“You gotta trust me.” How often I have heard this! If I was in a bind, then I had no choice but to trust whoever it was to do what they said they would do. Yet when I do so, I often feel deeply unsettled, probably because I am a human being and know just how untrustworthy I can be! As fallen beings, there’s no guarantee as to our trustworthiness. Even the most faithful of us will fail to be trustworthy from time to time. But, in life, each of us will often find ourselves placing our trust in others with important matters, hoping they will follow through as they said they would.
Psalm 31 begins with David declaring, “In You, O Lord, I put my trust…” The trust that David placed in God is what we could call, “first-trust”: The trust that has first place in our heart, mind and soul; the trust we have in someone that is above and beyond the trust we have in all others. For believers, this first trust belongs to God. For most of my Christian life, I have struggled to give God this “first-trust.” What I mean is, giving God “first-trust” is something I have had to grow into throughout my Christian life. I think this is normative for most believers. I believe this is what we see in David’s life as well — he regularly struggled with his trust in God (Psalm 13). But it was through these struggles that David came to an ever deepening first-trust in God. The same will hold true for you and I.
In life, we will have to trust others — parents, spouse, children, friends, doctors, and the list goes on. But these people will never be worthy of first-trust — only God is worthy of first-trust. Therefore, my trust must first be in the Lord, then (and only then) should I place trust in any other.
