Jeremiah 17: 5-10
This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh
for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a
bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell
in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose
confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends
out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are
always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear
fruit.”
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
“The Lord searches the heart and examines the mind, to
reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds
deserve.”
One of the major bottlenecks faced by married couples is
the issue of trust. There are quite a number of areas in a marriage where trust
has been regarded to play a major role. We have the issue of trust in the
financial life of married couples, trust in the sexual life of married couples,
trust in the work life of married couples and trust in the way couples handle
external relationships. So there are many parts of the marriage life that the
issue of trust features prominently.
Lack of trust in any of these areas of marital life that is
mentioned and even those not mentioned have contributed greatly to the high
divorce rate the world over. Without being told it is expected that a man is
faithful on all grounds to the woman he has married and a woman is faithful to
the man she is married to. It’s the requirement and it’s what God demands of a
spouse to his/her partner. But nonetheless faithfulness which in turns earns
trust is an attribute that we fail in every now and then. Some spouses are able
to conceal their unfaithfulness from their partners more than others, but with
time we all get to know that there is nothing hidden under the sun.
The knowledge of this unfaithfulness leads to a lot of
disasters in marriage, some even kill for it. The sense of betrayal that
follows can be overwhelming and it takes great effort to build the lost trust
again if ever that is possible.
But the mistake we make as humans whether married or not,
whether in a relationship or not is that we tend to invest our trust in the man
whom we cannot ascertain the state of their heart. What we are exposed to in
the other person we see and love is the aspect of him/her that he/she reveals
to us. We are able to judge based on what we see and not actually what is
concealed in the heart. The Lord said “Cursed is the man who trusts in man.” I
am positive this is a big pill to swallow, but to invest our total trust in a
man is to take a big risk, a very big risk I must say. This is so because this
man that we have so trusted is liable to fall at any time. He is prone to
temptations and can make mistakes at any time and can fall at any time no
matter his level of righteousness. This is so because he is just a man.
This man will not fall into temptation because he wants to,
he will not fall because he wants to hurt you, the fall might not be an
intentional one, but still he might fall, and his falling will hurt you, break your
heart, and injure your trust or might even destroy the trust completely. This
can happen not just in marriage issues, but in any and every form of
relationship. It could be between loved siblings or between the children and
their parents or even between close friends. But the truth is that the trust of
a man by a man is a big risk that we take.
Now, paying more attention to the man and wife in marriage,
the question that follows this discovery is that how is it possible for the man
and wife to live in love and harmony without trusting each other? When we are
able to answer this question well enough then we understand how to handle the
matter of trust in marriages and even in every aspect of our lives where trust
is required.
Again I will use a true life story and the experience of a wife
regarding the issue of trust to give an illustration to how God wants us to
deal with trust in our lives. There is a lady with so many issues in her marriage
and one of the issues that affected her marriage so deeply was infidelity. And
this went on over some time. It was an issue that cut through her heart and
each time her husband promised to make adjustment she discovered it was just a
little better of cover up. As would be expected this really got her weighed
down as it went on for a number of years. Naturally it affected her ability to
trust her husband and it affected their marriage deeply.
Gradually the husband began to make changes and paid more
attention to her and their children but that still didn’t make him earn her
trust him because he had made several promises and failed to keep them. But
then she began to pray, she asked God to come into the situation and help her.
I didn’t want my marriage to break, but she could not trust my husband
anymore. She cried to God and prayed on that issue over a period of time. Then
in the middle of her prayer with tears and swollen eyes she heard the Lord
speak to her heart that He will visit her marriage once again and put a stop to
infidelity in her home. The Lord asked her to trust Him on that. She was then
reminded of Sarah and Abimelech. So she decided to trust God on that.
Infidelity in her home has found its permanent exit. She didn’t
have to trust her husband not to cheat on her again, even though he appeared a
totally changed man that she can see and is evident in his attitude in their home,
but she trusts God to prevent infidelity from happening again in my home. She is
very comfortable to commit herself to her husband and marriage not because she
has his words of never cheating on her again, but because she has a word from
God not to make that happen in my home again. Her husband can always break his
words, but her God will never break His promise.
This is not applicable to just married couples, but also in
all other forms of relationships we might find ourselves. It’s easier to trust,
when you are not trusting man but God. Whatever changes you want to occur in
your spouse, pray and trust God to effect those changes in him/her rather than
to believe that he/she will be all that you expect them to be by themselves.
It’s even more reliable to trust God than man. When all your trust is invested
in God then your life will flourish and your mind will be at peace because God
will never break His promise or betray your trust in Him. He remains ever
faithful.
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