Trust

Trust.  So necessary for relationships and yet so fragile.  Once broken, trust is one of the hardest things to heal, because at the core of all broken relationships is broken trust.

I trusted you with my heart and you broke it.
I trusted you with this job and you destroyed my company.
I trusted you to keep a secret and you told everyone.
I trusted you with our finances and you stole all our money.
I trusted you to be my friend and you betrayed me.

Everyone I know has a story of when and how their trust was betrayed.  I have been the betrayer and I have also been betrayed.  I have broken other people's trust in me and I've had other people break my trust in them.  Yet, if we don't trust people, we will never be in authentic relationships with them.

Jesus says we are to trust Him and be in relationship with Him and often when we get hurt by the church we think that Jesus has broken our trust.  Then we turn our backs on God altogether because we've been hurt by religion.

I want to tell you something that we all know:  The church is not Jesus.
I'm a pastor at a church and I know this all too well.
We don't always get it right.  Sometimes we get it wrong.  The church is made up of sinful, hurting, broken people who are trying our best to follow our Teacher and live out His teachings in our lives. That is our mission.  Sometimes we forget our mission.

So, if and when we do break your trust, please know two things:

First, not all of us meant to break your trust.  I know there are some religious people who are only in it for the money or the control or to sooth their own consciences, and those people will willfully break your trust and use you if it means they get more of what they want out of you.  We are not those people.  We are people trying out best to create a community where Jesus transforms lives.  Along the way we will make mistakes, but those mistakes are ours, not His, because only He is perfect; we are not.

Second (and related to the first), when we don't love you perfectly, Jesus still does.  When we don't treat you fairly, Jesus always will.  When we push to hard or not hard enough, Jesus remains steady. We may never fully get your trust back, Jesus will always be worthy of your trust.  When we are selfish, He is selfless.  When we are distracted and miss you, He is focused and never forgets who you are.  

We are not trying to be any of the things I just mentioned.  We are not trying to be distracted or pushy or mean-spirited or cold.  Instead, we are trying to love like Jesus does, to serve like Jesus served, to care like Jesus cared and to all be standing together as a community when He returns.  We are just admitting that we are human and not perfect and that from time to time we will mess up and perhaps that might cause you to not trust us anymore.  But don't let it ever cause you to not trust Him.

I'm not making excuses for when we break your trust.  I wish we never did.  But we do, and when we do I hate it and it sucks, because as a church I want us all to be in authentic community with each other and with God.  God created us to be in relationships with each other and with Him.  This means learning to trust each other and to trust God.          

I have learned to trust Him with my life, sometimes in spite of how I've been treated by church, but also partially because of how I've been treated by church.  It was a church that taught me that when I fall, they were going to kick me while I was down.  It was also a different church that taught me that when I fall, they were going to pick me up and get me back into community with other believers and with God.
God is worthy of your trust. He will never break it.  I trust Him with my life and I hope that you will trust Him with yours too.  Then, let's work together on learning how to trust each other.