Temporal Trust

Temporal trust is fleeting and deceptive. It looks like a safety net but when you lean on it, it gives way. For example, you can trust in a good boss for your employment. However, your boss may receive a promotion or he or she may leave the company all together. Don’t believe your job security revolves around a person or an institution. People may tell you something one day and do something entirely different another day.

Joseph experienced this when his boss believed an untrue accusation about his lack of integrity at work, “When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined” (Genesis 39:19-20).

Trust in stuff is also vain. Just as metal cars cannot move mountains, planes and homes can’t answer prayer, stuff can provide leisure, but cannot forgive your sins. Stuff can make life easier, but it can’t provide eternal life in heaven. Certainly money is not to be trusted. Rather, it’s to be given away and leveraged for God’s Kingdom. Trust in what you can see and you’ll be disappointed. Trust in what you can’t see and you’ll be fulfilled.

Trust in God is like being an instrument rated pilot who flies through the night. The flickering lights that illumine the ground can be misleading. It is the accuracy of the pilot’s instrument panel that can be trusted. Otherwise you may talk yourself into landing on a well-lighted freeway instead of the safety of an airstrip.

So are the instruments of prayer, God’s word and wise counsel. God uses these tools to provide you the coordinates on how to direct your life. Do not be in a hurry. Good things happen to those who wait on God. He gives you His coordinates for your life as you are ready to receive them. Whether they come one at a time or all at once, remain patient.

Refrain from moving forward until you know exactly the longitude and latitude of God’s will. The last thing you want to do is land prematurely or even worse crash and burn. Trust in God. He is trustworthy. You cannot see Him, but you can see His evidences all around you. The marriage He healed, the body He made whole, the job He provided, the soul He saved, and His answered prayers. These shout of God’s workings all around you.

You can count on the fact that Christ is at work all around you and in you. He has not left you alone. Trust Him with your parent whom you currently have no relationship. Trust Him with your prodigal child or with a friend who can’t seem to find their way. Give your loved one space; let them learn what it means to lean on their Heavenly Father.

Trust can be allusive. One day you rest in Him with no problem. The next day you wrestle with Him over your problems. Trust means you moment-by-moment give to God everything, especially those things out of your control. Trust in the unseen rather than the seen and then the seen becomes all the more beautiful and useful for God’s purposes.

“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).

What temporal trust limits my trust in the Lord? How is He working around me?

Related Readings: Job 31:24-28; Psalm 20:7; Isaiah 31:1; John 12:35-36; Hebrews 2:13

Boyd Bailey is the author of Wisdom Hunters daily devotional and two devotional books, Infusion and Seeking Daily the Heart of God