Developing A Trusting Heart

Today's podcast is based on a listener's question about giving with a more trusting heart. In addition to answering the question, the discussion continued with points to consider when developing trust in God and the godly relationship. Trust is grown through process and experience. We must be patient with God and ourselves on the journey.

Transcript

Hello everybody.

My name is Jamila Perry and welcome to the Help My Unbelief podcast.

Now what is Help My Unbelief?

Well on this podcast I'd like to talk about practical applications of biblical principles and some of the challenging aspects of being a Christian.

So welcome to today's episode and I'm a bit excited today because I am going to be featuring a listeners question.

So I'm going to be answering the question and then talking in general or in a more in a broader sense expanding the question so that we can all get information from it,

Get some guidance from the principles in general,

As well as hopefully offering guidance to the listener.

So let's jump into it.

So listeners question reads,

I have people in my life who had trouble with letting go of the monetary due to their deep need of financial security.

That has changed greatly,

Although they still guard finances,

But they've grown in their trust of God and give more freely.

Jesus didn't want to die,

But his love and trust in his heavenly father and love for us propelled him to sacrifice his own life in obedience to the father and for our own good.

So shouldn't we give what we can with a trusting heart even when we don't want to?

So the question is,

Shouldn't we give what we can with a trusting heart even when we don't want to?

Well,

First of all,

I want to say that is a wonderful question.

Thank you to that listener.

Thank you not only for the question,

But also thank you for your support.

Now,

Let me start off by saying I am not a fan of sugarcoating things.

I'm one that likes to shoot straight from the hip,

As my mother would say,

When it comes to giving people information and making sure that they receive it accurately and directly.

So in reading the question,

I saw a little bit of a contradiction.

So having a trusting heart,

But not wanting to give and now for the sake of my answer,

I'm going to redefine that phrase.

We don't want to or yet giving if we don't want to.

I'm going to rephrase that to be experiencing some sort of fearfulness,

Experiencing some sort of hesitation.

I'm going to kind of come at it from that angle versus literal.

I don't want to.

You can't make me kind of perspective.

So a trusting heart and yet being fearful and being hesitant about giving.

So my first observation is that trusting heart.

How trusting is your heart?

Because trusting in God is more than just a warm and fuzzy feeling.

It's more than just hearing God's name and then smiling because of the positive associations you have with God's name in your mind.

Trusting God is also believing God,

Also believing in God's principles,

Believing in essentially the way that he does business and believing in the consistency and the unfailing nature of the principles.

Because when it comes to giving,

If you trust God,

Then then you absolutely believe in the concept that the only way to receive is to give.

And so if you if you are looking for,

In this case,

Financial stability,

Well,

One of the first things that you want to do is to be able to demonstrate to God that I trust you by giving freely,

By demonstrating I understand and I've gained some wisdom about the whole reaping and sowing concept,

The whole giving and receiving concept.

And so I give because I know that is really the only way that I'm going to receive,

At least receive in a significant and lasting way.

Now,

The world has taught us millions of different ways to receive without giving.

But often when we receive in those other ways,

There's a lot of sorrow,

A lot of grief,

A lot of anxiety that comes along with it.

And there's no permanence to what you receive.

So when we trust God,

We also have to trust his principles.

We have to trust the consistency of his principles.

We also have to be able to trust in the fact that God will always provide,

That if God can provide for the birds and the blades of grass,

Then certainly he can provide for us and on a consistent basis.

So if you're going to have a trusting heart,

You have to have a believing heart.

You have to believe in those principles.

So if you believe in the giving and receiving principle,

If you believe that God is your provider,

Then where is that time that you don't want to give?

Where is that time where?

Because essentially what you're saying is I don't want to receive.

And when have we ever in our lifetimes said that we don't want to receive?

Right.

I don't think anyone has ever turned down something that they wanted.

And so your friends,

As they are growing in their faith,

They need to recognize that in order to receive,

In order to receive the stability they seem to be looking for,

In order to receive the peace that they seem to be looking for,

They've got to be able to give and give more consistently.

Now,

I will also acknowledge that we are not perfect.

You know,

We are human beings.

We are,

If anything,

We are consistently inconsistent.

And so even with our highest evolved level of trust in God,

There are going to be moments when we become fearful.

There are going to be moments when we become hesitant.

The hope is that the further we go in our relationship with God,

The farther and farther apart these hesitant and fearful moments will come.

Now,

So we know that those moments will come.

The thing is,

Though,

The more stable your foundation in God,

The more,

The deeper the understanding,

The more entrenched the wisdom of God's principles and how God operates.

Then those moments of I don't want to will be very brief and hopefully you will still take the step forward to follow through on the action and let your emotions catch up.

So trusting God is an ever developing process that we will never be perfect at it,

But over time we can at least get better and better in our trusting walk.

So to the listener,

I hope that my answer answered your question.

Number one,

And I hope it provided you and your friends some guidance in their walk with God.

They seem to be walking in the right direction based on the information you've given me.

They just got to keep developing their relationship with God.

And so I want to because that was such a great question,

I want to kind of expand into the larger podcast discussion.

So I'm going to title this episode Developing a Trusting Heart.

So I want to walk through just just some things that we can be doing to develop a trusting heart to as it pertains to God.

And of course,

For anyone listening,

You know,

God is is the chosen name that is the name that I choose to refer to the divinity.

But if you want to use universe,

Spirit,

Whatever other title you want to use,

That's perfectly fine.

Just plug it in.

So,

OK,

So today's episode is Developing a Trusting Heart.

So one of the so one for the first thing I would like for people to do any time we are doing a spiritual self-assessment and we find ourselves lacking.

And it's very rare that we don't find ourselves lacking.

The first thing I want to encourage everyone to do is to relieve yourself of the guilt.

OK,

Whenever we're struggling and developing our relationship with God and are in developing our trust in God,

It's really easy to fall into this sense of feeling guilty,

Feeling I'm not good enough.

I should have got this a long time ago or I was in then I fell out,

Then I went back in and I fell out.

So we develop a lot of guilt around our inability to be consistent in our trust and in our walk with God.

Absolve yourself of that guilt.

That's that's number one thing you've got to do,

Because that guilt will serve as its own hindrance to you being able to bridge the gap with God,

To you being able to hear from God and being able to walk with God.

That guilt is going to hinder your ability to repair and and develop your relationship.

So absolve yourself of the guilt.

And you have to remember that we are very thoroughly trained to follow the principles and the lessons of this physical world that we're in.

We are thoroughly trained to follow the principles and the lessons of the societies that we live in.

We have more than extensive experience with worldly explanations for the things that we go through.

We have worldly thoughts.

We have worldly behavior.

We are thoroughly trained.

OK,

Where we are not so thoroughly trained is in the spiritual realm.

We don't easily access spiritual explanations for the things that we experience in this life.

We have to work at it.

We have to consciously shift ourselves from what we've been taught pretty much since birth to thinking along the spiritual lines.

It is essentially an unlearning because both lessons can't exist in your mind at the same time,

At least not well.

So it's a constant process of unlearning what we've learned and acquiring knowledge of what we should have already known.

So it's a process.

So get rid of the guilt because this struggle,

This confusion,

This inconsistency,

We came about it honestly.

OK,

So so when it comes to absolving yourself of the guilt and again,

Since we don't do anything independent of God,

All you really have to say is,

God,

Forgive me.

Forgive me for struggling in my trust in you.

Forgive me for not trusting you at all.

And it's done.

And the matter is resolved.

It is not a protracted,

Oh,

My goodness,

I'm going to feel guilty for weeks and days until God forgives me.

Nope.

God forgives you immediately,

Right then and there.

So so there's no need for any protracted guilt.

There's no need for any extended remorse.

Once you're forgiven,

You know,

Shake the dust off your knees,

Wipe the tears off your face and let's get to work.

The second thing after you absolve the guilt and start to move forward is,

Of course,

Ask God to help you build your trust in God.

Right.

A lot of times we often try to make the mistake of perfecting ourselves and cleaning ourselves up before we get to God.

We try to get rid of habits,

Get rid of thoughts and beliefs,

And then we go to God say,

OK,

I'm ready to do the work.

It's kind of it makes as much sense as hiring a maid,

But cleaning up your whole house before the maid gets there.

Then why did you hire a maid?

You know,

If you were capable,

If we were capable of perfecting ourselves,

If we were capable of cleaning ourselves up on our own power and walking the straight and narrow,

Then what do we need God for?

Why do we even need to acknowledge a God if we're able to do all of this on our own?

The reality is that we're not we're not able.

So we ask God to work with us.

We ask God to to help us,

Meaning that we ask God to open our hearts.

We ask God to help us build our understanding,

To increase our wisdom so that we are able to increase our trust.

The third thing I want to bring up in this walk as we are building our trust in God,

Very specifically developing our trust in God.

Expect things to become uncomfortable.

I know that we so want to believe that our spiritual growth and elevation is this smooth,

Well-lit path upward with opera singing and birds chirping and luscious greenery all around us.

That's not what it is.

And I think it's because we've we've kind of fooled ourselves into this romantic notion of what it means to spiritually elevate that when we come across these uncomfortable situations and these difficult experiences,

We reject them.

We reject them and we label them as evil.

Oh,

You're just trying to distract me.

Oh,

The devil's trying to steal my joy.

Not really.

I mean,

That that that possibly could be happening.

But the thing is,

If you're developing trust,

It's going to be an uncomfortable process because you've got to move from where you are,

Where you're comfortable to a new level.

And so in making that movement,

You've got to develop some new character traits.

You've got to dust off and revise some old character traits.

You've got to take on a new perspective.

All of this is uncomfortable.

It is not just thrown upon you and you like,

Like,

Like putting on a pair of something,

Waking up to a new pair of clothes.

It is a process you have to develop it because you have to choose it.

It's not just thrust upon you.

So expect the journey to be uncomfortable.

Growth is uncomfortable.

In order for you to be better,

You've got to be exposed to situations that are challenging.

I mean,

Think about it from the most natural perspective.

Exercise.

If you at present can only lift a five pound dumbbell and you want to be able to lift a 75 pound dumbbell.

That means you've got to increase your muscle mass.

You've got to increase your endurance.

You've got to practice.

You've got to work out.

You've got to do all these things to build your muscles up,

Because as you stand right now,

You can only pick up five pounds.

And so the process,

The exercise,

The routines,

The repetitions,

The sets,

All of that that you have to go through is going to be painful when you move from five pounds from the five pound ability to the 10 pound ability.

You're going to be sore when you move from 10 to 20.

You're going to be sore and wondering what were you thinking is setting this goal.

But the point is that if you want to get there,

This is what you've got to go through.

It's uncomfortable,

But it's for your good.

And so it is when we're growing with God,

There's going to be plenty of uncomfortable and challenging moments to build our trust,

Because our trust before we asked the question was at the five pound level.

But we went to God and we said,

Lord,

I want to build trust in you.

I want to reach that 75 pound level.

I want to reach that 150 pound level.

In order to do that,

You've got to go through those moments that challenge where you were so that you can increase your trust.

Now,

Going back to the money example,

I can imagine that at the beginning of the process,

When it comes to trusting God with your money,

There are a lot of challenges in being able to give up your money and being able to allocate your money in the direction that God is requesting because of our initial tendency to clutch money,

To hoard money,

To affiliate money with status and power.

And so you don't want to give it up freely,

Or at least if you do give it up,

You want to give it up in a particular direction.

So we tend to clutch onto money.

So,

Of course,

God's going to challenge you with your money.

And the idea here,

And I will say that when God challenges us with money,

Most likely it's always,

Or at least what my experience has been,

The challenge to give money.

If you say I want to trust God and I want to give my tithes or I want to give regularly to my church and my worship center,

The first challenge always comes when an extra bill happens.

Or if you manage to save a few dollars for some other reason,

And then that money needs to be given out.

Those are the challenges that come up because if you say you want to trust God and give God money and do these things and move in more God-led ways,

Then he's going to challenge you in the very areas where you have built up your own personal trust.

Basically,

When it comes to trusting in God,

We have to stop with the plan B behavior.

We have to stop with the safety net behavior.

Essentially,

We have to stop padding ourselves with our own personal efforts.

How can you trust God if you have provided your own plan B?

Imagine it like this.

Imagine if a friend came to you and they asked you to drive them to the airport early in the morning and you agree to do it.

And so you make all the arrangements,

You set your alarm,

You push back whatever other activities you have for the day so that you can be that reliable friend,

So that you can be there to show up for your friend when they need you.

And so sure enough,

The day comes,

You get up,

You're at the friend's house at the appointed time,

And they come out and they hop in the car with you,

Happy to see you.

But then they make the statement,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

I wasn't sure if you were coming.

So I had Bill over here on standby just in case you didn't show up.

Now,

How would you feel about that?

Here it is.

You have shown yourself reliable.

You've put in all this effort to make sure you were there.

You're going out of your way to do something that you don't normally do.

And your friend who should have been expressing some gratitude,

Who should have been,

You know,

Happy because it's very hard to find a friend who will take you to the airport very early in the morning.

So where he should have been grateful,

He said,

Ah,

Yeah,

Well,

You know,

Whatever,

Because I had my plan B in place.

So essentially he devalues,

Even though on some level he's grateful for what you did,

He devalued it by having his own plan B in place.

And sometimes we do that to God.

We will ask God for something.

We'll say,

Oh,

Yes,

Lord,

I trust you.

I believe you.

I know that that this is what you have for me.

And then we will make arrangements to get it ourselves.

If we don't feel like God is moving fast enough or if he's taking us in a different direction.

And so when you do stuff like that,

Then the question becomes,

Well,

Did you trust God?

Are you willing to be trusting?

So so when it comes to that,

Because again,

As I said,

In answering the original question,

Trust in God is not just about warm and fuzzy feelings.

It's not just about acknowledging his his presence or his existence.

Trust in God also means believing in his principles,

Believing in the way he does business,

Believing in his promises.

And the way to do that,

Of course,

Is to gain understanding,

Gain wisdom,

Study the word and be willing to to learn about God.

But but how much investment will you put in the learning?

How much investment will you put in building the trust if you are constantly operating with your plan B and your safety net behaviors?

Just an observation.

We all do this.

So we're just we're just walking through things honestly here.

Now,

As we learn to step away from our own self effort,

As we learn to step away from those safety net types of behaviors,

Then then we will be able to demonstrate more comfort in relying on God,

Because God's always going to challenge us in those areas.

And it's not about,

Oh,

So you should never have a savings account or oh,

You should never have a plan.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is when you are not willing to believe wholeheartedly in God's perspective,

If you are reserving a piece of yourself for your own personal perspective,

Where you're weighing or you're equating your perspective with God's perspective and you like your perspective just a little bit more,

Then that's where we're going to consistently get challenged if we say that we're wanting to develop a trusting heart in God.

Which actually kind of feeds into my next point,

Which is.

Part of the problem of us believing in our own perspective or the mistake that we make in believing in our own perception,

In our own perspective of things is that we mistakenly believe that we have all the information.

So we take what we see,

What we hear,

What we think about a particular circumstance.

And even if we've pondered on it,

Even if we've mulled it over,

We assume that we know everything there is to know about that circumstance.

We never take into perspective or take into consideration that there is a whole lot more going on outside of our understanding.

There's a whole lot more happening on a larger scale outside of our understanding.

But when we trust ourselves more than we trust God,

We make the mistake of fully,

100 percent wholeheartedly believing in what we have so intelligently ascertained about the situation in front of us.

For example,

Let's say that your bank account is at zero and payday is two weeks away.

Now,

Those are two factual pieces of information.

You can open up your account.

It is zero.

If you try to use the debit card affiliated with that account,

It's going to be declined because your balance is zero.

That is a fact.

Payday is two weeks away.

It's always been every two weeks.

It's always or payday has always fallen on the first and the 15th.

And for the length of time that you've worked for that job,

There's no reason for you to think that it will show up on the 14th or the 10th or even the seventh.

So your understanding that your paycheck is two weeks away.

Is a fact you have those two pieces of facts now where you get yourself in trouble is when you try to interpret what those facts mean,

When you try to assign larger meaning to the facts.

So so,

Yes,

Your bank account reads zero right now.

But in our anxiety and our panic and in our upset,

We will look at that zero and think that will always be the case.

Or we look at the fact that our paycheck is two weeks away.

And so we assume that there is no opportunity between now and two weeks from now to get some sort of money or to get some sort of income.

And of course,

If we believe that,

Then there goes our anxiety,

Our panic,

And we're upset and overwhelmed by what's going on,

Because based on the two or three facts that we know,

We cannot solve the problem.

We cannot solve the problem in a in an adequate,

Efficient and meaningful way.

Now,

Yes,

You can always go and borrow the money or you can go do this,

That and the third.

But those ways kind of bring sorrow,

You know,

Because you might get whatever money for now,

But then you owe this other person.

So you're just kind of shifting it around and it causes a lot of chaos.

But like I said,

When we believe wholeheartedly in our own perspective,

We mess ourselves up because we cannot see and often do not consider what all else is going on.

So that's where that trust in God becomes crucial,

Because you have to be able to trust that God will provide for you,

Even when you have no idea how it's going to happen.

You have to be able to believe in God's principle of that everything works out for your good,

Of not inclining to your own understanding,

Meaning not inclining to your own perspective and your own perception of what's going on,

Not trusting in just the the aspects of the circumstance that you can only experience with your five senses.

There's so much more going on.

And so so trusting in God is crucial because God has what I like to call the sky cam view.

God knows everything that needs to come into play in order for your situation to resolve.

This is why you have to let go of your own perspective,

Because your perspective has blockages.

It has emotional blockages.

It has attitude,

Attitude blockages.

And it's limited just by the sheer fact that we're human beings.

So you have to let go because what you know or what you think you know is nothing but misery.

Trust God.

You're developing your trust in Him.

Here's the perfect opportunity to do it.

Trust God.

Say,

I believe in these principles.

I,

I have acquired at least this level of wisdom to know what's happening.

Now,

Yes,

You can go to God with your fear,

With your anxiety,

With your overwhelm.

Absolutely you can.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But when you go to God with it,

Be willing to leave it there.

God,

I'm nervous,

But I trust you.

I'm not quite sure what's going to happen next,

But I'm not going to move unless you give me a God led,

God directed action to take.

I may not know what's going on,

But I know enough to know that if I move out of my own understanding,

I'm just going to screw it up even further.

Be brutally honest with God.

He looks at you.

He knows you.

He made you.

You're not going to say anything to God that he's going to be surprised by.

So when we make the mistake of leaning on our own perception and perspective of things,

We tend to make things a bigger mess because we don't know everything that's happening.

We tend to build our case on one or two facts that we overanalyze,

Overinterpret or misinterpret.

And so trusting in God,

Developing that trusting heart is absolutely crucial.

And the last thing that I want to point out to you is that trusting God is a process.

As I mentioned earlier,

When I was answering that question,

Trusting God is a process.

It is.

You do grow along the way,

Just like the listeners friends.

They went from completely hoarding their money to trusting God some.

And hopefully they're well on their way to trusting God more.

So it is a process and we do gradually get better at it if we are willing to be diligent and consistent in our pursuit.

And how do we do that?

By taking each and every uncomfortable circumstance.

Stopping ourselves and saying,

OK,

How can I trust God in this?

By praying,

God,

Please guide my actions.

By talking to God and saying,

I trust you,

But I'm still nervous.

Help me to be still and let you lead.

And also acknowledging those times when you find yourself resisting a situation.

You know,

That kind of.

It's basically when you get the sense of I should be doing something or I feel like this is where I need to be or this is the direction I need to be walking in.

But you get that internal sense of defensiveness,

Kind of that internal sense of,

OK,

Well,

Well,

I would do that,

But it's not not the should ism,

Not the like,

Like I should eat my broccoli.

Not not that kind of thing,

But where you really feel an inclination to walk in a particular direction or to do a particular thing.

But you're you're resisting yourself.

You're resisting it internally.

You're becoming defensive internally.

When those moments happen,

That is definitely the perfect time to stop and ask yourself,

Am I trust in God?

Am I trusting God?

And then pray for for the strength to take that next trusting step.

One thing that you will find throughout the Bible is that those moments where people had to trust God with no safety net,

No plan B,

Often and the circumstances looked extraordinarily overwhelming.

Often that trust boiled down to one symbolic or literal step.

When it came to crossing the Red Sea and the Jordan,

It literally came down to taking one step.

And then God parting the waters.

But he wasn't going to part the waters before they took that one step.

Why?

Because that one step said,

I trust you.

I trust you over my own logic.

I trust that in any other situation,

If I took one step into this water,

I would have a wet foot.

But I trust that if you say you're going to get me from where I am to where I'm trying to go.

And that this is the path I need to take,

Then I trust that you're going to have me on dry ground.

You're going to help me float,

Levitate,

Whatever it is.

So I'm going to put my own logic aside.

I'm going to put aside my own fear of having a wet foot.

And I'm going to take that step because that step says I trust you.

And just as in the Bible,

The most miraculous things happened when the people took that one simple step.

Because it's all about trust.

And that's what you will experience or probably have been experiencing all along the way as you've been developing your trust in God.

Amazing things happen.

Miraculous things happen.

You experience joy and peace that you're not able to explain.

It's because of the trust,

Not because you're any smarter,

Even though you're wiser,

Not because you're any cuter or more handsome.

It's because you trust.

And in developing that trust,

And again,

It's a process.

You only get better and better at it.

And those fearful times and those overwhelming times,

They become fewer and fewer in between.

So thank you so much for tuning in.

My name is Jamila Perry and this is the Help My Unbelief podcast.

I appreciate all of you who are listening.

And if you have a question or a topic that you would like me to address in one of the episodes,

Then please email me.

My email is helpmyunbelief19 at gmail dot com.

That's helpmyunbelief19 at gmail dot com.

Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next episode.