Trust

Trust
n. Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

My definition?

Trust: to be able to give your heart to someone you know will protect it; relying on someone to take care of your most vital possession without the fear of them breaking it.

I went to Passion 2013 in Atlanta and absolutely loved Francis Chan's message on trust and faithfulness. A message has never hit me so hard. He was basically preaching everything I was struggling with and gave me the solution to it all in less than an hour. 

Trust and faithfulness have been the 2 things I've struggled with this past year. For me, it was trusting others because I couldn't believe in their faithfulness. It's like, it's so easy for me to trust someone once they've been faithful for a long time, but once they mess up once, I can't trust them at all. Trust is almost all or nothing. You either trust someone or you don't. Because even if you're iffy on whether or not you trust someone, that's not real trust then is it? 

Francis Chan was saying how the only things you can ever trust in this world are God's promises and his faithfulness to the people who love him. No matter what happens between your friends, your family, or even people you rarely talk to, God is the only person you can trust. His promises have remained constant for the past 2000+ years, they haven't wavered in time or been altered to conform to the beliefs of current times. 

This is so comforting to me because days like today make me feel like I can trust no one unless they're my family. Sometimes I feel like I give people so much and I don't get anything back in return. It's like I try too hard to keep things going, but sometimes you can't keep things going without the other people involved helping as well. I don't even know, maybe it's just one of those days or something. Maybe I'm being oversensitive or I'm giving up too easily. I just feel like I'm worth fighting for and I'm so tired of fighting for other people. I'm discouraged because trusting others is getting so hard for me. It's just so hard to trust people when you feel like they aren't faithful to you.

When I say faithful, I don't mean like the marriage type. Like being cheated on. I mean faithfulness in the sense of loyalty to a friendship or relationship. Like seeing that one of your friends is making the same amount of effort to keep your relationship strong as you are. Like trusting that no matter what, your friend will stick up for you no matter the cost. 

But relationships are going to experience lows occasionally and some may even end altogether. It's because we're human. We get jealous, we get mad, we get bitter. We find it hard to forgive and nearly impossible to forget. We're unfailingly imperfect people.

Then Francis Chan brought up unfaithfulness in the sense of marriage or romance. He was saying that if his wife cheated on him, he'd be destroyed. He has been married for more than 10 years and if his wife cheated on him just one time, it's like those 10+ years become tainted. It's like one mistake can destroy 10+ years of trust. He'd feel absolutely helpless and betrayed; he would probably want to seek revenge and make her feel as bad as she made him feel. I can understand completely what that feels like. But then he turned the table and talked about if we cheated on God (which we do ALL the time). He was saying that God would still fight for you. You could go on a cheating spree and God would still want YOU. God's overwhelming love for you overpowers the betrayal, the anger, and the hurt. Cheating on you back doesn't even cross his mind because he loves you way too much to hurt you.

He would never stop fighting for you.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen is the true definition of trust. No matter what you do to upset God, he will never stop fighting for you and your love. You can have "firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character" of Christ. Because he's never changed. He's been the same all through the ages. He's always been fighting for you and will never stop. 

So that gives me peace tonight. I don't know where some of my most important relationships stand right now in this moment. I don't know if everything in them will be fixed or if things will ever be the same. But I do know that tonight and forever I can put all my trust in Christ, because he is faithful. People fail you and you fail people. You even fail Christ. But the beauty comes from the solid fact that he will never fail you. And that makes me so happy tonight. I can put my faith and my trust in the God I live my life for, the God I know will never leave me, the God who has the best plan for me and my life. 

When you feel like friends stop fighting for you, you just have to remember that God never will. And trust me, that makes you feel a lot better. :)