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Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Trust means that you are not going to depend on yourself, not going to depend on your feelings, not going to depend on outward circumstances. Trust is a firm belief in the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something.
I recently read a book on Desert Storm which had a passage about a pilot and trust.
Trust Your Instruments Inside every airplane are instruments that are critical to flying the aircraft. The instruments will give a true reading of how the aircraft is flying, even if a pilot's mind may tell him differently. On a clear, sunny day a pilot may not need some of these instruments, but at night or in poor visibility, these instruments become vital to his survival. Many planes have crashed because the pilot became disoriented and failed to trust his instruments. While attending Texas A&M, Jeff Patton and I became friends as members of the Corps of Cadets. He is now Lt. Col. Jeff Patton and flew as an F-15 fighter pilot in Desert Storm. On the first night of the war, his mission was to escort a large formation of fighters in bombing a chemical weapons plant in northern Iraq. The date for Desert Storm was chosen because the absence of moonlight and the high clouds helped the attacking allied fighters from being detected by enemy defenses. Flying in total darkness, the pilots became completely dependent upon their instruments. Shortly after crossing into Iraq, Col. Patton's jet was "locked on" to by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile radar. He violently maneuvered his aircraft to break the radar's lock on him. His maneuver successfully broke the lock, but it created a new problem. Those radical movements in the dark threw off the balance in his inner ear (which is what happens when a person gets dizzy), causing him to become disoriented. His mind was telling him his plane was in a climbing right turn, but when he checked his instruments, they indicated he was in a 60 degree dive towards the ground! He was sure he was in a climb instead of a dive, and his mind was screaming at him to lower the nose of his F-15 to halt the climb. While his mind commanded him to correct the plane in one direction, his instruments instructed him to do just the opposite. Because he was flying in total darkness, he had to decide quickly whether to trust his mind or his instruments. His life depended on making the correct choice. Even though it took everything within him to overcome what his mind was telling him, he decided to trust his instruments. He rolled his wings level and pulled his F-15 upward, which drew seven times the force of gravity, pulling the aircraft out of its dive. It only took a few moments to realize he had made the right decision. If he had lowered the nose of his jet like his mind had been telling him, he would have crashed the plane. Trusting his instruments saved his life! Immediately he looked at his altimeter, which told him the elevation of his aircraft. He had narrowly escaped colliding into the mountains of Iraq by just 2,000 feet. Although he had made the correct decision by trusting his instruments, he realized if he had delayed just three more seconds his plane would have crashed into the mountains. Even right decisions can be wrong ones if they are made too late. (Kent Crockett, The 911 Handbook, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003, 17-18)
If the pilot had only made the decision only three seconds later, he would have crashed.
And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. Num 13:30-31
What is the difference between Caleb and Joshua’s report and the other ten men? Caleb trusted what God said. He said that they would be able to overcome it because God said that he would give them the land. Did the other men believe? No, they thought it was too hard; they had no confidence in God. They were putting their confidence in themselves. When they put confidence in themselves, they started exaggerating the problems. If you lack faith, your problems are going to seem bigger to you than what they really are.
I have seen people who have complained about situations that were actually pretty small, but in their minds they were huge mounds. The reason is that they didn’t trust God. When you start leaning on your own ideas and your own opinions, and how you see things out of your literal eyes, you are going to be just like the ten spies. It causes unbelief. God wants us to look through the eye of faith. Look not at the situation, not at the problem, but at the promises. If God says it, it is going to be that way. It is just like the pilot who had to trust his instruments not his mind, not what he felt, not what it seemed to him.
Have you ever been in a situation where it seemed like you needed to do one thing but God was saying to do something else? You have to pull your whole self over to what God wants and say that you are going to trust God. If you trust yourself, and trust your mind, and trust your ideas and opinions, you will make shipwreck. That is why we need to trust God with all of our heart. Unbelief will try to get you to trust yourself, trust your opinions, and trust your ideas. If it contrary to the Word of God: you’ve got to trust God’s word above everything or everyone else.
Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. Jeremiah 17:7-8
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