How Can I Trust God When I Don’t Understand His Ways?

This is an adapted article from Lysa TerKeurst’s book, I Want to Trust You, But I Don’t. 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)

I’ve been studying the topic of trust lately. And what I’ve realized is that I attach a great deal of my trust in God to my desire for things to turn out like I think they should. 

I want the goodness of God to compel Him to fix things, change minds, prevent hurt, punish the bad, and vindicate the good on my timeline. I want the goodness of God to make people who do hurtful things say they are sorry and then act better, do better, be better. I’m desperate for Him to make circumstances good in the timing that seems good to me.

But that’s not faith. It’s actually a sign that because I still don’t understand what he allowed to happen in my past, I’m struggling to trust him with my future. So I’ve started asking myself this question: Can I trust Him enough to really start surrendering the outcomes of the way my life will go?

Proverbs 3:5–6 instructs, “Trust in the Lord withall your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” I know these verses, but I want to live these verses. And in order to do that, I must acknowledge God’s version of making my path straight most likely will not line up with what I expect.

Ugh. Can I do that? Can I make peace with the fact that my definition of a path being made straight is limited by my human thinking and emotion? Can I find my security in the unlimited, all knowing power of God?

Friend, as we sit with all of this, I’m reminded of this big, uprooted oak tree I once saw after some bad weather. It was a stately tree that appeared incredibly grounded and stable. But as I got closer to the fallen giant, I saw that when it fell, the roots were so shallow that they lifted out of the ground as well. As a crew was cutting up the tree to remove it, I saw that the tree was hollow on the inside. I just had to know: What made such a seemingly immovable tree fall? One of the men said, “Shallow roots and ants.”

“Huh?” I replied. He explained that sometimes big trees that grow in yards with sprinkler systems get so easily satisfied by the water from the surface that the roots don’t need to go deep into the ground for water. The trees can look strong and stable, but shallow roots make them less stable and way more vulnerable in storms and strong winds. 

Oh boy. I could feel the life lesson coming in hot. 

When life looks like I expect it to and feels relatively good, I am tempted to get satisfied with where I’m at and not continue to grow deeper and deeper in my faith. Or if I’m just letting others sprinkle some biblical wisdom on me through their sermons and podcasts but I’m not digging into God’s Word and going deeper in my application, then my roots will be shallow. 

That all seems okay until a storm comes. And storms always eventually do come. The ants played a big part in this tree falling as well. They target where some sort of injury has occurred and the moisture that gets in has started to weaken the wood. Taking full advantage of the softer wood, they wear away at it, eventually even damaging the sound wood and making the treehollow inside, even though it may look solid from the outside. The more hollow the tree becomes, the more it will lose structural strength.

Notice that the hollowing out of the tree and the tree having shallow roots happened slowly, daily, one compromise after another. I am a lot like that tree. But instead of trying to control things beyond my control, I want to make the choice to surrender them today to God. And then surrender again tomorrow. And the next day too. Refusing to control is an act of building more and more trust with God. 

Each time I have doubts and fears about God’s goodness, I will bring these to God and let His truth refute them. My job is daily obedience to God. His job is holding and handling my future. This is a whole lot to think through. It’s weighty stuff. But for today, let’s hold onto this truth: Trusting God is holding loosely the parts of my life I want to hold most tightly. Is it easy? No. But is it the pathway to the peace I long for? Yes, it really is.

Prayer

Father God, I want to be a woman with deep roots. A woman firmly anchored to Your truth and filled by Your Spirit. I confess today how much I need Your help in resisting control, letting you lead me, and learning to trust You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

It’s so confusing when some people who do such wrong things seem to get away with what they did. In the midst of this hurt, do you ever find yourself secretly wondering … “Whose team is God really on here?” Lysa TerKeurst understands and wrote her new book, I Want to Trust You, But I Don’t, just for you. You can grab a copy of this resource by clicking here.

In this episode of The Grove Podcast, Shelley Giglio and Lysa TerKeurst unpack practical ways to move forward from places of hurt and how to invite life-giving community back into your life when fear feels overwhelming.