As I have experienced counseling, have counseled others, and have been equipped further for healing ministry I have come to heartily embrace this reality, revealed in scripture and demonstrated through having lived 67 years, that we are to vest our trust in God and God alone. We are to trust God and love and forgive people. In counseling I hear people put significant emphasis on trusting people (or, more often, having been disappointed so often by people they trusted that they grieve not being able to trust people at all.) And therein lies the problem…..disappointments again and again!
From James McDonald, Walk in the Word:
John 2:24-25 says: “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” Jesus was neither cynical nor naive. He loved people without entrusting Himself to them, and He served people without exposing himself to their faults or failures. Are we so attached to one another that we set ourselves up to be shattered when the inevitability of one’s fallenness comes to the surface? Are we so in need of affirmation and acceptance that we find ourselves ‘wheels up’ in the ditch when a friend or colleague denies or betrays? Loving people, yes. Living in community, yes. But attaching ourselves to people in a way that we lose our footing in following Jesus when individuals in our lives stumble or trip us up? No! Let us fix our eyes squarely upon the only One worth following while praising God for the blessing of people, but refusing to attach ourselves in a way that puts our Christian faith and following at risk.”
If we are less euphoric in the glory days with any particular person or group, we will be less crushed by disappointment when we discover their feet of clay.”
Only Jesus on the pedestal, the rest of us on level ground, looking up. That’s how to survive disappointment. As we learn to trust the Lord, we will be guided into discernent regarding which people we may trust and how much to trust them. John 21:21: “Peter . . . said to Jesus, ‘Lord what about this man?’ Jesus said to him, ‘. . . What is that to you? You follow me!’” Truth!
7/14/21 CBB