Trust My Heart

Do you trust me?

It's been used as a catchy line in movies, but the answer to that single question has enormous implications for our spiritual life, both in our personal walk with Christ and in our relationship to other believers.

What enables us to trust our heavenly Father when all around us seems to offer nothing but reasons for doubt?

The only way we can truly surrender in trust to God is in the recognition of His unfailing love toward us, which demands that He desire nothing for us but ultimate good. No matter how much trouble or difficulty or heartache we suffer, we can abide in trust that He is working all things to good because of that great love.

When we struggle in relationship with other believers, when we find ourselves disappointed, offended and angry at one another's actions and words, we should begin to ask ourselves a very piercing question: Do I trust the heart of my brother or my sister in Christ?

If you are trusting in the heart of an unsaved human being, beware! The human heart is filled with detestable things and many desires for evil because of our fallen state. You would be setting yourself up for incredible pain.

Yet, a fellow believer has been renewed in the blood of Christ and has truly been awarded a new heart, one that beats with the love and goodness of its Creator.

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).

That is not to say that Christians don't do or say wrong things or fall into sin in their relationships with others. For the work in each of us is not yet complete. But, we have a tremendous gift, should we choose to accept it, that enables us to offer forgiveness to and seek reconciliation with the members of our Christian family as we walk the difficult road to unity.

That gift is to recognize the new heart within our brothers and sisters in Christ and to rest in the assurance that there is love and goodness at the core of the "new man" in them.

When we believe that God has gifted love and goodness into the center of every one of His redeemed children, we can trust them, when needed, to speak into our lives for our greater good, and we can trust that even when they make mistakes in their words and actions toward us, that love is their greatest intention toward us, as it is from us toward them.

Believing in the new heart of Christ within each member of our fellowship, frees us to love one another without fear, to expose ourselves fully with no threat of condemnation, and to walk in the greatest depth of relationship without easily taking offense.

It is the only way we can be patient, avoid envy, choose not to seek our own way, keep no record of wrongs, always hope, always trust, always persevere (1 Corinthians 13).

What binds the body is love. And that is what the world should see. But, it is not a love we can concoct or create by human will or determination. It is a gift of the Father to be received and extended from the new heart of one believer to the new heart in another.