Consider with me for a moment this statement:

 “If we put our hope, our trust, in anyone other than the person of Jesus Christ and the Creator of the universe, then we are putting our trust in something broken.”

I love that quote.

In this world, we are a people guilty of looking to anything other than God to trust in.  We look to government, corporations, retirement, family, friends, and even ourselves–all to no avail.  They fail us.  They are broken.

If we want to feel loved, significant, desired, or accepted, we often look to others–broken like ourselves–rather than to God our creator.

 So it’s with this brokenness in mind that I reach out to all who will hear and share my heart on an issue that plagues mankind.  The issue being, concerning all areas of life, the mistake of placing trust in broken solutions rather than God alone.

 We are broken.

 At the creation of human life we were right, just, and whole.

Then, sin entered through one man; therefore, we are all broken as a result.

Before we can see our need of a solution to the problem, we have to first acknowledge the problem.

 Sin has broken us. 

 It broke our communion with a holy God, it broke our right standing before this holy God, and it broke the very world we live in.

 We have been asked to apply verses like, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt. 5:48). Or in 1 John 3:9, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” And Paul in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” 

However, the unexpected occurs.

Then, we rationalize and find our own system to cope with the current issue.  And thus, we have broken people trying to fix a broken world with broken solutions.  Scripture says, “There is no one good, no not one.” Yet, we fight to prove and cope with the opposite.  This is where trust and hope in a God who saves is our only escape from a life spent in endless and pointless effort–like the hamster in a wheel to nowhere.

Often, our method to cope with our brokenness is, “love myself” or “see myself as valuable.” But, in the scriptures, we are hard pressed to find support for self-help methods.  Instead, we see more scriptures like Ezekiel 36:31, “Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations.”  God is telling his people that a proper self-image will cause such loathing that repentance will be the response.  Similar to Isaiah when he saw the Lord, he confessed his inadequacies and repented.  We also find Job saying how he abhors his self, and he repents in the dust and ashes.  This view of man is not uncommon to God but rather to men who learn to see themselves as more than they are–to hopefully cope with a broken and fallen world.

Look with me at Psalm 62.

David expresses trust in the Lord in spite of opposition in this psalm of confidence. He contrasted the security that comes from trusting in God with the insecurity of hoping in human schemes.  In Psalm 62:9, God weighs man and his worth on the scale only to reveal that the scale doesn’t move in favor of man at all and that all his schemes are but a vapor, and as light as one too.  How amazing! On the scales of God, we weigh less than nothing.  The scales never go up, and man is left with his true self-worth without God. What a graphic picture of man’s ultimate nothingness.

However, in this same psalm, we find the clear way to the answer we all seek.  This comes from David’s life amidst opposition.  He is facing much in life as we all are, but he holds strong to the One who solves it all. 

In this psalm we see:

1. David’s example to trust God

          He begins the psalm by sharing, “My soul finds rest in God alone.”

  This is the entire theme of the psalm.

     2.  David’s encouragement to trust God

  David had seen, before, the saving power of God in hard times so he boasts in that to encourage people to trust God, our true refuge.

     3.  David’s exhortation to not trust ourselves

  It is unwise to put one’s ultimate confidence in other people whether they are low or high in position, because all human beings are     comparatively insignificant.  Consequently, the actions and products of human endeavors are poor objects in which to trust.

All in all, I pray we would take heed to David’s psalm and apply it to our lives.  People are constantly deciding whether to trust in what they can see or what they can’t.  In this psalm, David helps us see that God Himself is a much better person to trust than any mortal man. We should trust God who remains faithful forever, because human beings pass away and often disappoint us.  As long as we remain, living and outside of Christ, we are broken people and the results of our brokenness will be evident.  Our only hope is to put all our hope and faith in One who is not broken like we are–Jesus Christ.  Then, and only then, can we truly say, “In God we trust!”