Trust Issues? 4 Keys to Restoring Trust in Your Relationship with God

This post may contain affiliate links. Read the full disclosure here

Trust in the Lord and do good,

Dwell in the Land and befriend faithfulness

Delight yourself in the Lord

And He’ll give you the desires of your heart

Proverbs 37:3

This year, my word from the Lord is trust.

Everything I’ve encountered, every opportunity, or trial has required that I do this one thing- trust the Lord.

I have something to confess:

I struggle to trust God.

Yes, I know that He is good.

And that He loves me.

I know His words are true and that He is faithful.

Yet I still struggle.

I am not sure if this comes from loss and instability in my life but trusting God has been the hardest thing for me to grasp.

So instead of grasping Him and His goodness- I rely a LOT on my own strength.

I strive constantly.

I end my days often wiped out and drained, feeling as if it is up to me to take care of everything.

Because if I don’t do it: who will?

My struggles with trust have really impacted my relationships with others as well as God. It makes it difficult to pray or open up. I feel like, why bother if I am unsure that God will listen or that I can’t hear Him when He does answer. So, I just give up.

I hate feeling this way and I want to trust, as Proverbs 3:5-6 states:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He shall direct your paths

Trusting God brings so many good things to us.

We know where to go. We won’t be led astray.   He’ll give us the desires of our heart.

I honestly think the leaning on my own understanding has hindered my relationship and makes trust difficult. If I am constantly leaning on what I know and believe is the truth, and am not seeking God for wisdom and understanding, then I am not trusting God. His ways are better than mine and He knows everything from being to end.

Why do I always believe that I know better? That my way is the only way?

It’s frustrating that I put myself in these situations. How much easier will my life be if I just surrender and trust!

Because this year has been about trust, God has been slowly giving me opportunities to work out my faith and trust muscles.

It’s been hard y’all.

I like to see the whole staircase before I ascend the stairs.

What if it’s not complete?

Or there’s a nail sticking out?

I want to know for certain that the outcome will be good before I ascend the stairs.

I want to know (or see) EVERYTHING before I act.

Sadly, life and our walk with God does not work that way:

 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? Romans 8:24

For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

 A relationship with God requires a willing, obedient heart and LOTS of trust.

When you struggle trusting God

4 Ways to Trust God

So recognizing that there is a trust issue, how do you start to repair it? How do you build trust?

  • Confess. I think the hardest thing to do is to admit you have a trust problem.  For me, I felt a ton of shame. I mean, I’ve been a Christian for almost 3 decades, how can I have a trust issue? But it’s there, and there is no use ignoring or hiding from it. God already knows and doesn’t hold it against you. He wants you to talk to Him about it. When you hold back on how you’re feeling, you ultimately put up a wall between you and God. Confession frees you (1 John 1:9)
  • Repent. This is my second word for the year that I am learning to embrace. Repentance gets a bad wrap. To repent simply means to turn back and to do a complete 180 and go another way, the right way. God loves repentance. It restores our relationship with Him. (Acts 3:19)
  • Get to know Him. The best way to know God is through scriptures. How awesome is it that God left us with the Bible as a way to get to know Him better? I decided to look at some verses that describe His character:
    1. He loves us: The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
    2. He is very forgiving: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John1:9)
    3. He’s patient with us: The LORD is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in loving-kindness. (Psalms 145:8)
    4. He’s trustworthy: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? (Numbers 23: 19)There are many more attributes about God, but to list them all would turn this into a book. After reading through these, I realize that to trust Him is to get to know Him.
  • Spend time with Him. The final key to trusting God is spending time with Him. We won’t trust someone we don’t know or spend time with. Think about it; would you immediately trust a random stranger at a coffee shop versus your best friend of 15 years? I think not. You trust your friend because you’ve spent time with them and know who they are. The same goes for a relationship with God. In the same vein, take a look at what is taking your time away from God. Is it distractions like social media? Entertainment? Busyness? Technology? Etc. If any of these are taking time away from God, it’s time to scale back.

I know that busyness and social media are big-time thieves for me. I’ve learned to pencil in God time and to protect it by placing my phone in another room so I don’t get distracted. I try to make a point to start and end my day with God.

If you’re like me and struggle with trusting God, I think you must make a decision daily to trust God and His plan for your life. When you find yourself struggling to trust, run to Him. He is always there waiting and will love you no matter what.