Problem Trusting God
One of the things we need to realize is that God is the ultimate authority. Our parents have been placed by God to raise us up, the Bible says in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They are to be there for us, they’re to walk the road with us, they are to help us to become the people that God created us to be and help us in every situation. So often because of their problems, their emotional issues, because of how they were raised they’re not able to provide what we needed.
It’s very, very important for us to realize that trusting God is something that we’re told to do. It says “Lean not to your own understanding; trust God,” Proverbs 3:7. It says “Trust God.” Well, we have a hard time doing that. If we really dig deep and we really look at it and we really have an understanding we’ll realize that we have all a hard time trusting God. The reason is because of these painful childhood situations. If you stop and think about it really does make sense. Most people don’t stop and think about it but it makes a lot of sense that if my mother or father or father or mother treated me in situations and circumstances where it was abusive or it was neglectful or just wasn’t loving, then what are we going to do? We’re going to believe that we’re not valuable and we’re not important. We’re also going to know by experience that we can’t trust mom or dad. So what’s going to happen? Well, who are we going to trust? We’re going to trust ourselves and the reason we’re going to trust ourselves is because there’s nobody else to trust.
If dad is abusive, if dad yells and screams, if dad does things that are hurtful or mom does things that are hurtful then we are going to not be able to trust dad or mom. I’ve worked with people on both sides and one of the things I’ve found is that if there was painful childhood experiences then people that I’ve worked with and people that I’ve talked to have a very difficult time trusting God. They may think they can trust God when things are going well, but have a much more difficult time trusting God when they’re not going so well. What childhood painful events really cause is they cause people to be able to, and I’m talking about Christians. I’m talking about born again Christians, Christians that have given their life to Jesus and we’re told to trust, but it’s so hard. The reason it’s so hard is because of the fact that we can’t trust mom or dad as a child.
What we come to learn and my studies have really helped me to discover, is that we really are not going to be able to trust when we have been wounded by our parents. When we can’t trust we are also not going to be able to have the proper view or belief about ourselves. What we do, psychologists tell us and behavioral scientists tell us, is we can’t trust mom or dad. We do trust ourselves, but we can’t certainly trust ourselves. God is the ultimate authority, and so what we have is a very serious problem because if we can’t trust God, we’re going to live in fear. Jesus said many times in the scriptures, to his disciples, “Fear not.” The Bible says that fear has torment. Fear torments us. What do we have fear of? We have fear of the future, we have fear of the present, we have fear that causes us to make bad decisions. We have fear that causes us to not be able to live a life in which we will have the opportunity to enjoy peace that Jesus said he came to give us. He came to give us life and life more abundantly.
The abundant life is certainly not the fear-filled life, but if we can’t trust we’re going to find ourselves in a position where we are going to be very fearful. What we’re looking at is the reality that people that I’ve studied and people that really understand how our brains work called brain scientists have determined that when we are babies, toddlers, infants, and young children that if we don’t get what we need, which is nurturing, loving, acceptance, and what it is that we desperately need that we are going to go ahead and when we don’t trust it effects every area of our life. What they have actually seen is that what we do is we not only don’t trust, we actually are afraid of authority. We’re afraid of all authority, so what do we do? We end up putting the face of our father or mother on God. That’s a way to explain what happens. It really is that we can’t believe that God is really for us.
That’s what happened to me. I was severely emotionally abused by my father and what happened to me is that I ended up in a situation where I really couldn’t trust God. I wanted to trust God but I couldn’t trust God, and the reason I couldn’t trust God is because of the severe emotional abuse by my father and sometimes physical abuse. What happened is that I ended up in a situation where I knew that I wanted to trust God. I knew that I desperately needed to trust God because I was afraid all the time. I was so afraid. I was afraid of everything and the reality was that I couldn’t make it happen. I couldn’t willpower myself to trust God. I don’t know if any of you feel that way, but that’s what I felt. I could not make myself trust God, and so what happened is that I kept living a life without joy and peace. A life which was certainly not an abundant life. I kept finding out that I’m was in trouble. I’ve had problems. I had issues of trust.
I really, really wanted to trust God but I couldn’t, and the reason was is because of the way that I was raised. That abuse affected me for all of my life. I actually hated authority. I didn’t just dislike authority, I hated authority. It affected me so dramatically, because I was so insecure because if I hated authority I had to rely totally on myself. You know what? I’m not God. I can’t handle life’s problems. They’re too big for me. They’re too much and I really was having a very, very difficult time. I had an anger problem because I hated authority so much. I tried anger management, I went to different counselors. I tried everything and it wasn’t until I really got an understanding of how God wired our brains and how God created us to really have all learning by new experiences.
There is five physical sense knowledge and we also learn by experience. What happens is if we learn by experience I found out studying with the work of people that have understood why humans behave the way they do, behavior scientists and also the brain scientists, what I discovered for myself was that in fact my experiences were driving me with this hatred of authority. My experiences were abusive. I had a major problem. What I discovered in this whole situation was that I could actually pray and ask God, now I didn’t trust him but I thought, “You know what? I want to trust you, so will you help me to have new experiences that prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are trustworthy.” You may say, “Oh, come on, Pastor Frank. Are you kidding? I can pray that prayer.” Yes, you can. You definitely can pray that prayer and it needs to be prayed. Please, please, please pray that prayer and then realize that you can have new experiences and we have the knowledge and the structure to help you have new experiences.
If you will give us your e-mail address we’ll be glad to help you. You can give us your e-mail address and we’ll send you some more information that will help you to resolve these childhood wounds and trauma that keep us stuck. I really hope that this information has been helpful to you. It has given you some new information. Pray the prayer. It’ll change your life and I’m excited to be able to share that with you.