How to Keep on Trusting God

If you want to flourish in life, you’ve got to believe the best about God and cultivate your trust in him.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 tells us, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and has made the Lord his hope and confidence. He is like a tree planted along a riverbank, with its roots reaching deep into the water—a tree not bothered by the heat nor worried by long months of drought. Its leaves stay green, and it goes right on producing all its luscious fruit” (TLB).

Life is difficult. It’s tough. This passage mentions two kinds of difficulties we can face: heat and drought.

Heat represents the sudden crises of life. Heat comes on suddenly. The accident. The cancer. The death. Somebody walks out of your life. It’s a sudden crisis. How do you handle the heat in your life, when the heat is on?

Then there is drought. Drought represents long periods of time when you must go without something you feel you need.

You’re out of work. You’re out of income. You’re out of energy. Somebody walks out of your life. You’re going without. How do you handle those kinds of situations?

Notice three words in the passage from Jeremiah: trust, hope, and confidence.

What bothers you? Your bank account? The future? A problem you’re facing in a relationship? What worries you? What gets you down?

It’s possible to be like a tree that keeps on blooming even in the middle of heat or in seasons of drought.

What makes the difference? The difference is in having roots!

Some of you are trusting in your career. You’ve got it made, you’re on the fast track, things are going great. When you’re hot, you’re hot! But when you’re not, you’re not.

Some of you are trusting in your bank account. Some of you are trusting in your good looks. Some of you are trusting in your husband and he’s the rock in your life. He’s the stability in your life. Or you are trusting in your wife, or your parents.

All those things are good, but there’s one significant problem. Every one of those things can be taken away from you.

You can lose your career, you can lose your money, you can lose your health, you can lose your spouse, and you can lose your family.

To have ultimate confidence, you must put your confidence in something that can never be taken from you. And there’s only one thing that can never be taken from you—your relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

Your confidence must be in the Lord. Then when the heat is on and the drought comes, you are not blown away because your roots go deep and you keep on producing fruit.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:24, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the solid rock” (NIV).