Read: Building Trust through the Word

Trust is developed through time, testing and training.

Trusting in God can be challenging. Our God is an unseen God. Our senses are accosted daily with the challenges of the world. The threats we face are tangible. We see them, but we cannot physically see God. So, how on earth do we develop trust in something we cannot see?

As mentioned in the previous post, this is the regimen I recommend:
Read. Pray. Renew. Praise. Repeat.

In this post, we are going to focus on READ: devoting yourself to God’s Word… daily.

We read the news, the Internet, books, blogs, and Facebook nearly everyday…

Do you commit to reading the Bible everyday?

Building this habit isn’t easy. There are many demands placed on our time and even more distractions to occupy the mind.

One of the things I have found very helpful recently is listening to the bible. I can listen on the way to rehearsals, while I’m doing chores or when I can’t sleep at night. It is a good way to plug into the Word and tune out of the world. I currently use the YouVersion App on my iPhone and listen to the ESV. It’s free and you can take it anywhere without having to download CDs or mp3s. (By the way, this is not an affiliate link, just a suggestion!) You can check out their website to learn more.

Start with 5 minutes each day. Hebrews chapter 11 has 40 verses. For the ESV Hear the Word Audio Bible, it takes 5 minutes and 56 seconds to listen to the chapter. Some chapters don’t get up to 40 verses, so you could feasibly start with listening to one chapter per day while you wash dishes, drive to work, brush your hair or whatever.

Begin with your favorite book and then move on to another book. I often recommend Proverbs—there are 31 chapters, one for each day in a month.

Search for verses on trust. If you are feeling oppressed with anxiety, worry, doubt or fear, spend those 5 minutes looking up verses on trust. Use the concordance in the back of your Bible, the search function on your Bible App or go to a website like BibleHub or Bible Gateway and search there. You’ll be amazed how many verses in the bible deal with trust, fear, doubt and anxiety. If you have a second, stop by our Facebook page and share your favorite trust-related verses!

Read up on the heroes of faith. Abraham. Moses. Gideon. Elijah. The Apostles. They all had doubts. They all struggled as we do, and they learned to trust in the Lord. (We’ll be looking at them in future posts.) Reading the Bible demonstrates how God has taken care of his followers over and over again. Be on the lookout for these examples as you read/listen. He demonstrates His faithfulness, justice, mercy, unfailing love and trustworthiness from the beginning to the very end. He keeps His promises, even if people do not.

Reading daily will remind you to trust daily. Look for the promises God made to his people and their respective fulfillments. You will see that God can be trusted. Fortify your mind with these examples so that you can withstand the forces of anxiety and doubt. When fear and anxiety come, write down the scriptures about trust. Put the verses on your computer or phone wallpaper, your bathroom mirror, and your desk at work.

Memorize. Uh-oh. The dreaded ‘m’ word.

Cops have to memorize penal codes and vehicle codes.

Nurses memorize symptoms and medications.

People in these professions will tell you that they mainly commit to memory commonly used things. They know where to go to find the more obscure penal/vehicle codes or symptoms/remedies.

Living the life of a Christian is a 24-7 job. There’s things we need to commit to memory in order to function or we will fail. We also need to know where to find the answers to our questions. We only do that if we devote time to learning the Word.

If you are having trouble trusting, then it’s time to start memorizing verses to treat the problem.

Find a passage on trust and ask your friends, your spouse or even your kids to help you memorize it. Your kids might be impressed that you aren’t asking them to memorize, but that you are doing it yourself!

Commit yourself to trusting in the Lord through daily reading.

Tomorrow, we’ll go into the next part of training: Pray.