Although trust is just a five letter word, it carries a load of meaning. It has the ability to make or break a business, a marriage and even a person. Its power cannot be understated. Where trust exists between two business partners, a business can thrive. Where trust exists in a marriage, that marriage will prosper, joy will flourish, love will blossom.
It’s fundamental to our success. It’s fundamental to our very existence.
And yet many of us struggle with trust. Life has hurt us…people we have loved let us down or even betrayed us, wounding us. We guard ourselves and promise to never trust again. “I’ll never be that vulnerable again,” we whisper to ourselves, clinging to the pain.
And our life is altered. But not for the better.
So what is Trust? Webster defines it as “reliance on the integrity, strength, ability,
surety of a person or thing; confidence. Confident expectation of something. Hope.” With so broad a definition, who can possibly attain its ideals?
Yet God asks just that of us. He asks us to trust Him.
Isaiah 26:4 says:
“So trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting rock.”
A rock is something determinedly unshakable, unmovable, and unbreakable. A rock expresses who God is. We can trust Him. He will not let us down.
In my book, Love’s Memory-the Scotts of Mountain Ridge Book One I write of an average married couple who have been bruised by life; their dreams and hopes dashed. Trust erodes between them, and it doesn’t take long for love to follow that same path. Without knowledge of God, they have nothing to stand on, thus their marriage hangs on the precipice of disaster.
But someone is praying for them. And God, who is stronger than their pain, who is stronger than their catastrophe; has a way out. Because the nature of God is good, He is trustworthy. Jeremiah 29:11 says
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
And that’s the point of my book, Love’s Memory: to reveal a God who knows us so intimately, who understands our struggles better than we do, and who works behind the scenes in every detail of our lives. He is a GOOD God even though we walk through bad situations.
To get to the gist of this tale, I wrote Love’s Memory from both Manny and Valerie’s
point of view. As a woman, writing from Valerie’s perspective was simple. Her trials, conflicts, and behaviors were second nature to me. She was me.
But writing from Manny’s point of view? I struggled, I prayed, I studied. I was determined to write his story as a man would write it; as one who would feel and understand things purely from a man’s perspective. But that made Love’s Memory all the more fun for me. God is a mystery and I guess it only makes sense that our God-given partners have a bit of the mystery in them as well.
If I could leave one thought, it would be this: never underestimate God, never
underestimate the power of His love, and never underestimate what He can do through two
people who love Him and trust Him.
This has been a guest post by Shannon O’Donnell, author of the book Love’s Memory-The Scotts of Mountain Ridge Book One. Get your copy here: http://shannonhopeodonnell.com