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Ruthless Trust: the Ragamuffin’s Path to God (excerpts from chapter 1, "The Way of Trust") by Brennan Manning
“Brennan, you don’t need any more insights into the faith,” [my spiritual director] observed. “You’ve got enough insights to last you three hundred years. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.”
That sounded simple enough. But his remark sparked a searing reexamination of my life, my ministry, and the authenticity of my relationship with God… The challenge to actually trust God forced me to deconstruct what I had spent my life constructing, to stop clutching what I was so afraid of losing. . . .and fearlessly to ask myself if I trusted Him.
Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus’ cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployment, loneliness, depression, the loss of a loved one; when we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain; when the world around us suddenly seems a hostile, menacing place—at those times we may cry out in anguish, “How could a loving God permit this to happen?” At such moments the seeds of distrust are sown. It requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.
When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months. . . .in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Theresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
“What do you want me to pray for?” she asked.
“Pray that I have clarity.”
She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”
“We ourselves have known and put our trust in God’s love toward ourselves” (1 John 4:16). Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.
We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
The decisive (or what I call the second) conversion from mistrust to trust—a conversion that must be renewed daily—is the moment of sovereign deliverance from the warehouse of worry.
The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. Through the indescribable anguish on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, Abraham learned that the God who had called him to hope against hope was eminently reliable and that the only thing expected of him was unconditional trust.
The story of salvation-history indicates that without exception trust must be purified in the crucible of trial. David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history, was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure, and even sinister plots to destroy him; yet he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust.
“When I am most afraid, I put my trust in you; in God whose word I praise, in God I put my trust, fearing nothing; what can men do to me?” (Ps. 56:3-4).
“My trust in God never wavers” (Ps. 26:1).
“He rescued me, since he loves me” (Ps. 18:19).
“But I for my part rely on your love, O Lord” (Ps. 13:5).
“Put your trust in Yahweh, be strong, let your heart be bold, put your trust in Yahweh” (Ps. 27:14).
“Happy the man who puts his trust in Yahweh” (Ps. 40:4).
“I mean to thank you constantly for doing what you did, and put my trust in your name, that is so full of kindness, in the presence of those who love you” (Ps. 52:9).
Behold the splendor of a human heart which trusts that it is loved!
Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, “Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord. Amen.”
