Is “Trust In The Lord” Just A Cliche?

If you know a Christian you have heard the phrase, “Just trust in the Lord!” or “I’m just trusting in the Lord.” Honestly, it can be a little obnoxious. It is given either as advice or a statement of how they are dealing with a particular situation. Yes, it’s an odd thing to hear someone say–even foreign or weird sounding. But your bound to hear it or say it one day, if you are around or are a Christian. So what is trust? What does this really mean? Or how does it apply?

I define trust as:

“Belief in, reliance on, or acceptance of a particular circumstance, situation, or individual regardless of full knowledge of all the facts, whether they are, or perceived as, positive or negative.”

That’s from the Unapologetic Collegiate School of Hard Knocks Dictionary. The reality is many people believe, or say they believe, in God. But as soon as a difficult situation comes, or something doesn’t work out, they blame God immediately. They say things like, “Why are you doing this to me God?” or “Why do you hate me?” Somehow we have let ourselves come to the conclusion that we are entitled to the perfect life. And when it doesn’t happen we start to assign responsibility. The problem is, we’ve forgotten a very important principle through this wrestling and, in this process, we’ve set ourselves up for discouragement and failure.

The perfect life doesn’t exist on earth.

That’s called heaven, which is exactly why we trust God in the first place, right? Trusting Him gives us the hope of the perfect existence with Him, free from pain or worry, and also gives us strength until we get there. This helps us to stay focused and fulfill what it is we are meant to do while we live here in this imperfect world.

It can’t be the situation or circumstance that makes God real or not to us. It has to be how we handle the good and bad that comes our way that makes Him real. It shows that we are willing to trust no matter what happens. It’s easy to lean on God when the sun is out, there’s lots of money in the bank, our kids are getting A’s in school, and were on a Caribbean Cruise. But that’s not really trust.

Trust is made evident through testing, and testing comes through difficult situations.

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