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Shawn's Corner
The Power of Trusting

We went to see Chicken Little last Friday. It’s not one of the best Disney movies we’ve ever seen, but it was pretty good. There were some really clever scenes, and I don’t remember any bad or questionable language. Basically, the movie is about trust. Chicken Little had an experience which no one believed, not even his father. It takes Chicken a whole year before another opportunity arises in which he redeems himself in the eyes of both his community and his father. Then the same situation arises which got him into trouble in the first place. The question: should he keep quiet and continue basking in his new-found popularity, or should he throw that popularity to the wind and warn his town? Perhaps more importantly, should he sacrifice what he is beginning to receive from his dad in order to warn the town?
Trust is such a delicate thing, isn’t it? I remember times when the boys would tell me something that I just couldn’t (and sometimes wouldn’t) believe. When they were little, we lived near a busy street. We warned them repeatedly to stay in the yard and well away from the street. One day they were outside, and we went in only for a few minutes. We then heard the screeching of tires! We knew what it was; we just knew. We went racing outside and sure enough, I see our two little ones racing back from the street. I spanked those boys all the way back to their bedrooms. Douglas tried to tell me that he had not been in the street, but I wouldn’t listen because of what I saw.
Sometime later, our neighbor told Peggy that although Benjamin had been in the street, Douglas never was. He had seen the car, picked up rocks, and was throwing them at the car so it wouldn’t hit Benjamin. I felt lower than a snake’s belly. I apologized to Douglas. Over the years, I’ve realized that just because we think we see something doesn’t mean that that is what we really saw.
In many ways, I think our expectations and ignorance (the things we think we know but don’t) interfere with our trusting God. Our fear sometimes cancels out our trust in God. Sometimes, we’re actually trusting ourselves but say we’re trusting God. In Psalm 31, David is exceedingly distressed by his enemies. He lists all the things he’s struggling with. But he also says that he will put his trust in the Lord: He will trust the Lord to save him and to keep him from being put to shame. He even commits his spirit to God, the decision to live or die.
True trust can only occur when we have a choice not to trust. Trusting someone is placing faith in them, believing in them even though you’re afraid or really not sure that they will “save” you. Trust is a process. It is a growing thing. Abraham, Moses, and Joshua grew in theirs. David started out with it, forgot it for a while, and was reminded of it later. Even Jesus’ trust in God grew—what do you think the Hebrew writer meant when he wrote, “He learned obedience through the things that he suffered…[5.8]”?

So let us grow our trust in God by doing what He asks us to do and seeing what He does. Let us weed out faulty expectations and interpretations of what we think we see. If other people did it, so can we.

 

Shawn's Corner
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