Trustworthy

Being trustworthy (reliable, dependable, and honest) is an exceptional character quality, don’t you think? I desire to live up to others’ expectation and need of my being a trustworthy woman. I appreciate trust is established by living and serving with integrity, with action aligning with our values and I need that. Certainly with a new acquaintance, personal or business, I am watching for honest and respectful words and follow-through. I admit to having my guard up and exercising (at least in my mind) a healthy amount of discernment and appropriate hesitation. A guarding of the personal and potentially vulnerable seems wise.

In today’s world, there is an ever-increasing amount of unsettling possibilities. So there are many systems and structures in place to keep us safe, to keep our info and our minds (our hearts??) protected. But I will admit … I sometimes feel inundated with the levels of action necessary to access resources. Medical records, purchase history, insurance coverages, communication tools, to name a few.

Updates can be tough for me. New equipment aka devices like the phone, the laptop, even the clothes washer. My base of trust evaporates and I feel adrift. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been dropped into an episode of Star Trek (my brother’s fav when we were kids) where the food materialized with a couple quick buttons. No actual food, prep, or apparently clean-up required. But if you hit the wrong button, you could find yourself among the natives of an unknown planet where they thought you were the food! I confess to making up that storyline, but it is not so far off from what I recall, after all it has been more than 50 years (gray-haired emoji here!).

A recent update at a government website I use once or twice most months now requires I have an authenticator app on my phone so the system knows it’s me and allows me to proceed, with another password or two, of course. I expect them to require a blood or saliva sample soon.

But I digress. Updates of my technology or of familiar resources triggers unsettledness and quite a bit of distrust, if I’m honest. What if I can’t remember the new protocol? What if they don’t recognize the first five passwords I try? What if they lock me out forever? It has happened before. It could happen again.

But not true of our relationship with our Lord Jesus. He already knows who we each are, always recognizing our face and our heart. He knows where we have been, where we are going, and the load we’re carrying on our back. He doesn’t add to the burden, but rather He lightens the load. He reminds us of what to put aside, what to maintain attentiveness over, what to share with others as He allows our paths to cross. And what burden to help someone carry.

Scripture reminds us that we … can know God. No passwords needed! It is an extraordinary statement. I may not be readily equipped to know much, but I can know God! And it is not wrong to be discerning, to test for trustworthiness. The Apostle John coaches us, even commands us, to exercise discernment over who we listen to, who we trust.

1 John 4.1-6

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

While my hesitant approach to the new and the updated feels quite less significant than to whom we are trusting for our very eternity, we each can make a declaration of Who and what we can know and Who knows us. And this makes the ins and outs of life doable because that which sustains us is so so much greater than that which befuddles us.

… he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

This is true, trustworthy, and infallible. A rich blessing to the befuddled! Praise God!

Blessings, Colleen