What has happened to people who can be relied upon to keep their word? It’s gotten to the point where there are very few individuals that I feel I can trust.
I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling. I imagine that most individuals feel that the circle of their trusted confidants is getting ever smaller.
I remember, when I was younger, I felt trust for most people that I knew. Of course, that was not a wise way to live. I was constantly having my trust broken. Once, I lost trust in someone, I have found that I could never fully trust them again.
More recently, I am finding that I approach individuals as untrustworthy. I feel that they must now earn my trust. I might learn to care about them more easily but my ability to trust my fellow man has been shattered.
I always look at someone and think, if I tell them something real about myself, will I live to regret it? I haven’t enjoyed this about myself but it seems to be the way most of us now feel.
I have had a hard time writing these weekly articles because I expose so much of my feelings and of my past. It is the exact type of information that I don’t like to tell people of my acquaintance.
I write it here because God leads me to do so. Often, after I have written the article, I look at it and think, Why am I telling so much about what is so important to me?
There is only one answer. God is using my past to help other people. He will do what I am so unwilling to do on my own.
Even when I feel so uncomfortable with what I have exposed of my life, I don’t delete it. I know that I have prayed and God has led me to what he wants me to say.
In my experience, serving God is not easy. It is not comfortable. It is not something that I even look forward to doing. However, it is something that fulfills something inside me that has always been empty before.
While, in my mind, I may chafe at the thought of trusting total strangers with my story, I am thankful that what I have experienced in life has not been in vain.
If one person can be helped by reading of my trials, tribulations, successes and oh, so many failures, then it has been worth it all.
I have to learn, daily, to trust that God is leading me the right way. It is something we all should be doing.
Sin is always easy. Bad habits don’t have to be learned. Learning to turn away from sin is hard and most of us fail over and over again. Creating good habits is very difficult. It’s one of the reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail most of the time.
I’ve prayed that God would give me more acquaintances and friends whom I can trust. It seems like I have been praying for the wrong thing. A pastor once told us something that I completely understand.
He said, people are people are people are people. They will disappoint every single time.
What I came away from that sermon finally understanding was that trusting people will always be fraught with problems. The trust that I need to learn, that all of us need to learn, is that we need to learn to trust in God. It isn’t easy but one thing is definite, he will never fail me and he will never ever break my trust.
Psalms 91:1-2
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”