“The Horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the Lord”   Proverbs 21:31

“Dad, you’re working too hard.  You need to trust the Lord”.

This is what a son of a friend of mine told him the other day.  I asked him what he was going to do, and he replied, “Well, I’m going to trust the Lord, of course.”

Okay. That sounds good. And just what exactly does that mean?  Is there a switch somewhere that has to be turned on?  How do we do that – “just trust the Lord”?

I’ll bet all of us have said this very same thing – we’re going to trust the Lord – but it never occurs to us what plan of action we will follow to bring that about.  We’re just going to do it … somehow.

I believe that you must come to a predetermined place in God before you can have that level of trust where you are absolutely sure that God will reciprocate in kind.  If you decide to go ahead and step off the edge of a cliff, just muttering a phrase about trusting the Lord may not be enough to break your fall. 

There has to be more of a reciprocal relationship with God to be absolutely sure that He will catch you when you tumble off the precipice.  Anything less than that is not faith or trust – it is presumption, and, to some degree, a tempting of the Lord.  Even Jesus refused to jump off the pinnacle of the Temple when tempted by the devil, even though it had been written in black and white in the Word of God that the Messiah wouldn’t dash his foot against a stone.

The “Name it, and Claim it” crowd might disagree, but the Bible says that the kingdom of God is not in “word”, but in “power”.  There has to be more than just a verbal statement to put substance behind faith.

Trust is a form of surrender.  It is the letting go of your fleshly ways, thoughts, and works so that you may give yourself over to a crucified walk in the Spirit of God, completely yielded to His Will, so that you can allow God to take complete control of the reins of your life, no matter what.

That’s a mouthful!  And how do you bring yourself to a place of surrender like that?  How do you come to a place of brokenness where you have given up on your own ways and have totally given yourself over to the Will of God? 

The world (and the worldly churches) will tell you that you don’t have to come to a place of such abject submission, and you don’t have to go through the sufferings of the Body of Christ because Jesus did it all for you on the Cross.  Well, good luck with that Gospel, but it doesn’t line up with the Bible that I read.

No, we are commanded to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Him. In that broken, crucified walk we find ourselves in a place of complete surrender to God’s eternal will, and whatever He has for us, whether it be good or bad, we are willing to give ourselves over to it because the whole of God’s Plan is greater than our individual part.  Jesus died to save souls, and He asks us to do the same.

When you get to a place in God where you are given over to His Will, you know that whatever happens, you are in the hands of God.  That’s the definition of trust.

So back to the original question: how do you get there? 

Not to oversimplify things, but really, it comes down to reading and prayer.  Seek the face of God like your life depends upon it -- that’s where your power comes from to walk in His Spirit -- and when you forget that, you can forget your power in God.

Do bad things happen to Christians?  Of course, but when you are no longer part of this world, it doesn’t matter because you are in Him, and the sufferings of this world fade in the face of His glory.

“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world”. John 16:33

Only then can you step off the edge of the cliff, and trust that His hands are right there to catch you.