Trust, Positive Expectation, & Love

Ron Simkins – July 23, 2024 1 Comment

This is installment #6 in the RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS series from Ron Simkins. Enjoy!

TRUST, POSITIVE EXPECTATION, & LOVE

If I were to begin this series again, this essay would be much earlier in the series. If I ever decide to write another book, I plan to make that adjustment. Trust, Hope, and Love are words scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible. They also occur throughout the New Testament as key descriptions of how the spirit of God empowers healthy relationships with God and with our fellow humans.

Paul summarized the empowering work of God’s spirit in our relationship with God and with one another with these words: “And now these three remain: faith (trust), hope (positive expectation), and love (stubborn commitment to good for the other person)” [1 Corinthians 13:13].

As I have mentioned throughout this series, one of the problems with translating from one language to another is that often it is impossible to translate meanings with a single word. Another issue is that our words tend to become jaded and emptied of much of their original content. That is especially true of biblical words which tend to lose their everyday meanings and become “religious.” For example, it is so difficult to remember that “repent” is not a religious word in the Bible, it is an everyday word for “turn around and go a different direction.”

TRUST (FAITH)

If we want to mature in “right relationships” as a community of God’s people, let’s be asking God to empower us through the spirit of God toward becoming more trusting and more trustworthy in our relationships with God and with one another. Sadly the word “faith” has become a “religious” word. Today, it is often heard as “be committed to the right doctrine.” Or, reflected in the use of “believe” as contrasted with what is real and true and empirical. So, “trust” and “trustworthy” are much better translations of the biblical meaning into English.

There is nothing “religious” about trust. It allows so much social freedom and efficiency when it is well-founded. Life has much less anxiety if you can trust the label on your food and the honesty of your bank. Trust is also the very fabric of growing, deepening relationships. Trust does not come easily for most of us. For most of us, the ability to trust deeply becomes quite damaged at very young ages by the brokenness of this world. For some, early devasting experiences of broken trust and broken trustworthiness occur even within the family of origin. 

Further, for many of us, the ability to trust God was deeply damaged by what we were taught God would always do, and what we were taught God would never allow.  Often, this included quoting scriptures, but without the larger contexts that balance scriptural truths. Example: the common teaching that Jesus wants to make your life easier and more prosperous, without the context that includes we are being asked to follow someone who was unjustly shamed and executed—someone who said, you must “take up your cross” to follow me. And, for those who teach that after Jesus’ resurrection it is supposed to be easy and prosperous, remember how “easy” (ironic inflection, please) God made it for Paul to follow Jesus (2 Corinthians 6:3-10).

These experiences mean that we need God’s spirit to bring about healing and the willingness to take risks and even to be hurt at times if we are to grow in trusting God. The gain? It is absolutely delightful to be in a place where we trust God to be trustworthy with all that we are and all that we have. There is no greater peace. This experience of “right relationship” is an experience of being the humans we are meant to be.

Further, the gift of growing in our relationship with one another to the point that we trust each other to be trustworthy by relating truthfully, authentically, and with caring is a profound experience of being a more fully human community. We all fall short of this glorious imaging of God, but the experience of moving closer and closer to full trust and trustworthiness is amazingly freeing and filled with shalom.

POSITIVE EXPECTATION/HOPE

Hope is also a word emptied of most of its biblical meaning in our current everyday usage. We often use it as “I wish” concerning things we have very little expectation of occurring. The biblical content was positive expectation of an ultimately good outcome—easier when things are going well, and of course, much more difficult when things are not looking very promising. 

Think about what a gift it is when people in your life expect that you will act positively in the end. Think about what a gift it is to children when parents’ expectations of them, and for them, are positive. We need God’s empowering to have more positive expectations of how God’s spirit can work in our lives to bless us all as a community of God’s people. 

And, what a gift to expect that God will ultimately work for our good and keep God’s promises to us. There is so much joy in expecting the future that God promises in which human society will ultimately become the forever family of God made up of women and men completed fully into the image of God and able to live forever in the direct presence of God. I find this hope even more compelling when I realize that it includes the promise that the best of all human societies throughout history will be incorporated into this creative future that God plans for us.

But positive expectation is not just about the ultimate future. It is the work of the spirit of God in us that allows us to expect God to act in our daily lives even when we cannot see past the darkness and the brokenness that surrounds us. This is the path of trust and hope that Sharon Chubbuck recently called “It’s the Middle of the Story.” And, this path to “right relationship” with God is filled with “peace that passes understanding.”

LOVE (Stubborn covenant commitment to wanting and acting toward good for the other.  See essay #3 in this series which is still available on the NCF website.)

CONCLUSION

Let’s encourage one another toward deeper “right relationships” with God and with one another. It may be the road less traveled in a world with far too many broken and breaking relationships, but it is by far the most rewarding road. Let’s make it our prayer for the empowering of God’s spirit to create in each of us, and among us, the following growing reality: “And now these three remain: trust, positive expectation, and stubborn covenant commitment to wanting and acting for good for the other person. And the greatest of these is the stubborn covenant commitment to wanting and acting for good for the other person.”-Ron Simkins, NCF Pastor Emeritus