When reading the Old Testament, we can struggle to identify with the people we meet on the pages; they feel so far away and different from our current situations. But if we look closely, we see their own struggles to trust God and can recognize our own failures in this area. Take Abraham in Genesis 20 for example. He arrives in a new region and fears that the men there will kill him and take his wife Sarah for themselves, so he tells everyone that she is his sister. On the surface, it seems like an odd story. But when we think about Abraham’s heart and fears, we realize that he was genuinely afraid and was having a crisis of trust. He didn’t trust God to take care of his family and decided to take matters into his own hands and lie. 

Abraham provides one example of many; the very first example comes in Genesis 3 as Adam and Eve fail to trust God’s goodness and provision and instead believe the lies of the devil. As children of God who still live as sinners in a fallen world, we also struggle to trust God. Sometimes we treat trusting God like a business deal. We come to God with a heart attitude that says, “If you’ll do this thing for me, God, then I’ll trust you.” Or “I trust you, but you need to deliver on this one.” We place demands on God and essentially require that He earn our trust. Our cross-cultural situations and needs can loom so large and seem so impossible, and we want things resolved on our terms and timetables. 

But we forget that God has already addressed our biggest need at the cross! In Jesus we find all the assurance we need that God is for us and that He is mighty to save. We can approach God with boldness and faith while also admitting our struggle to trust Him: like the father in Mark 9, we cry out to God in belief, asking Him to help us overcome our unbelief.