Last week I mentioned that we would be embarking on a mini-series regarding the issue of trust. Trust is a hard thing to come by. Faith is a word we have watered down in the English language — some people even define it as belief in the absence of any evidence. Quite frankly, that definition is sheer nonsense, but I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say, when we talk about faith, people get a very airy-fairy notion in their heads of some kind of otherworldly, abstract spiritual state.

Trust, thankfully, is still a concrete word rooted in our everyday lives. When a parent grabs ahold of their little kid’s hand and walks across a busy street, that child is trusting its parent to avoid being killed by an oncoming car. When someone signs a business deal with me, I am trusting that person not to be a scam artist and a crook who’s out to rip me off. When Jane is at the altar ready to exchange vows of holy matrimony with John, she is trusting him to be a person of character who will not dump her and run off with the office secretary a month down the road. You could define trust in this manner: I have experienced enough of you in my life to put my faith in you and believe that you will do right by me.

Once you give out trust, you become vulnerable to one of two reactions when that trust is broken — and unfortunately, you will never live your life without experiencing the sharp stab of betrayal or loss at some point. The first reaction is to become angry, bitter, to withdraw into your little dark abyss of grief and horror and never come back out. People like that may look like they’re functioning normally in society, but scratch the surface and you won’t find a heart, you’ll find a brick wall fortified with heavy artillery.

The second reaction is to realize that trust is too valuable a thing to lose, and that disillusionment only serves to clarify and bring into crystal-clear focus the things that really matter the most. And thus my metaphor: trust as a form of disillusionment — you lose faith in something foundational and therefore resolve to spend the rest of your life seeking out that which is truly worthy of trust and faith.

I went through this experience, and my source of disillusionment was…me. Even though I grew up in a Christian home with a Christian worldview, and I loved God and Jesus as best I knew how, my ultimate trust was placed in my own person. I was my own best judge, my own best source of ideas, my own perfect arbiter of what my life would be all about. Yeah, God was there, and He was my King, but frankly I was off building my own little kingdom and only giving him some of the proceeds here and there.

It took a long and painful process — one that is still ongoing! — to bring me to the point where I realized how undeserving of faith and how untrustworthy I really am. We love to pride ourselves as being “good people” — but the fact is that, given different circumstances in different times, all of us are capable of committing the most horrendous evils. I had to become deeply disillusioned with myself in order to become aware of my deep need to trust and believe in something wholly good, something worthy, something holy, something pure, something powerful and mighty — something or Someone who had the ability to do a transformative work in me I could never do myself.

Some people live in the shame and despair of their own sin and never learn to trust. I pray God can use me to help people emerge from that dark shadow and learn how to trust again. When you trust and put your faith in Jesus, it’s not just a religious devotion — it’s a cry of a heart yearning for Someone who is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). My heart’s cry is that I will give all of my trust completely to God, every day, no matter what the cost, no matter what the circumstances, knowing with every fiber of my being that I serve a trustworthy God. What is your heart’s cry?