Helping you navigate the tension between faith & mental health by looking at a tension point, a talking point and a truth to ponder.

Tension Point

“I’m so tired of the Christian response to just ‘trust’ God. It’s not that easy! I don’t know how to trust – for me, trust has always led to feeling disappointed, or worse.”

Talking Point

Think about all the other relationships in your life. How many people do you trust implicitly? And what have you been through to get to that level of trust? When you think about it like that, choosing to trust God, a God that we can’t necessarily see or touch or have coffee with, can feel like a dangerous tightrope at times. Yes, we know He is good but trusting God can’t just be something we say. Trust always means putting skin in the game.

When we ask ‘Can I trust God?’ we are actually asking two questions. First: Is God trustworthy? Of course, as Christians, we know He is—this is an absolute Truth. But the second question is where it gets personal: Can I can trust God? As in, do I have what it takes to believe this absolute Truth?

Acknowledging what we bring to the relationship

In all of our other relationships, trust requires something from us. So why do we treat our relationship with God any differently? We can sometimes expect intimacy to come from religious devotion… as if just acknowledging that He is God is enough for us to throw ourselves into trusting Him as if we have never been hurt or let down before. But just like any other relationship, we still bring our relational baggage, our trust issues, our defence mechanisms and our fears of intimacy to it.

Think about the 'Trust Fall' exercise: that awkward exercise where one person falls blindly into the arms of another, relying on the integrity, strength and ability of that person to catch them. Even if you know the person waiting behind you, it can feel uncomfortable. This discomfort is a reflection of the internal vows and misconceptions about trust and the risk of getting hurt, looking stupid, being judged, or being betrayed.

The sad reality is that even if we are entirely safe with the person ready to catch us, these internal vows and misconceptions can make us feel like we are being sprung back, like being tied to an elastic cord, to those times we trusted someone and were let down, made to look foolish, misrepresented, abandoned, (insert your experience here!)

So, we hold something back to protect ourselves: a ‘prudent mistrust’, just in case. But this limits us.

Truth to Ponder

Getting to know God is the foundation of trusting Him. The simple truth is that without getting to know Him, our ability to trust Him is limited. But we also need to get to know ourselves so that we can identify the cords that hold us back from trusting God more freely.

Ready to go on that journey?! It can be hard, but trust us (pun intended), it's worth it...