At times life can seem like a regular trust fall with God and His people. It’s easy to doubt God since we can’t see Him, and yet it is often His intension to provide other believers to us as we practice trust in Him. What would it look like for us to trust each other more, taking that risk that we just might let each other down? That said, as we practice trust in God through trusting one another’s imperfect care, we do like to see trustworthy behavior from one another.

This is something I’m learning in my own life day-by-day. As I seek to better and better provide for my family and love my wife and son, I am daily challenged to engage with God through engaging with those God has placed in my life. My first and daily practice is to get into His Word and to pray. Having this blog has given me a next step to most days, which is to exhort and encourage my friends through sharing stories about friends and relatives I admire as well as heros of the faith such as Francis Chan or C.S. Lewis or Tim & Kathy Keller. This encouragement part of my day through blogging has been a wonderful way that I can trust others with my life. This may seem odd to say, but the reason for this is that I am challenged by the lives of others and their humble and consistent walk with God. I also recognize that those I’m writing about don’t have perfect lives just like I don’t have a perfect life with my wife and son. We all have imperfections and foibles, yet we have the opportunity daily of establishing rapport with one another, which simply means establishing mutual trust.

To establish trust, one of the big things we should do is to honor one another, dispite knowing that we don’t know each other perfectly and fully. This is where things come back to our relationship with God again. Often our issue when seeking to trust others is that we are struggling to trust God with others. When we trust that God is working in both our lives and the lives of our loved ones and acquaintances, we are able to hold our relationships with an open hand. This is hugely difficult. Wouldn’t you agree? Yet, as we do this, we can more freely love and serve one another, ready to be let down at times but also ready to experience God’s grace – both when we get to be a means of grace and forgiveness in others’ lives as well as when they are this in our lives.

Hopefully I’m making sense here. This is my late lunch-time encouragement. Let’s build trust in God together, and let’s have one of the means of building trust in God be our trusting one another, even as we know we’ll let each other down.

Take the risk. Trust people around you. Let some of it be earned, as appropriate, but let some of it be totally unearned. Run into God’s arms by embracing the lives He has placed in your life. Let love be a little wreckless at times, and I’m certain you’ll experience deeper joy today and going forward. This is what I’m seeking to grow in daily. I know God will provide plenty of opportunities even in the next week.

In His friendship,

– Torrey