Trusting When Trusting is Hard
It’s been a tough week in the Gray home. I was supposed to have rotator cuff repair surgery on Thursday of last week. I dreaded the surgery, knowing it is a brutally painful procedure, but I also wanted it done because I need this shoulder fixed.
(I cannot recall if I shared with you that I lost an argument with my step ladder about two months ago. It bucked me off from about six to seven feet. I landed directly on this shoulder, broke a rib, and left the shoulder pretty torn up.)
That surgery was canceled. In a pre-surgical consultation, something came up that resulted my primary-care physician (an excellent doctor) calling a “full-stop” to the surgery. We don’t know the specifics yet, but there appear to be issues with my heart. We’ll know more in about a month.
Things That Scare Us
I’m not afraid of dying, and I have not been afraid of it for over forty-three years, since January 16, 1983, the day I was baptized into Christ. But I am definitely afraid of pain. I really don’t like pain. And this week I became increasingly concerned about what could happen if I left Alean by herself. We share household responsibilities. As we age each of us finds it more difficult to meet our own responsibilities. What if she were instantly saddled with mine as well?
Trust, Fear Not
Have you ever been told that worry is a sin, or that it is sinful to be afraid? The pomposity of such claims is such an eye-roller. It is so easy to read a verse like “Be anxious for nothing,”1 and say, “Hallelujah! I will trust always.”
But then life happens.
- The bills pile up, as the bank account shrinks.
- The medical diagnosis comes back. It’s cancer.
- Three hundred layoffs at work include your name.
- The sheriff’s office called. Your child is in the Emergency Room.
- Your house caught fire at 3:00am. You lost everything inside.
When such things happen, fear hits us like an involuntary reflex, while trusting feels more like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill again, and again, and again. We want to trust. We try to trust. We believe God is worthy of our trust, but the rock is so heavy and it rolls over us to the bottom of the hill once more.
I will boldly contradict our pious friend above, who said anxiety is a sin, by pointing out that scripture neither ignores nor shames the reality of our fears. God, who designed us, understands how and why fear comes so forcefully upon us. Fear is the exponentially easier response than trust, but trust is still the best response.
Why Trusting Is Difficult
Fear Sees What’s in Front of Us
This is the most obvious reason our tendency is to default to anxiety or fear. Anxiety is responding to what is right in front of us. It is the looming disaster screaming six inches from our face. Fear reacts to what is immediate, what is visible, while faith sees what is unseen.
We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
– 2 Corinthians 4:18, ESV
…for we walk by faith, not by sight.
– 2 Corinthians 5:7, ESV
When the armies of Israel were camped across the valley from the Philistines and the enormahuge Goliath came out every morning to taunt them, fear was their logical response. It was the easy response. The guy was nine feet tall, after all! He carried a spear the size of a weaver’s beam. All Israel had to do was to look and listen to what was enacting the daily scene in the valley. And here came fear.
Trust requires a deliberate, conscious pivot away from what overwhelms, taunts, and intimidates us. In saying this, I’m pointing out that one of the key differences between faith and fear is that fear is passive. It comes upon us. Faith or trust is active. we choose trust. Faith requires us not to look at the object of our fears, but to look through it and beyond it. We look past our intimidating circumstance to the eternal God of the unseen.
Fear Defaults to Self-Preservation
Anxiety is interwoven with our self-constructed illusion that we are in control. When we truly understand that the circumstance is out of our control, anxiety makes no logical sense. Yet, something innate to fear and worry says, “This bad thing could happen and I need to prevent it from happening.”
While entirely unproductive, anxiety feels productive because it carries the illusion that we are doing something. Our minds are engaged, keeping us awake at night, churning, reviewing the possible outcomes. Though we know better, there is some part of us that buys into the false sense of control.
Don’t confuse research or planning with worry and anxiety. There is a quantitative difference between saying, “Here are the steps I am going to take, or the precautionary measures I am going to enlist,” and saying, “This horrible thing may happen and there is nothing I can do to stop it.”
In some cases, I do have some measure of preventative control. In my current situation, there may be alterations to my eating or exercise patterns that can have a curative effect. In most cases, however, our anxieties are linked to things over which we have little, if any control.
In contrast to all of that, trust mandates a surrender. Trust requires us to acknowledge that we do not have control, and we cannot fix or prevent the object of our fears from occurring. We can neither control nor influence the outcome, so we must choose to leave the circumstance in hands other than our own, and more capable than our own.
Surrendering control sounds and feels like giving up, which goes against every human instinct we have. I urge you, however, to consider Jesus in the garden, actively pursuing the most effective path available to him. The man without sin2 was overwhelmed with anxiety and grief to the point that his sweat became like drops of blood,3 a medical condition known as hematidrosis or hematohidrosis.4 When faced with that level of stress and anxiety, Jesus employed the best tool in his toolbox—prayer.5 And in that prayer, he surrendered control.
Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.
– Luke 22:42, ESV
Fear Emphasizes Urgency
Every day, I get text messages and emails attempting to scam me, to rip me off, to get me to respond to some stimulus. The two greatest tools scammers use are fear and urgency. “You need to respond to this right now, or this bad thing is going to happen.” Anxiety operates on us using that same model, pressing us to do something. We need to do something. We must do something, and we must to it now!
King Saul
When Saul was king over Israel, the Philistine armies came against him at Gilgal. It was a massive army with thousands of chariots and foot soldiers numbering like the sand on the seashore.6 Samuel informed Saul to wait, to do nothing for seven days. At that time, Samuel would come and make a sacrifice and offer spiritual direction.
As the seventh day wound down, Samuel had yet to show up, fear elevated, and urgency demanded that Saul do something. Giving in to his anxieties, Saul did that thing he had no authority to do. Saul offered the sacrifices and sought the favor of God. Just as Saul finished making the sacrifices, Samuel arrived, saying, “What have you done?” As Saul attempted to offer some justifying explanation, Samuel rebuked him, telling him that his foolish action just cost him his kingdom.
And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which he commanded you. For then the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue.
– 1 Samuel 13:13-14a, ESV
Fear had persuaded Saul that waiting was the assurance of destruction when, in reality, waiting was the very thing required to secure his legacy.
Jesus’ Disciples
Consider the disciples of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee when the gale force rose up against them. They feared for their lives as Jesus slept on a cushion in the back of the boat.7 Terrified, the disciples awakened Jesus, screaming, “Don’t you care if we drown?” Jesus, of course, just told the winds and waves to hush up and be still. Everything was fine.
Note that Jesus didn’t say the storm was not real or not dangerous. It was real and it drove the disciples to the easy response of terror. The waves were screaming, but Jesus was quiet. The wind was howling but Jesus was sleeping. Anxiety is easy when the threat is immediate, while peace is quiet. Anxiety always screams more loudly than trust, and the loudest voice grabs our attention.
Fear Specializes in Spiritual Amnesia
The theme of “remember” is strewn across the pages of scripture, everything from direct commands to remember, to rituals that remind us, and memorials set up to mark the intervening events of God in the lives of his people.
As Israel walked away from 430 years of Egyptian slavery, having just witnessed a decad of plagues that afflicted only the Egyptians while leaving the Hebrew people untouched, being led by a pillar of fire and pillar of cloud, having just been led through the divided waters of the Red Sea, walking on dry ground, it seems an absurdity that the people of Israel would doubt that God would provide for such basic needs as food and water.
Absurd? Yes. But we are no different.
Fear isolates us to the present. Anxiety blocks our memory of past provision while screaming at us, “This thing is going to break you!” But trust is built on memory. Faith is deliberate. It disciplines us to recall God’s tremendous track record of faithfulness as the evil one whispers in our ear that God has abandoned us to this horrible circumstance.
Trust Coexists With Fear
I’m going to say something that may contradict what you have been taught. Trust is not the absence of fear. Indeed, without fearful or fear-inducing circumstances, trust could not exist. King David, the man after God’s own heart,8 did not say “Because of my trust or faith I never have fear.” No, what David said was…
When I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
– Psalm 56:3, ESV
Fear is hardwired into our fallen biology. It is an attribute of our humanity. What we do with that fear is where we demonstrate or deny trust. Fear is no more than the launchpad from which our trust takes flight. Faith is squaring our shoulders toward that very thing that terrifies us and saying, “I’m coming anyway, and God with me.”
Faith is not pretending that no fear exists. Faith is saying to our fears, you will not stop me. When fear howls in our facea, we choose to take the step anyway.
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him:
– Job 13:15a, KJV
1. Philippians 4:6
2. Hebrews 4:15
3. Luke 22:44
4. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/hematidrosis-hematohidrosis
5. Matthew 26:36-46
6. 1 Samuel 13:5
7. Mark 4:35-40
8. 1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22
