The Surrender Series Part 2

Trust

My good friend explained to me that in order to Surrender you have to Trust the person you are surrounding to. Wow that really hit me hard. I realized that I didn’t trust and perhaps I still don’t trust completely. It was so revealing to me that I didn’t trust that I have had to take some time and ponder and really look into my heart. I didn’t like what I found.

I have a long history of what I feel is failure and I have trust issues when I feel that I had tried and tried to do things and it seems to never work out. Trusting is a huge issue for me. I realize that most of my trust issues come from those around me and not from God. Everyone that I was supposed to trust never came through for me.

Parents are the ones we should grow up trusting the most. I never could trust them. My mother constantly failed me in so many ways when it came to trust. My dad was even worse. How can you trust someone when you know they don’ t love or understand you. When you hear them say things to others when they think you are not listening or when they actually say things to you that rip your heart out.

I couldn't trust my siblings, and still have issues with that. It’s hard to trust when they are critical and what seems to be without understanding of my personal journey.

Trusting in the world around you can also be a huge challenge. In the work place I have been taken advantage of and even abused. It seems that when it comes to making friends that there are not a lot of people that you can trust to be there and support you when you are down.

So, as you can see trust has been an issue and it seems that I my lack of trust in the world around me has over the years kept me from trusting God.

I am having to surrender my trust issues to gain trust in God. It is a challenge to surrender habits and mind sets of years and years of devoted practice. It’s easy not to trust. I have learned that it is an escape for me. If I don’t trust I don’t have expectations and I get comfortable in my failures and comfortable in my isolation.

So a huge part of Trust is to learn to surrender our lack of trust and to really look where it is coming from. Being able to see and understand it a huge part of being able to drop the shackles that hold us in bondage. I have been in bondage for a long time and as I am learning to surrender and trust I can feel those shackles dropping of. It’s a slow painful process, but I have to remember that I have been creating those shackles for my entire life and it is going to take some effort to take them off.

I do trust in God, or at least I am trying, in that if I am conscious of where I am and what I am doing and if I am really trying to surrender that he will guide me and teach me and help me to understand just how and what to surrender to him and Christ.

My trust is growing and I am hopeful that I will also grow in my ability to open up my heart to trust those around me as well as God. I am working on taking down the walls that don’t allow me to trust others.

My trust should be in God and Christ. They have never given me a reason not to trust them. In surrendering I have learned that all that I have experienced is for a purpose and if I trust in that all is for a reason of divine purpose that I trust one day I will understand.

Brad Petersen