Conditional Trust

Conditional Trust

Everyone has dealt with the suffocating sense that is fear. Whether it is heart-slamming-cold-sweat type of fear, or the looming uncertainty of the unknown – fear all stems from our humanness. In my opinion, we can boil most of it down to want to control something we can’t.

Isaiah 41:10 starts with something that goes against our human nature: ‘Do not fear…’

How can one just turn off fear? That’s my first thought when I read this verse.

Then it says, ‘I am here, with you.’

Do you know that God isn’t just standing up on His throne looking down on us disappointed in the mess we’ve made? He actually enters into our emotions with us. Fear is no exception.

The end of the verse says, ‘I will strengthen you and help you.

   I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.’

What we need to realize is that God isn’t promising that the outcome is going to be peachy keen—but He is promising to sustain us no matter what. We need to learn what it means to surrender control of the outcome and trust Him. Quite often there are conditions on our trust. We reach a point of surrender to the Lord, and we say, ‘I trust you God…’ but whether we voice it or not, there is a ‘…to bring the outcome I want.’ I for sure am guilty of this. Or we trust God to save us from the thing we are fearing, then if we indeed have to face it, we throw our hands up thinking He failed us.

That’s an ugly thing for me to type…but I know I’ve been in that place before.

So let us take a few things out of this verse:

1. That God meets us in our fear, but he whispers that we aren’t alone
2. There aren’t conditions to this. He will strengthen us no matter what the outcome of the situation we are fearing is. Surrender because you probably can’t control it anyway, but trust that no matter what happens that God will give you what you need to survive it.

When you are stuck in fear or doubt, just find this verse and start speaking it out loud over and over. It will slowly start to sink into your heart & calm your mind. Remember God always has you, even if the outcome is scary.