Worry and Anxiety Are Only Displaced with Trust
By: Trip Kimball
Tags: Scripture, Worry, Christianity, God, Trust

The calligraphy

I read it every time I sat in what I call my worry chair. A former girlfriend of mine was an artist who gave us a scripture written in calligraphy. She hand-painted it and gave it to us as a wedding gift.

The calligraphy was hung on a narrow portion of the wall of our first home next to the front door. It hung directly across from my worry chair but I had to look up a bit to read it.

Not long after we got married, the construction job I had ended, and I remained unemployed for several months other than odd jobs and some house painting. We were young and expecting our firstborn son.

So I worried. A lot.

I worried about money, the upcoming birth of our son, the responsibility of parenting, and how I would provide for my young family.

Sometimes I spent hours in my worry chair. When my worrying session was finished, I got up emotionally drained and worse off than before I sat down.

Even as I wasted time on all my worrying, I would read this scripture over and over again. I didn’t just memorize it, its truth embedded itself in my heart and soul.

What was embedded in my heart took a while to reach my mind.

I’ll try to explain why later.

Permission given by artist– Rosemary Buczek–The Gilded Quill

A truth to live by

This scripture became a lifelong source of encouragement for me. More than that, it became the bedrock truth of our life together as a couple, as parents, and during more than four decades of ministry together.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. (Proverbs 3:5–6 KJV)

These two verses in Proverbs express the essence of a life lived by faith—trust. Let me share with you how this truth became embedded in my heart and life.

The Book of Proverbs contains many of these couplets of godly wisdom and practical guidance to live by. Let’s look at these verses line by line from the King James Version as I learned it.

“T rust in the Lord with all thine heart”

At first glance, this seems pretty basic and simple. But… how does a person learn to trust the Lord with all their heart?

Think about it. Is there anything or anyone you really give your whole heart to? If you’re like most of us, probably not.

As many have said, trust is easily broken but not so easily gained or restored.

Trusting God is a learning process for all of us.

It’s not that God is untrustworthy. Quite the opposite! Each of us needs to learn to trust God just like a child’s implicit, natural trust in their parents.

During my early-marriage unemployment, we saw God provide for us in ways we never imagined. One day we found cash in an unmarked envelope left in our mailbox on the street in front of our house.

At one point, a young unmarried but pregnant friend stayed with us for a while and gave us money for groceries. This was a humbling experience for me as a guy, but also a lesson in trusting the Lord.

These two examples are just the beginning of the many ways God taught us to trust Him. Often through ways that made no sense to us and seemed paradoxical to our friends.

This brings us to the second part of verse 5.

“…lean not unto thine own understanding”

Faith is not provable in an empirical sense. Neither is trust. Faith is a personal trust in God. It is developed in us as we learn to trust the Lord through life experiences as I shared above.

Faith in God isn’t something to be reasoned out with God, although plenty of us try to do this. God is amazingly patient. All we need to do is observe Jesus with His disciples.

Jesus did one miracle among the people found in all four of the gospels—the feeding of the 5,000 (Matt 14:13–21; Mark 6:34–44; Luke 9:11–17; John 6:4–13). It amazed the disciples more than all those fed with the five loaves and two fish from a little boy in the crowd.

When you read these gospel accounts, it becomes somewhat obvious Jesus stretched the disciples' faith way beyond what seemed reasonable to them.

It never entered their mind to do what Jesus did.

After several years of ministry experience in two previous ministries, the Lord made it clear we were to establish a new church in a new area. We started with no following, no funding, and no specific place to meet.

Twelve years later, when our firstborn was a senior in high school and the church had grown to a few hundred people, God called us to move our family to the Philippines where we lived and served for fifteen years.

As we prepared for this major move for our family, many people in the church and in our community asked us why we would leave such a “successful” ministry.

It made no sense to most people, but we knew without a doubt it was what the Lord was leading us to do.

Here’s the bottom line on this—we don’t need to figure it all out before we step out in faith. In one sense, this is the point of faith. Not that it’s illogical, but it requires a trust in God beyond what is obvious to others.

“In all thy ways acknowledge him”

This may be the simplest part of learning to trust God, but it is contrary to our nature. When it comes to faith and trusting God, we tend to be childish in the wrong way. We want our own way. We want to do things by our self.

A simple way to understand how to “acknowledge Him” in all our ways is to invite God into all we do, even the simplest of things.

When we bring the Lord into all we do throughout a day, we acknowledge Him as our partner or companion. When we involve the Lord in everything we do, talking with Him becomes somewhat natural.

This is what Paul meant when he told the young believers in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).

He doesn’t mean to stop what we’re doing to pray before we do anything or to sit around praying all the time, but to pray or converse with God as we go about whatever we’re doing.

Shortly before exhorting these believers to “pray without ceasing,” He warns them not to be idle (1 Thess 5:14), and in a second letter he warns these believers if a person is unwilling to work, they shouldn’t eat! (2 Thess 3:10)

It’s not complicated or mystical.

Think of it more like how a toddler or preschooler wants their parent to see what they’re doing or have done. They want our attention and involvement in what they’re doing.

So, as we did as children with our parents, include the Lord in what we do, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us at the time. Learning to live by faith, to trust in God, is a lifelong process.

“…he shall direct thy paths”

A question I often heard as a pastor was, “how can I know the will of God for my life?” This is akin to asking, “what’s my purpose in life?”

Answering either of these questions can be tricky or simple. If you want a clearly laid out plan for your life, I think you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, even if you’re a fatalist.

I don’t know of anyone who wants to be lost. Wandering isn’t the same as being lost. If you’ve ever experienced being lost, really lost, and without a clue what direction to go (I have), you know how scary that can be.

Of course, sometimes we don’t know we’re lost. When my oldest was a young boy (maybe kindergarten-age), we lost him while shopping. Er, I should say, I lost track of him.

We were in a huge shopping mall and began to retrace where we’d been. As I raced through a department store looking for his little blonde head, I almost went right by him.

I found him sitting on the floor in front of a TV screen watching a college football game. He didn’t know he was lost. He knew where he was all along.

When it comes to direction and purpose in life, God knows where we are all the time. Nothing we do takes Him by surprise. I mean, God being God, He knows all things, is ever-present, and is all-powerful.

This is where genuine faith comes in. For me, the essence of faith is found in the letter of Hebrews within Chapter 11, often referred to as the “faith chapter.”

No one can please God without faith. Whoever goes to God must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Heb 11:6 GW).

It should be obvious, but I’ll state it anyway. A person needs to believe in God in order to have faith in Him.

But beyond the obvious part of faith, it’s important to see how personal this is. It’s a personal promise that God will honor our trust in Him.

This is the essence of faith—it’s personal.

A simple and personal life application

Personally, I think knowing the will of God for my life is pretty simple. It’s personal and proportional—how well I know the will of God is based on how well I know Him.

A simple way to see this is with preschool children and their parents. This is when it’s most obvious but it kind of carries into and through adulthood.

Early on, even at two or three years old, a child learns which parent to go to when they want something. They learn this by trial and error—through the training school of rewards and consequences and a battle of wills.

In other words, they learn who is an easy touch for one thing or another for what they want. If this sounds like manipulation, well it kind of is but’s it’s also part of the learning process.

Here’s a simple example or two. Son to mom— “Mom, can I play baseball in the house?” Mom— “NO! You know better than that!”

Son to dad— “Dad, can I play baseball in the house?” Dad– “I guess so, just be careful (as he changes channels with the remote).”

That may seem like a silly example, but you get the idea and it really seems to hold true throughout life. At least it has with my four kids and their kids. And well, with my personal relationship with the Lord.

Throughout the years, my wife and I chose to follow the Lord’s guidance even when it was difficult to do so or see where it might lead, and even when others thought our faith was misplaced.

So far, the Lord’s never let us down and we know He won’t in the future.

He has provided for us in ways we never expected or imagined, and blessed us with experiences and opportunities to serve Him that most people can only imagine.

We’re thankful for God’s faithfulness and for the simplicity of living a life of childlike faith. Although it’s had its share of difficulties, those are far outweighed by the fun (yes, fun!) and fulfillment we’ve experienced together.

Living a life of genuine faith is simple yet challenging—challenging to our pride and our desire to control our own destiny.

Here’s how Eugene H Peterson—a pastor, professor, and author—sums it up in The Message (The Bible in contemporary language)—

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. (Proverbs 3:5–6 MSG)

Here’s the story mentioned above related to Proverbs 3:5–6—

Trip is a seasoned pastor and missionary — a teacher and writer by the grace of God — committed to making what is abstract and conceptual, simple and clear, and to challenge people to think and process the truth of God.

You can read more about him and see his other writings at www.word-strong.com