly Father is more than deserving of our trust, there are times where our minds cause us to hesitate when it comes time to completely put our trust in him.
David knew what it meant to trust God in the face of adversity. In fact, David’s life, which is given great attention in the Old Testament, includes some of the most severe instances of adversity that we read about anywhere in Scripture. Today, let’s look at some instances from David’s life where he had to live out the things that he wrote about in Psalm 62. Doing so will give us a greater understanding of how we can completely trust God in our own lives.
David vs. Goliath
1 Samuel 17: 45-46 (NIV)
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you I the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.”
Perhaps the greatest example of David trusting God in the face of adversity is found in the most popular story from his life. As a teenage boy, David had been anointed as the next King of Israel, but he was still taking care of his father’s sheep. When his older brothers followed King Saul into battle against the Philistines, they ran into a champion of their army named Goliath. After their father sent David to the battlefield to deliver some food to his sons, David found himself between a rock and a hard place. He heard Goliath’s blasphemies and felt compelled to fight the giant. However, he was a child who had never been involved in a battle.
In the verses that we just read, we see David’s trust in God at work. Once he convinced King Saul to allow him to fight the giant, David found himself standing in front of Goliath. While Goliath spewed hatred and taunts at David, David maintained his complete trust in God.
Shortly after David vocalized his trust in God, he reached his hand into a shepherd’s bag, pulled out a single stone, placed it into a slingshot and knocked Goliath to the ground. Seeing the opportunity, David jumped onto the giant, pulled out Goliath’s sword and cut the giant’s head off.
David didn’t overcome his giant because of his size, strength, or skill. Instead, it was because of his trust in God.
David Runs from Saul
Psalm 22:25 (NIV)
From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
After David killed Goliath, he became one of the most popular men in Israel. Saul knew that God had chosen David, so Saul decided the only way to protect his throne was to kill David. Psalm 22 was written during a dark time in David’s life where he found himself running from a wicked king who vowed to not stop until David was dead.
Surely, when David was anointed as the next King of Israel, this isn’t the life he pictured. In our own lives, the hardest times to trust God are those times when things aren’t going the way that we pictured. You have a vision for your own future, and those visions rarely include adversity.
While the first part of Psalm 22 includes David pleading with God and wondering where He was in David’s hardship, the end of the Psalm included a declaration of trust. Even when our lives aren’t turning out the way that we thought they would, it is crucial that we maintain our trust in God.
The God of the Breakthrough
2 Samuel 5:20 (NIV)
So David went to Baal Perazim, and there he defeated them. He said, “As waters break out, the Lord has broken out against my enemies before me.” So that placed was called Ball Perazim.
David was surrounded. By the time we get to this passage, he was the King of Israel. However, the same Philistines who he had defeated as a teenager were seeking revenge. They surrounded David, and David immediately knew that his only chance of survival was to trust God. In the verses before the one we just read, David asked God if he should battle the Philistines. God promised David that the battle was already won, and he should go out to fight them.
David did exactly what his God told him to do. Supernaturally, God overthrew the Philistines just like He had done for David on the day that he defeated Goliath. The name “Baal Perazim” means “the God of the breakthrough.” David trusted God, and God did what David couldn’t do.
We have the same promise in our own stories of feeling surrounded. When you have done everything that you can do, God will do everything that you can’t. He is still the God of the breakthrough!
A Closing Prayer:
Heavenly Father, help me to trust you more every day. While there are things in my life that seem bigger than me and are out of my control, I know that You have gone before me into my future and have set a path for me. Help me to trust you, even when I’m facing adversity. In the name of Christ I ask these things, Amen.