Trust with All Your Heart

We are halfway through the relationship series. Last week was fun as Mike preached about love. It is comforting to know that you have a God, family, friends, and church that loves you. I especially enjoyed seeing the slide show with all the thoughtful messages. I smile every time I think of Robin and Stephen as they showed their love for each other. This Sunday was different. There was no warm and fuzzy slide show with our Celebration family sharing who and how they trust folks. Instead we saw folks on the street being asked to define “trust.” The answers were diverse to say the least. The one that has played over and over in my mind was the lady in her late fifties who stated that she had spent her whole life trying to figure out what it meant to trust, and then she dropped the bomb. She still had not figured it out!!!!

I am grateful that from an early age God has placed people around me that were trustworthy. They were in the form of parents, grandparents, teachers, aunts, uncles, friends and even siblings. It is much easier to define trust when it has been modeled for you and you have experienced it.

However, these experiences did not fully prepare me for the level of trust that would be needed to enter into the greatest earthly trust relationship…marriage. On July 4, 1996, God reunited me with an old friend from high school. She was now finished with college and teaching high school. After we talked for a few minutes, I was certain that she needed to date me…J It only took me two weeks to get her to take my call and agree to a date. After our third date, I was convinced that if I was not ready to get married I should never go out with her again. This girl was everything that I had every prayed for in a bride. She was beautiful, smart, athletic, and very godly. I was way out of my league. Within nine months we were engaged, and six months later Traci and I were married.

During our engagement, we had a dilemma. Where would we attend church when we were married? I was helping lead a youth group at my home church, and Traci was very active teaching and serving at her home church. After much prayer, discussion and searching we concluded that we would not be serving at either of our home churches. That was a big help since we went from having two options to now having about 85 possibilities. Within about a month, I got a call from a guy who was going to start a church in South Hall County, and he offered for us to be a part of the leadership team. This was an additional opportunity to learn about trust as we had a new group of “best friends” that we knew very little about. The church launched exactly one month after our wedding!!!

Over the past 12 years, God has revealed a great deal to Traci and I about how he desires for us to trust each other, others and most importantly, Him. I am eternally thankful that God gave me the most trustworthy person I know to be married to. Traci knows way too much about me and she still loves me. I am not saying she does not want to change some things about me. She would love for me to remember the four things on the grocery list instead of being able to recall the batting line up for the 1982 Atlanta Braves. But, there is no person that I trust more than her. The foundation of our trust in each other is rooted in our trust in God. I am convinced if we remain committed to trusting God in all that he desires for our lives and the lives of our families, we will never waiver in our trust of each other. One of the first verses I remember memorizing was Proverbs 3:5-6 which says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your abilities; in all your ways acknowledge God and he will make your paths straight.” I am sure that without a trust in God I would be just like the lady on the street who was unable to “figure out” the meaning of trust. For me trust is having confidence in someone other than myself!

Ted