Trust Yourself

Show the Fray video “You Found Me.”

We live in a culture of seeming contradictions. People consider themselves spiritual and yet don’t want anything to do with church. Rick Richardson talks about a pastor friend of his who went to work at a Starbucks simply to meet unchurched people. What he found out surprised him. The first surprise was that all twenty-one people he worked with believed in God. They all considered themselves spiritual persons. The second surprise was that they were all interested in spiritual things but not in Christians, Christianity, or the church. Rick’s friend soon found out that all of these people had experienced a breach of trust somewhere along the way in relation to Christianity.

One day Rick’s friend asked a coworker about her feelings about a relationship with God. She looked at him and then blurted out: “I want to know where God was when I was fourteen and somebody raped me.”

What can you say in a moment like that? Nothing. But, we can learn that rebuilding trust in God, in Christians, in the church, in ourselves requires time and patience and effort. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

Begin rebuilding trust by trusting yourself. Let’s pause a moment. Let’s be still and know that I’m not God. When I said, “trust yourself,” some of you may have thought, yeah that’s true; I need to trust myself. But others of you thought that’s the stupidest things I ever heard. I got into most of the junk in my life because I trusted myself. And myself is the wrong person to trust. You are right, of course. Our fundamental problem is that we can’t be trusted, as we are. But the hope of the Gospel is that we can be changed. We can be changed into persons that are trustworthy.

We begin this process of change by keeping commitments to ourselves and to God. We must shape our souls and persons with the practices and disciplines that will produce not just superficial or even felt change, but real change.

Homer Simpson, that thoroughly contemporary man, has faced this problem countless times in his life. He wants a better life but realizes that he is the biggest obstacle in the way. In one episode of the Simpsons, Homer is having chest pains and Dr. Hibbert tells him that there is a serious concern. “Mr. Simpson you need to lose weight, start eating right, and start exercising.” Homer’s response to this is classic:

“Yeah, but whaddya gonna do?”

Nobody, I mean nobody changes into the person they can be without practices and disciplines. This is especially true of the so-called “spiritual life.” In Acts 10 we read about a Roman soldier named Cornelius. We are told that Cornelius is,

“a devout man who fears God, as does his whole family.” Acts 10.2

Cornelius is a Gentile, a non-Jew. And yet he is exemplary in his religious devotion, a devotion to rival that of many Jews. We are told that he is a soldier, but not just any soldier. He is a member of an elite unit called the Italian Cohort. So he was accomplished. He was disciplined in his life. And this discipline was also evident in his religious devotion. By “devout”, the scripture doesn’t only mean that he “went to church” or that he felt spiritual but that he “gave alms (charitable giving) generously to the people and he prayed constantly to God.”

One day, Cornelius is praying. It’s about three in the afternoon. And he has this vision of an angel from God who speaks to him. Cornelius is probably almost as surprised as you or I would be.

“What is it, Lord?”

The angel answers – your prayers and your giving has not gone unnoticed before God.

This is an excellent word – when we enter into the way of seeking God intentionally through prayer and other spiritual practices, God notices. God does things. Do we believe this?

When we pray and read scripture and give and serve, well, what happens? God changes us and invites us into the work he is doing. In Cornelius case, he becomes the one who helps change Peter’s mind about the mission of the Gospel. It’s the most extensive story in the book of Acts. Without Cornelius, Peter never takes the Gospel beyond the Jews. Maybe there is no missionary Church. Maybe you and I aren’t sitting here today. All because one man decided it was important to pray and to give, day after day, year after year.

There is a scene in the film, Behind Enemy Lines, in which a navy pilot by the name of Burnett turns in a request for transfer to his superior officer. The Admiral, played by Gene Hackman, calls him into his office and asks him why. Burnett responds that he thinks all the endless drills and schedules and preparations are boring and meaningless. He signed up to go fight somebody. But nothing is happening. He wants out.

The Admiral responds that the drills and discipline that he calls boring is the very thing that prepares him and makes him ready when the real fight comes.

Not much good happens without practice and discipline. We know this is true in the military. We know this is true in sports, in music, in academics. But for some reason we don’t give it much due when it comes to religion and spirituality. We want everything to be mystery and forgiveness and feel good story. Religion, at least the Christian religion, contains those things, but is essentially more than those things. C.S. Lewis uses the example of nature. Most spiritual people get a mystical feeling from nature. But Lewis writes:


We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us
Fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all
The leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it
Will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When
Human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the
Inaminate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory
, or rather the great glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.


Lewis says that we are on the outside looking in when it comes to how things ought to be. We can be inspired by nature or music or books; but it is the practicing of the presence of God, the living of a devout life, that helps us enter into the life of the Holy Spirit. What did John the Baptist say? Hey, I’m baptizing you with water but He, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Following Jesus by engaging in regular spiritual practices immerses us in the life of the Spirit. We get in tune with what God is doing around us and in us. Don’t you think God is rooting for us to live this way? Don’t you think his Holy Spirit power is at the ready, waiting for us to pray, just like Cornelius did?

We maybe have wasted a lot time and opportunity in our lives. Maybe we should be a lot further along in this spiritual journey than we are. But we can’t go back and get that. We start where we are. We start by doing. Maybe we don’t feel it. Maybe we only half believe it. But if we start doing it, we may just find a person that we can trust.

Will you begin to arrange your life around the activities that Jesus did? Will you begin to do the things that every spiritually mature Christian has always done? Will you immerse yourself in the Jesus Way? Will you put in the effort it takes to become trustworthy again?