Who Do You Trust?

It may be a parent or best friend. It may be the wealthy business owner who ‘took you under his wing’ to teach you. It may even be your local priest. But whoever it is, there is someone close to you to advise you and to hear your deepest secrets, and you trust everything they say.

Brethren, it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens.  He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did this once for all when he offered up himself.  Indeed, the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect for ever.  Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord.

Hebrews 7:26-28;8:1-2

Trust is built over many years and ‘tests’ between two people but is lost in an instant. Because there are so few we truly trust, we tend to ‘listen to advice’ and then evaluate whether we will heed the advice. If it seems good to us, the advice is solid. That is not trust.

If the advice ‘works in the end’ we may return for more advice, and the cycle repeats itself. Eventually, so long as the advice has always been ‘good’ we might even stop evaluating it before ‘doing’ it. That sounds like trust, but it is just learned effectiveness.

Real trust is knowing that the advice we receive, even when it seems wrong, is good for us. There is only One who can be really trusted. He is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but often His advice is the advice we ignore the most.

If we ‘test’ what He has said over thousands of years, His advice has always been the right advice, but still, we ignore it because WE don’t agree with it. We don’t even put our parents and best friends to such ‘high’ standards.

We trust ‘everyone’ else, but we can’t seem to trust God. That is the point Saint Paul is making for us today. Instead of putting our trust in humans, who often let us down, we can and should put our trust in God. He offers us the perfect advice, with perfect motives, with perfect love.

No other person, not even our closest confidant, loves us enough to give us perfect advice. Maybe it was time we put our actual trust in the One who actually loves us.