It’s not always easy to trust God and his providence when his providence seems dark. And sometimes when things are going well, we simply forget about trusting him since it seems like we may not need the Lord. Jerry Bridges wrote some helpful comments on these pitfalls of trusting God:
“Another pitfall we need to watch for is the tendency to trust in God’s instruments of provision rather than in God himself. In the usual course of events in our lives, God provides for our needs through human means rather than directly. He provides for our financial needs through our vocations and gives us medical personnel to treat us when we are ill. But these human instruments are ultimately under the controlling hand of God. They succeed or prosper only to the extent that God prospers them. We must be careful to look beyond the means and human instrumentalities to the God who uses them.”
“Still another pitfall to trusting God, which we are prone to fall into, is to turn to God in trust in the greater crisis experiences of life while seeking to work through the minor difficulties ourselves. A disposition to trust in ourselves is a part of our sinful nature. It sometimes takes a major crisis, or at least a moderate one, to turn us toward the Lord. A mark of Christian maturity is to continually trust the Lord in the minutiae of daily life. If we learn to trust God in the minor adversities, we will be better prepared to trust him in the major ones.”
Bridges does list a few more pitfalls; those were two that I thought were helpful. If you want to read more, check out chapter nine of Is God Really In Control by Jerry Bridges.
Shane Lems
Hammond, WI
The Reformed Reader Blog 