5 Reasons We Struggle to Trust God

Should we say that even louder?

God is trustworthy!

This manuscript could easily be titled # Reasons I Struggle to Trust God, but experience shows I’m no outlier in this struggle. Scripture confirms this as well.

“No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

When the temptation of doubt comes about, my first thought is not usually that God is faithful. Rather, God is letting something happen to me that I don’t like. Given enough time, that thought will turn into God keeps letting something happen that I don’t like. And from there I doubt whether God is actually on my side. Can you relate?

Even if our struggles look different on the surface, deep down, the causes are the same. We struggle to trust God for the same reasons. Thankfully, we rely on the same solutions to get back on track.

God is trustworthy! That’s a truth we need to ingrain in ourselves, but if you’re like me, trusting doesn’t come easily. So why do we struggle to trust God? There are many reasons, but we’ll look into 5 and figure out how to counteract our doubtful ways.

Here are five reasons we struggle to trust God.

1. We Forget God’s Goodness

When calamity strikes in the world like a mass shooting, or within our lives like a terminal illness, we often see little reason to think God is good. If He was, why in the world would all these bad things happen?

The truth is that God is good, no matter what we think we see with our two eyes. But how do we know?

First, Scripture reminds us of God’s goodness, not just through miraculous stories of Christ healing, but at times directly in certain verses.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8)

Secondly, we doubt because of our own limited human perspective. While we focus on our own sickness, God has just healed someone else. That may not sound like good news for us initially but the point is that while bad things are happening good things are happening as well.

Moreover, even when bad things have happened in our lives, good things have too. Or have we forgotten?

That brings us to the solution.

When we forget God’s goodness, we need to remind ourselves of God’s goodness. Keep a gratitude journal, read Scripture, go to church, and ask people about the blessings in their lives. Make the effort to remember and we won’t forget!

2. We Focus on the Circumstances

An imperfect world filled with sin and free will is bound to carry tragedies, and yet with the right perspective, we’ll see that there is often so much more good than bad. But what happens when we don’t see that? What happens when we lack the right perspective?

Suddenly, God doesn’t seem trustworthy. He seems passive in a world rife with sorrow.

Maybe there’s a reason the news is always highlighting the worst of society. Would we tune in if all they showed were good things? Maybe there’s a spiritual cause for our doubt and anxiety. Would we feel those emotions if we trusted God?

We focus so much on our circumstances that the thought of God, let alone trusting Him, becomes an afterthought.

Therein lies the solution! Instead of focusing on what we want or what’s going wrong, we find truth when we focus on God. What does Scripture say about the Lord? Who is he? How good is He? What does He promise for those who love Him?

Meditate on these truths and focus on them.

3. We Lack Accountability

The thought of one person sharpening another can sound very friendly and helpful (Proverbs 27:17). Though sometimes we need more than a gentle nudge. Sometimes we need a slap to the face or a splash of water, figuratively speaking of course. Without close relationships in our lives to point us back to God, we can easily go off course. We may fall into worldly trends or just bad habits.

“For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:10)

The solution to lacking accountability is to find accountability. Godly people having an influence on our lives will make the difference in those seasons when trusting God seems impossible.

4.We Are Ungrateful

There’s no way to trust God without being grateful for what He does. Just consider the people in our lives. Those we are grateful to have around are the same ones we most trust.

In line with remembering God’s goodness, we fight a spirit of doubt by finding a reason for gratitude. More than keeping a journal, or thanking God before meals, this virtue is like a muscle we have to exercise.

We must practice gratitude, over and over again. Eventually, we’ll learn to trust God because we’ll realize He blesses us day by day in so many ways that we take for granted. Do you have feet that walk, a mouth that talks, a brain that thinks? Can you go to the bathroom on your own, or carry on a conversation? Do you have a roof over your head? You get the picture.

5. We Lack Faith

What is faith? “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Ultimately, a lack of trust boils down to us lacking faith in God. We can’t find comfort in someone that we doubt. This doesn’t make us less Christian, but instead, makes us very human. We have a natural tendency to believe in what we see and only what we see.

Faith says otherwise. With faith, we don’t rely solely on what we see. We believe even in what we don’t. Of course, acknowledging that we lack faith doesn’t immediately fix the problem, but that does point us to the solution.

When we lack faith, the solution is to find a reason for having faith. We do that through prayer, and by using the same solutions present on this list. When we take time to remember God’s character, His blessings, and His love, we ultimately rediscover why we have faith in the first place.

God is trustworthy!

No, our lives will not always look pretty. No, our world will not always look pretty, God makes use of every good and bad thing for those who love Him (Romans 8:28), Let that be the reason to trust Him today.

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/AndreyPopov

Aaron D'Anthony Brown is a freelance writer, hip-hop dance teacher, and visual artist, living in Virginia. He currently contributes to Salem Web Network’s Crosswalk platform and supports various clients through the freelancing website Upwork. He's an outside-the-box thinker with a penchant for challenging the status quo. 

Get in touch with him at aarondanthony.com and check out his debut short story anthology Honey Dreams on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.