Building Trust In Marriage.

Jeremiah 17: 5-10

This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no-one lives.

“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

“The Lord searches the heart and examines the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” 

One of the major bottlenecks faced by married couples is the issue of trust. There are quite a number of areas in a marriage where trust has been regarded to play a major role. We have the issue of trust in the financial life of married couples, trust in the sexual life of married couples, trust in the work life of married couples and trust in the way couples handle external relationships. So there are many parts of the marriage life that the issue of trust features prominently. 

Lack of trust in any of these areas of marital life that is mentioned and even those not mentioned have contributed greatly to the high divorce rate the world over. Without being told it is expected that a man is faithful on all grounds to the woman he has married and a woman is faithful to the man she is married to. It’s the requirement and it’s what God demands of a spouse to his/her partner. But nonetheless faithfulness which in turns earns trust is an attribute that we fail in every now and then. Some spouses are able to conceal their unfaithfulness from their partners more than others, but with time we all get to know that there is nothing hidden under the sun. 

The knowledge of this unfaithfulness leads to a lot of disasters in marriage, some even kill for it. The sense of betrayal that follows can be overwhelming and it takes great effort to build the lost trust again if ever that is possible.

But the mistake we make as humans whether married or not, whether in a relationship or not is that we tend to invest our trust in the man whom we cannot ascertain the state of their heart. What we are exposed to in the other person we see and love is the aspect of him/her that he/she reveals to us. We are able to judge based on what we see and not actually what is concealed in the heart. The Lord said “Cursed is the man who trusts in man.” I am positive this is a big pill to swallow, but to invest our total trust in a man is to take a big risk, a very big risk I must say. This is so because this man that we have so trusted is liable to fall at any time. He is prone to temptations and can make mistakes at any time and can fall at any time no matter his level of righteousness. This is so because he is just a man. 

This man will not fall into temptation because he wants to, he will not fall because he wants to hurt you, the fall might not be an intentional one, but still he might fall, and his falling will hurt you, break your heart, and injure your trust or might even destroy the trust completely. This can happen not just in marriage issues, but in any and every form of relationship. It could be between loved siblings or between the children and their parents or even between close friends. But the truth is that the trust of a man by a man is a big risk that we take. 

Now, paying more attention to the man and wife in marriage, the question that follows this discovery is that how is it possible for the man and wife to live in love and harmony without trusting each other? When we are able to answer this question well enough then we understand how to handle the matter of trust in marriages and even in every aspect of our lives where trust is required. 

Again I will use a true life story and the experience of a wife regarding the issue of trust to give an illustration to how God wants us to deal with trust in our lives. There is a lady with so many issues in her marriage and one of the issues that affected her marriage so deeply was infidelity. And this went on over some time. It was an issue that cut through her heart and each time her husband promised to make adjustment she discovered it was just a little better of cover up. As would be expected this really got her weighed down as it went on for a number of years. Naturally it affected her ability to trust her husband and it affected their marriage deeply. 

Gradually the husband began to make changes and paid more attention to her and their children but that still didn’t make him earn her trust him because he had made several promises and failed to keep them. But then she began to pray, she asked God to come into the situation and help her.  I didn’t want my marriage to break, but she could not trust my husband anymore. She cried to God and prayed on that issue over a period of time. Then in the middle of her prayer with tears and swollen eyes she heard the Lord speak to her heart that He will visit her marriage once again and put a stop to infidelity in her home. The Lord asked her to trust Him on that. She was then reminded of Sarah and Abimelech. So she decided to trust God on that. 

Infidelity in her home has found its permanent exit. She didn’t have to trust her husband not to cheat on her again, even though he appeared a totally changed man that she can see and is evident in his attitude in their home, but she trusts God to prevent infidelity from happening again in my home. She is very comfortable to commit herself to her husband and marriage not because she has his words of never cheating on her again, but because she has a word from God not to make that happen in my home again. Her husband can always break his words, but her God will never break His promise. 

This is not applicable to just married couples, but also in all other forms of relationships we might find ourselves. It’s easier to trust, when you are not trusting man but God. Whatever changes you want to occur in your spouse, pray and trust God to effect those changes in him/her rather than to believe that he/she will be all that you expect them to be by themselves. It’s even more reliable to trust God than man. When all your trust is invested in God then your life will flourish and your mind will be at peace because God will never break His promise or betray your trust in Him. He remains ever faithful. 

My book Marriage God's Rules of Engagement is available on amazon.com in print and kindle, to get a copy please click and of the following links. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Marriage%3AGod's%20Rules%20Of%20Engagement, or https://www.createspace.com/4309313