"Trust in the Lord and do good"

“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture”(Psalm 37:3) is my first ingredient to the “Take It Easy” attitude. 

    The basic meaning of trust is to “have confidence” and “cause reliability.” During times where our trust is tested when we experience how products, people, and even God can produce responses that erode our confidences. Some examples of how my trust or confidence has been eroded through disappointments include:

  

1. I remember the Dallas Cowboys (aka America’s Team) during the 1970's.  My dad would assure me that they will pull out the victory in the second half even though they were losing at the end of the first half. However, sometimes the team would lose and shock me to disappointment. All these years later, every lost disappoints me.

2. My 1989 Nissan Sentra was the best car I ever owned. I could drive across the Arizona and California Deserts with the confidence to stay cool in the daytime, drive 70ish MPH, and still hit almost 50 miles per gallon on the highway.  However, one time the car failed to start because of a bad battery. Even today, if my vehicle should be slow to start due to cold weather, it takes me five starts before I have confidence in the vehicle again.

3. I cannot count how many times that I have been blessed with a job, gift, rides, or help because of the generosity of people.  However, on rare occasion people have let me down. Someone forgot to mention me in their network when I was looking for a job or leave me without a ride. To this day, I struggle to trust people when they seemingly leave me out to dry.

      No matter how many times my team won, car started, or promises; I am tempted respond to the broken trust, “prove to me why I should trust you.” This is a key sign that I am not trusting God.

     Since my teen years, Psalm 37:3 has been a source of strength to me because trusting in the Lord is to give rise to the opportunity to “do good, dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture” rather than let my confidence in God erode.  

      I remember the car that I had before my beloved Sentra. It broke down time after time until it could run. On my final day with this broken car my choice was to either sale it for scrap or to keep it by spending a fortune. I began to think, “Why is God giving me a hard time when I am trying to serve Him with my life?” Psalms 37:3 began to repeat in my head over and over. As I walked outside the mechanic’s shop to wait for a ride back home. I saw a man who looked hungry and I had to spare is $2.36 the cost of a Whopper after tax. So I thought I would do some good by giving my last bit of change to buy this man a Whopper. So I did and gave it to him. He was sensitive to know that all was not right with me. He graciously tore the Whopper in half and shared it with me. We had great conversation where I got to hear how God was challenging him to help others instead of taking for himself.  I knew God was caring of me by the time that my ride arrived. That semester, I never missed a day of work because of my good college friends.

     What I learned from this difficult experience at my young age was that trusting in the Lord and doing His good was vital to cultivating my faith. I began to see how people who are also “Trusting in the Lord and doing [His] good” can nurture one another to stay on track with God's process for shaping lives for His daily mission.