Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

by Jerry Bridges

For many years in my own pilgrimage of seeking to come to a place of trusting God at all times—I am still far from the end of the journey—I was a prisoner to my feelings. I mistakenly thought I could not trust God unless I felt like trusting Him (which I almost never did in times of adversity). Now I am learning that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will and is not dependent on my feelings. I choose to trust God, and my feelings eventually follow.

Having said that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will, let me qualify that statement to say that, first of all, it is a matter of knowledge. We must know that God is sovereign, wise, and loving—in all the ways we have come to see what those terms mean in previous chapters. But having been exposed to the knowledge of the truth, we must then choose whether to believe the truth about God, which He has revealed to us, or whether to follow our feelings. If we are to trust God, we must choose to believe His truth. We must say, “I will trust You though I do not feel like doing so.”

How was John Newton helped? First he chose to be helped. He realized it was his duty to resist “to the utmost of our power” an inordinate amount of grief and distraction. He realized it was sinful to wallow in self-pity. Then he turned to the Lord, not even asking, but only indicating his willingness to be helped. Then he said, “I was not supported by lively sensible consolations, but by being enabled to realize to my mind some great and leading truths of the word of God.”4 The Spirit of God helped him by making needed truths of Scripture alive to him. He chose to trust God, he turned to God in an attitude of dependence, and he was enabled to realize certain great truths of Scripture. Choice, prayer, and the Word of God were the crucial elements of his being helped to trust God. The same David who said in Psalm 56:4, “In God I trust; I will not be afraid” said in Psalm 34:4, “I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.” There is no conflict between saying, “I will not be afraid” and asking God to deliver us from our fears. David recognized it was his responsibility to choose to trust God but also that he was dependent upon the Lord for the ability to do it. Whenever I teach on the subject of personal holiness, I always stress that we are responsible to obey the will of God, but that we are dependent upon the Holy Spirit for the enabling power to do it. The same principle applies in the realm of trusting God. We are responsible to trust Him in ...

We saw earlier that God’s sovereignty involves His absolute power to do whatever pleases Him and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. But God’s sovereignty also includes His absolute right to do as He pleases with us. That He has chosen to redeem us and to send His Son to die for us, instead of sending us to hell, is not due to any obligation toward us on His part. It is solely due to His sovereign mercy and grace. As He said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Exodus 33:19). By that statement God was saying, “I am under obligation to no one.”

Worship from the heart in times of adversity implies an attitude of humble acceptance on our part of God’s right to do as He pleases in our lives. It is a frank acknowledgment that whatever we have at any given moment—health, position, wealth, or anything else we may cherish—is a gift from God’s sovereign grace and may be taken away at His pleasure. But God does not act toward us in bare sovereignty, wielding His power oppressively or tyrannically. God has already acted toward us in love, mercy, and grace, and He continues to act that way toward us as He works to conform us to the likeness of Christ. As we bow in worship before His almighty power, we can also bow in confidence that He exercises that power for us, not against us. So we should bow in an attitude of humility, accepting His dealings in our lives, but we can also bow

in

love, knowing that those dealings, however severe and painful they may be, come from a wise ...

PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE A spirit of humble acceptance toward God or forgiveness toward others does not mean we should not pray for deliverance from the adversities that come upon us. Scripture teaches just the opposite. A number of the psalms, for example, contain very fervent prayers for deliverance from troubles of various sorts. Most of all, we have the example of the Lord Jesus Himself, who prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). As long as the ultimate outcome of an adversity is in doubt (for example, in the case of sickness or a spiritually rebellious child), we should continue to pray, asking God to change the situation. But we should pray this in the same spirit as Jesus did—not as we will but as God wills. We certainly must never demand of God that He will change the situation. We should also pray for deliverance from the attacks of Satan. As we have already seen, Satan’s attacks, like the injuries of other people or the calamitous events of nature, are under the sovereign control of God. Satan cannot attack us without the permission of God or go beyond the limits that God has set (see Job 1:12; 2:6; Luke 22:31). We do not know why, in a specific instance, God allows Satan to attack us. But sometimes the reason is that we may engage in spiritual warfare—that we may “resist the devil” (James 4:7). We should pray for deliverance, and we should learn to resist the attacks of Satan in th...