To build trust with the loved one?

"Trust not only needs to be build, but it needs to be protected" [Paul David Tripp, "What did you Expect?"]

            I think we are living in a world where we cannot trust anybody.  There are many people who believe in other people and are disappointed and are hurt.  So many people don’t want to believe anyone anymore.  Even married couples do not entirely trust each other.  Rather, many couples seem to suspect each other.  There seem to be a lot of couple who doubt whether their husbands or their wives are having an affair with other women or other men.  Especially, it is a great risk to trust in their spouses who already once broke the trust of the couple by having an affair.  Like this, we are living in the world that we cannot trust even our loved ones.  What should we Christians do in this world of distrust?  We must build trust with our loved ones.  In particular, we must build up trust with our spouses whom God has paired.  In order to do that, what should we do?  Let us consider four things:

                First, we must trust God in order to build trust with our loved one.

                The ultimate reason why beloved people don’t trust each other is because they don’t trust God.  For example, the couple who cannot trust God cannot trust each other.  The reason is because trust can only be made in the relationship with the horizontal loving spouse when there is trust in the vertical relationship with God.  Therefore, the first thing we need to do to build trust with our loved one is to trust in God.  This is what the Bible Proverbs 3:5 says: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”  As the Bible says, we must trust in God with all our heart.  But there is an element that prevents us from trusting in God with all our heart.  That element is to rely on our understanding.  This is our instinct.  Our instinct isn’t to trust God with all our heart, but to rely on our own understanding.  It is very unstable for us to trust our loved one while relying on our own understanding.  The reason is because the source of trust is not God, but ourselves.  If we are trusting in ourselves rather than God, not only we don’t but also we cannot trust others but ourselves.  Since we trust in only ourselves, we cannot trust our loved one.  Even we trust our loved one, that trust is very unstable.  We don’t know when and how that trust will break.  So Jesus didn’t entrust Himself to people because He knew all men and what was in man (Jn. 2:24-25).  Therefore, in order to build trust with our loved one, we must trust God before we can trust our loved one.  Only by trusting God we can trust our spouse whom we love.

                Second, we must give our trust to our beloved one in order to build trust with our loved one.

                We must trust each other by trusting God.  The more we trust God, the more we can trust each other.  As we trust each other, we must first give our trust to our loved one instead him/her to give us the same trust.  We should give our trust to our loved one not only when we see something that we can trust in him or her but even when we don’t see anything that we can trust in him or her.  In other words, giving trust to our loved one shouldn’t be conditional but unconditional.  Just as God's love is unconditional, we must love our loved one unconditionally.  And if we love our loved one unconditionally, we should trust our loved one unconditionally.  Even if our loved one breaks the trust with us and betrays us in the future, we must trust our loved one by trusting in God.  Then what should we do if our loved one actually breaks our trust and betrays us?  I am sure we can throw this question to ourselves.  And I think the reason we ask this question is because we may not trust God completely, but rather trust our own understanding.  So if we trust ourselves more than God, we cannot help but wonder in distrust, 'What if we trust our loved one and get betrayed?'  So when we rely on our understanding, we cannot trust our loved one completely.  Therefore, we must give our trust to our beloved spouse by trusting in God.  But many times since we trust ourselves rather than God, we expect our spouse to trust us instead of giving our trust to our spouse.  And when we don’t get that trust from our spouse, we feel bad and even get angry.  This is a person-centered marital relationship.  If we have the person-centered marital relationship, we will expect to receive rather than give (we will be selfish).  But if our marital relationship is God-centered, then we will love to give to our spouse rather than expecting to receive (we will be selfless).  The couple who has such God-centered marital relationship first gives unconditional love and trust to their spouse.  And even if we are betrayed by our beloved spouse, God-centered couple overcomes their own fight against their own sinful nature by looking at Jesus, who has been betrayed by His own people.  And in the meantime, the God-centered couple forgives their spouse who betrayed them with the love of God.  Although this is impossible when we think and rely on our own understanding, but it is possible if we trust God.  God can make it possible.  By trusting in God, we must give our loved ones trust.

Third, we must be true even before our loved one as we are true before God in order to trust the loved one.

We must be truthful Christians.  And we should be honest.  We must not lie to each other.  We should not deceive each other.  We must not only be truthful before God but also before each other.  To what extent we must be truthful before each other?  We must be truthful enough to say to each other, 'God is my witness' (Phil. 1:8).  God is watching us all.  Also, God knows all our thoughts.  Therefore, as we are truthful to God, we must be truthful even before our loved one.  In order to do that, we must have a straightforward, clear and transparent conversation with our loved one.  And when we have conversation, we should have ‘other person-centered’ conversation instead of ‘me-centered’ conversation.  That means we need to talk to our loved one because we want to do something for him/her rather than we want him/her to do something for us.  That is, we must talk in order to build our loved one up.  But the conversation that breaks down our loved one is to manipulate him/her and say something to him/her in order to get something from him/her.  We must refrain from saying those kinds of words.  Also, we should not speak to deceive our loved one.  Just as we don’t speak deceitfully to God and manipulate Him in order to be truthful before Him, we must do the same to our loved one.  Just as we pray to God in a straightforward, clear, and transparent prayer, we must also have open, clear and transparent conversation with our loved one.  We must speak the truth from our hearts (Ps. 15:2).  Truthful lips endure forever (Prov. 12:19).  Just as God is faithful in all He does (Ps. 33:4), we must also be faithful in all we do.  We must devote ourselves in keeping our promise faithfully to our loved one.  Whether that promise is large or small, we must keep the promise that we made to our loved one faithfully.  In doing so, we can build trust in relationships with our loved one.  We must love each other with actions and in truth (1 Jn. 3:18).  We must be truthful and faithful to each other so that we may trust each other (Prov. 25:19).

                Fourth, we must acknowledge our wrongs and seek forgiveness when we wrong to our loved one in order to trust the loved one.  And we have to devote ourselves to change.

                We can do wrongs to our loved one.  We may not trust our loved one completely and doubt about him/her if we don’t trust God completely and rely on our own understanding.  And when our doubt toward our loved one increase and has developed, we may distrust our loved one.  These distrusts create dissatisfaction in our hearts and eventually make us to complain to our loved one with our lips and to disobey him/her.  Even this dissatisfaction in our hearts makes us not be honest with our loved one and to lie to him/her.  And while we lie to our loved one, we make excuses and justify our lies to our loved one (ex.  It was good lie.  I lie because it was for your sake, etc.).  But a lie is a lie.   Lying is worthless (Jer. 7:8).  We shouldn’t deceive or lie to each other (Lev. 19:11; Col. 3:9).  But if we deceive or lie to our loved one, we must ask him/her for forgiveness.  We must confess to him/her honestly and sincerely our wrongful sin.  And we must not only commit ourselves to him/her that we will never commit the same wrongful sin again, but also show our commitment to him/her with our words and actions.  Not only that, we must forgive our loved one when s/he asks us to forgive her/his sins.  And when we forgive our loved one, we shouldn’t keep any record of his /her wrongs (1 Cor. 13:5).  As God blot out our transgressions according to His unfailing love and His great compassion (Ps. 51:1), we must erase all the wrongs our loved one did to us in our hearts.  And we must devote ourselves to love our loved one with God’s unchanging love.  We must also rededicate ourselves to trust him/her.  We should make the relationship with our loved an opportunity for change in the Lord.  Therefore, we must grow with our loved one in the Lord.  We must be built as mature couples.