The issue of trust is crucial to any significant relationship. Without it, no positive, healthy relationship is possible. Each of us, therefore, and all of us together, must make building and maintaining trust a high priority.
Two related questions are worth asking: “Why do we trust God?” and “What might God’s example teach us?” Three key characteristics come to mind.
First, competence. God continually displays His unlimited abilities. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He does whatever He chooses to do because He can. We pray to and rely on God because we know this truth. He is absolutely competent.
Second, consistency. God never changes; He is always true to Himself. In the past, He did what He said He would do. In the present, He does what He says He will do. In the future, therefore, we can trust that He will do what He has said He will do. He is 100 percent reliable. God is consistent.
But what about those times God does not do what we ask Him to do, what we expect Him to do, what we know He is capable of doing? What are we to think, for example, when the loved one for whom we are praying passionately is not healed?
That’s when we must focus on the third characteristic of God: character. When we wonder why our competent and consistent God isn’t providing what we want, we should remember that God is righteous. He always does the right thing. Always. We struggle to understand how certain things God does or allows can possibly be the right thing, but we can trust God’s character. Whatever “it” may be, it’s right within God’s sovereign plan. God’s character allows nothing else.
We humans, of course, do not possess the competence, consistency, and character of God. Someone once said, “The best of men are men at best.” But we can aspire to those characteristics. Doing so will help us build and maintain trust.
— Loren Stacy
GC President
