“Have enough courage to trust love one more
time and always one more time.”
— Maya Angelou
Trust is a sticky prospect, but we
never truly know grace unless we trust enough to love one more time. This is
the essence of trust: to be ever prepared and willing to love. Such trust is
not about setting ourselves up to be trampled; such a trust is simply openness to love—to withhold from ourselves the option
of resentment.
One hundred percent trust is
taking Jesus at his Word—to forgive and forgive and forgive. The biblical
principle of forgiveness is unconditional love. The biblical standard of
forgiveness is perpetual. The biblical expectation of forgiveness is obedience.
Nothing less than full obedience is faith.
Clarifying This Trust
This trust is not about trusting
the people that have hurt us so they can hurt us again. This trust is about our
overall attitude of love toward them, such that we put ourselves beyond being
hurt. Such an investment in love—such a trust—is unconditional in intent. We
get beyond the hurt, reaching deeply into the grace that redeems both them and
us.
We trust not the person, per se,
but we do trust love, because our faith attests to the truth we believe, that
love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).
One hundred percent trust is the
test of God’s grace as it operates through us. If we can receive such grace,
knowing it by our thinking and feeling, it influences our doing. Our attitudes
influence our behaviours. If trust prevails within us, because it finds a place
to reside in our hearts, trust extends beyond the intrapersonal realm into the
interpersonal realm. The people we relate with are blessed, as are we. We
cannot hurt them and they cannot hurt us.
Through faith enough to risk for
love—enough to trust—we experience more of the life of Jesus, which is often
death to ourselves, so that others may have life (2 Corinthians 4:10). We risk
being hurt, only if it matters that being hurt is important. But we have to be
careful here. The layperson isn’t to trust foolishly; to put themselves up for purposeless
abuse, for instance.
But this trust is certainly a
riskier life; not without its rewards.
Trusting God Enough To Trust Where He Is
Taking Us
When we can trust God enough to trust
where he is taking us, we find it is love—the openness and courage to receive grace—that motivates us from within.
Trusting enough to love just once
more, and then again and again, just to love one more time, is only achieved
through the receipt of grace. This ever-sufficient grace (2 Corinthians 12:9)
is apportioned only in quantity for the moment. Trusting enough is simply faith
for one more step. And that is all faith is—enough trust for the next step.
Trusting God enough to trust where
he is taking us is the method of the abundant life.
We don’t get the abundant life
without trusting God in matters of love.
***
The life we were made for—being
made, as we are, in the image of God—is the life of faith; to trust enough to
love just one more time, and then once more and so on.
One hundred percent trust is the
beauty of grace as it reaches into others’ lives. Grace is power enough to
trust. Trust is the power of love mobilised by faith and fuelled by hope. Trust
is the capacity for blessing in Jesus’ name.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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