There’s a lot behind that question, isn’t there? Feels a little bit like a trap! Or like neither a yes or no answer fully explains where we are on this journey called life. Where we are in our relationship with God.
If we answer “yes,” it could mean that we have reached a point in our lives where we fully trust God, no matter what happens. Or it could seem a little prideful, perhaps, as if we never need to more deeply understand something that has rocked our world.
If we answer “no,” it’s just the opposite. On one hand, it sounds like we’ll never completely trust what God is up to, no matter how faithful he’s been. But it could also suggest that we understand our human tendency to want clear explanations for the tragedies that land in our lives.
Rather than landing on a hard yes or no, I think the value in a question like this is to ponder just where we fall on the yes-no spectrum. It requires much more than a quick one-word answer. Its worth lies in the evaluation we go through to see why we might answer either way, depending on circumstances.
Let me take you on my own evaluation journey as an example.
In my younger years, and especially as a newer Christian, I didn’t have a lot of questions for God. But for the wrong reasons. Even though I had a personal relationship with him, I didn’t always go to him first when something questionable happened to me. I mostly tried to figure it out on my own. Clearly showed lack of maturity in my faith at this stage.
Until about ten years ago, I also didn’t question God, but for a different reason. He gave me a really blessed life! Yes, I did lose both parents during this season, but overall I wasn’t hit with major struggles that caused me to wonder what God was up to. I’m grateful for those good years that also allowed me to establish what I believed about God. In short, I got my theology in place!
In 2013 when Dale and I moved off our acreage and into town because of his dementia and inability to continue the necessary “country” work, everything turned upside down.
We entered the most crisis-filled year of our lives together. I won’t take you through all the gory details, but it felt like attacks on so many levels. And yet this season was where I developed my hard-times spiritual mantra – which consequently became the title of my most recent book. “God, I hate this … but I trust you.”
That is where I landed through most of that relentless year. It actually surprised me a bit because I would have expected me to shake a fist (perhaps quietly) at God and question why he dropped so many challenges into our lives.
If I finished the evaluation there, it would feel like a mostly happy ending. Trusting God all the way through my life! Good job, Lynne!
But not so fast. In the midst of all those trials that year, God dropped one more tragedy that flipped the script.
Most of you know that my pets are like kids to me and I love them all dearly. In this year of heartache, my beloved Holly died in the heat in our backyard because of incorrect assumptions that Dale and I both made. Innocent assumptions, but deadly for my sweet girl.
It’s the only time in my life I’ve been truly hysterical. Despite my earlier trusting in God, my first thoughts were, “Really God? You took my precious Holly from me?? How could you have done that with all the other heartaches we’re going through? Why? Why? Why?” Eleven years later, I’m still crying while I type this story. This trauma will stay with me for the rest of my life.
So, did this tragedy cause me to stop trusting God through future trials? It did not. And therein lies the lesson I’ve learned, and I hope you can benefit from.
At this stage of my life, and having faced my husband’s death, the hardest thing I’ll ever experience, I can say unequivocally, I still know that God is sovereign over all things. I do still trust him. His sovereignty doesn’t change depending on my circumstances.
How I react to them does, as I’ve just illustrated. My basic trust in God is intact. But this life is going to include devastating circumstances that can throw us completely off track. Crying out to God in your pain and confusion and perhaps even anger is to be expected during those gut-punch tragedies.
Cry out to God when you need to. Know that he understands your broken or angry heart and isn’t “thrown off” by your questions. But then land back in “trust mode” once you’ve worked through it with him.
That’s where I find myself on this journey. I love the idea of God’s sovereignty, but also know that I can still cry out my “whys” to him without incurring his judgment. He loves me through it.
What does your trust journey look like? It’s a question worth pondering.
When I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
Psalm 56:3