The Trust Thing

For God’s people, relationships have long been pivotal, despite fissures, divides and justified barriers. In most instances, it is a reflection of blending into the surrounding cultures. Yet the toxicity of the spiritual atmosphere and the pressures and uncertainties of the season give pause in reaching for something more. It bears on the focus given to community maturity as we navigate the challenges and face the strongholds.

John, who really grasped what Jesus was imparting, explained the prime focus as love. While this message does not depart from that focus, the love-focus suggests subtle underpinnings that meld into the God-force that triggers change. At the core of those underpinnings is trust.

On one level, trust is one of those “beyond-self” dynamics that manifests with His presence. Both prayer and worship is our response to His presence. At its root, it simultaneously connects believers to God while establishing the basis for relating to one another. Solomon captured its essence with: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Prov 3:5, 6

The profoundness of this wisdom taps relationships at both the individual level as well as within the community of faith. It is the basis of the prime target emerging in the cross-hairs in the confrontations with evil in Iran: the unity spoken of by Paul in Ephesians 4.

Trust is what encompasses and connects all the God-elements relationally. It’s a trigger. Unity is the framework enabling trust.

Trusting in the Lord has to be a comprehensive response, with ALL your heart. It doesn’t work on a partial or “sometime” or a “blended” basis. It involves complete surrender that begins to unveil direction despite not having all the elements in understanding it. It’s like being a Marine. Either you’re ALL-IN or you find you’re not cutting it.

In acknowledging God’s authority and control, it triggers what is needed to empower the way forward. It embraces that insight so foundational to a faith-walk that Paul explained to the Romans: it reprocesses reality to the extent that our natural perceptions penetrate the spiritual realm as: “we view and call that which is not as though it were.”

Yet, on the community level, it is the catalyst that releases even more. We gain a glimmer of the extent of this community-factor of trust from a renowned social economist Francis Fukuyama. Despite his focus not including faith communities, his findings uncover the insight that higher-level trust societies are more inclined to be prosperous. It’s the gleaning from the life of Abraham: the principle that blessing others attracts blessing back our way.

It borders NOT on the clamor so evidenced through social media, but on the reality posed to God’s people in Deuteronomy 30: “SEE, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing ….therefore choose Life.”

The Impact of Trust Societies
Trust is a Reality that gives birth to Life and blessing. It was this reality that a generation faced in Vietnam after the 1975 regime change, when the bottom dropped out of freedom for those in the South.

It was the brutal cost paid by spiritual leaders embracing the Power, who birthed and led prayer movements, trans-generational prayer movements that triggered significant spiritual change across the entirety of Vietnam at the highest levels.

It represents the model needed for God’s movement of restoration needed to follow the dust-settling from what many have discerned to be a parallel to the demise of the biblical anti-Semite Haman in modern-day Iran. And the response-parallel doesn’t stop with Haman, but as the trust and unity gain traction, it will result in casualties among the misguided Shebnas (Isa 22) of this day.

Dr. Fukuyama’s insights into trust societies are pertinent for the believing community. In his examination of economies and cultures in “Trust: Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity,” he contends that social capital may be as important as physical capital.

It’s what Solomon imparted centuries ago. The common ground paved with the social capital of trust. Only societies with a high degree of social trust will create the foundations needed for the enduring cultural prosperity of today’s global economy. The keyword being enduring.

Social Capital and Darkness
Missing in Dr. Fukuyama’s analysis is the amazing track record reflected by the Startup Nation, Israel; a success not unrelated to its Jewish cultural roots, historically known by the moniker of being “the people of business.”

It reflects foundations of Jewish culture with trust, creativity and innovation consistently at its core. A people, who when their trust in God and with one another adhered to the standard, have prospered far beyond the levels seen in other nations and cultures.

Sadly, but uniquely, despite the propensity of being blessed to be a blessing in their influence on surrounding cultures, it is this success that is the very dynamic that tends to draw the most severe manifestations of persecution and anti-Semitism. Yet, these subtle realities involve distracting trivia that cloud the narratives comprising intercultural perceptions and dynamics ….not unlike the blinding seduction that took place at the fall.

In concert with that blindness and enticements to distorted narratives is even more subtle minimizations of clarity, not only spiritually in communities of faith but in high-level business planning. It is the fine-line that exists between the emphasis given to goals versus that given to the strategies to accomplish those goals.

Its impact has extended not only from short-term planning to long-term responses ….to such vital matters as reducing the power of God to doctrinal precepts and Movements of God to institutions. Such reductions of pivotal spiritual power bleeds down into the thinking and planning that produces comparatively anemic results from the reality of the power from on high.

Undermining the Potential
For example, the Westernized church that has long been institutionalized embraces this thinking and practices of reaching people for God through evangelistic meetings. Who would quibble with that focus?

Indeed, it is the very thing when God’s people who know better have fallen into rebellious, moral decay. Yet, when that moral decay is the product of the influence of non-believers, it factors differently in the equation of restoration. Likewise, when there is but a remnant who are fully-committed, as the tz’dakim, the righteous, it bears on the balance of power.

Both Isaiah and Jeremiah foresaw a time when darkness and oppression would encroach ….and cultures and nations whose spiritual foundations were wobbly at best, would cry out:
O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.  Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!” “Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the LORD.” Jer 16:19-21

The result is the dynamic of revival of the persecuted, when liturgy fails and the prayer-veil into the Power is penetrated. The history of persecution-related turnings-to-God suggests a subtle difference in moral decay response-revival: as the roots of what is birthed becomes a movement, one that changes the course of the culture or nation in its path.

Historically, with the overwhelming darkness that engulfed Vietnam following 1975, people began coming together, crying out to God in desperation-prayer. In response, entire villages began encountering the reality of Jesus and the power of God ….and the conscious joy of His presence. It was contagious and drew others, not unlike what was described in Acts 4.

Thinking Like God
Years ago, a man I knew and respected as a significant spiritual influence in our generation, Peter Wagner, made a statement that astounded me. That statement in essence was that the chief factor defining the Jewish people was that they tended to “think like God.”

For generation after generation Jewish culture, for Jews practicing and those not practicing their faith, a foundation of values and societal practices given by Moses have shaped their culture. For the most part, Christian culture that ignores its Jewish roots has tended to last to the third generation, if it makes it to the second.

The trust thing and the related unity is a key chink in the Gentile armor, so prevelant in Jews, where largely it has became the natural order of things, in practices, morality and thinking, rather than it being a goal to be achieved or simply a doctrine embraced.

Not to be confused with conformity, but rather a response to the reality of His presence, those in desperation following 1975 in Vietnam, a gateway into this unseen dimension was opened …..and it spread like wildfire. The overflow began penetrating significant cultural strongholds across the North, as well as within the South, AND the thinking, practices and priorities began aligning in such a way as to be described as “thinking like God.”

Whereas disproportionate business success tends to be the greatest trigger of Jewish hatred for the anti-Semites, for Gentile believers, it is instead Paul’s description of the demonstration of the Spirit in power. It being the very complement, rather than replacement to the vital Jewish foundations.

One of the most graphic examples of this dynamic is that the penalty for proselytizing for early Vietnamese evangelicals was two days in jail. However, for the Pentecostals, those wielding miracles, it was two years. Even the agents of darkness recognized the difference ….the difference that would manifest when the faith of trusting in the Lord was demonstrated with a whole heart.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Prov 3:5, 6

The Seedbed of Trust
A South Vietnamese pastor I’ve worked with once commented, in referring to the impact of the Post-1975 persecution, that “everyone has a story.”

One of my closest Vietnamese associates moved over 40 times in just two years to stay ahead of authorities seeking to jail him. He held miracle meetings in open fields at midnight with 500 to 1000 who came to be touched by the healing power of God. Another of those I’ve collaborated with spent two years and seven months in a hard-labor prison, finally being put in a sweltering connex box by authorities’ attempting to break his faith. Knowing he would die, he resisted their offer of freedom in exchange for renouncing his faith ….yet miraculously was released before that happened.

John the Revelator heralded this trustworthiness describing those who during severe persecution overcame the assaults of Satan against believers as being by “the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, loving their lives not unto death.”

Faith and trust are not the same. Trust is the consequence of abiding in faith. Trustworthiness is the reliability in believing, regardless of the circumstances in the seen realm.

Betrayal is the opposite of trustworthiness. It is not unrelated to the initial murmuring at the Red Sea crossing, Korah’s rebellion, the clamor that amassed when the Israelites faced the uncertainty from the time Moses was spending on the mountain.

When the sound of heaven is overshadowed by loose, misguided tongues of God’s people, giving voice to the suggestions of the spirit of the Garden-serpent concerning matters of God’s power, then Order is replaced by chaos ….and God’s people are encountering the pain and facing the fight for restoration.

Jesus taught His followers to pray for those who persecuted them, yet if possible, to flee it. His admonishment was to beware of those, sometimes from among our closest family and friends, who would yield to loose, misguided tongues and become betrayers.

Praying for our persecutors diffuses their intent. Yet, as we maintain our trust in God, when betrayal comes, according to Jesus, it can yield opportunity …. at times in the wisdom of our response; in other times in triggering the power of God.

Confronting the Stronghold
Probably one of the more subtle deceptions among Western believers in terms of what John got right is in approaching the “love” message as a feeling, an emotion. It may develop in that way, but love is an action. Love is something you do.

From days of old, one of the more serious challenges individually and within the community has been in the unbridled tongue. The simple murmuring that began at the Red Sea crossing as the Israelites spied Pharaoh and his hordes closing the gap to their location. Yet, in preparation for the astounding event about to take place, the word of the Lord was simply “you have only to keep silent.” So it is today, amidst the clamor, are ones whose greatest challenge is simply in maintaining their silence.

After the completion of the generational judgment that resulted from the murmuring prompted by the spies’ bad report, when Moses turned the mantle over to Joshua, the fear of God gripped the community in unity as they crossed the Jordan.

It set the stage for the amazing battle when Joshua commanded the sun and the moon to stand still in the sky. And so, in grasping the intent of God’s heart for restoration that took place at this incredible event; perhaps also recognizing the beyond-the-ordinary changes that ensued from darkness after 1975 in Vietnam at the hands of simple people-of-faith; today, we face the opportunity to put our trust in God and those at the forefront of this battle ….and for some, with a single mandate of simply “staying silent.”

Trust is the risk we take in extending or “doing” love. It starts with the simple things. Praying for someone. Being an encourager. Bearing one another’s burdens. Sharing a meal. Giving a gift. Extending a helping hand or opportunity.

In a toxic world that seems to overflow with lies, betrayals, distortions, deceptions and subtle beguilements, trust is the interceptor, the building stone, the healing salve needed in both the receiving and the giving.

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Morris Ruddick has been a forerunner of the Joseph-calling and God’s economy message, being an international voice for the higher dimensions of spiritual game-changers and intercessors since the mid-90s. As founder of Global Initiatives Foundation, the Strategic Intercession Global Network [SIGN] and designer of the God’s Economy Entrepreneurial Equippers Program and the Jewish Business Secrets YouTube series, Mr. Ruddick’s messages equip leaders and economic community builders with strategy where God’s light is dim in diverse regions around the globe.

He is author of “The Joseph-Daniel Calling;” “Gods Economy, Israel and the Nations;” “The Heart of a King;” “Something More;” “Righteous Power in a Corrupt World;” “Leadership by Anointing;” and “Mantle of Fire,” which address the mobilization of business and governmental leaders with destinies to impact their communities. They are available in print and e-versions from www.Amazon.com, www.apple.com/ibooks and www.BarnesandNoble.com.

Global Initiatives Foundation (www.strategic-initiatives.org) is a tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 non-profit whose efforts mobilize economic community builders imparting influence and the blessings of God. Checks on US banks should be made out to Global Initiatives and mailed to 3838 South Wabash Street, Denver CO 80237 or by credit card at https://strategic-initiatives.org/donate/