Psalm 33:21
In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
How does the idea of ‘trusting God’ make you feel? Totally
secure, in the arms of an all-powerful, all-loving heavenly Father? Or dangerously at sea, all out of your own ideas and resources, and forced to reluctantly fall back on Plan B, at least until you can get Plan A up and running again?
I have to admit, sometimes ‘trusting God’ feels more like a
negative, rather than a positive. When our situation is hard we may say, through clenched teeth, “I suppose I just need to trust God more.” But what we really want is for things to be easier,
for the pain to go away, for life to go back to ‘how it ought to be’, so that we don’t have to trust God quite so desperately.
That’s not what the psalmist has in mind when he thinks
about trusting God. The psalmist’s experience of trust isn’t a grim, clenched-teeth, last-resort thing. It’s joyful. God’s people’s hearts rejoice because they trust in God. Why is that? It’s because of what they know about God – his name, in other words his character.
As we’ve seen from this psalm, our God is faithful, righteous, just, loving and awesomely powerful. So, to trust in this God is to
put ourselves utterly in the hands of one who is totally committed to doing what is good and right. However hard our situation, we have no need to fear the outcome with a God like this in charge. Trusting him is the first and best choice we can make, not a reluctant fall-back plan when all else fails.
Let’s praise God for his holy name and righteous character,
which make trusting in him such a blessing. And let’s ask him to deepen and strengthen our trust in him, so that our hearts might rejoice in him more and more.
