The ability to trust. It sounds simple enough, but there is a lot to it. People can have one of two identities at work inside of them. They can have the identity of a Truster, or they can have the identity of a Fighter. And to make my point poignant before I even make it, I ask you, which of the above two identities is given more respect, praise, and commendation in society? The blatantly obvious answer is the identity of a Fighter. This identity is lauded, applauded, and sought after the world over. It is constantly glorified in movies and television; we are taught from day one that it’s the fighters who win at life.
However, fighting naturally infers that there be someone or something to fight against, otherwise there would be no fight. This is all fine and dandy when faced with a real enemy who is threatening you. However, when it comes to the spirit, most of the time, there really is nothing to fight. You are only bombarded with lies. And lies, being lies, are not true; hence, they ARE NOT REAL. Hence, there is nothing to fight.
And here is where the identity issue becomes important. Because people naturally operate in whatever identity, (or identities), they have inside of them, whether they know it or not. It is something that is done without thinking about it.
So, a person is walking around with either the identity of a fighter or the identity of a truster. Now here comes a lie. How is a person with each respective identity going to respond? A person with a truster identity is going to respond with indifference to the lie. He will simply trust God, what God says about him/her, just trust what he knows to be true, and go on his merry way. However, a person with a fighter identity will, of course, see the lie as something to fight. He will immediately, because of his pride in “fighting for what’s right”, attack the lie head on with every weapon available to him in his arsenal. This is because he, we, have been taught, our entire lives, that fighting is the honorable and best thing to do. We should always fight all evil and bad things wherever we encounter them.
The problem with this is that when you fight a lie, you are fighting with an illusion. You are, literally, fighting with something that does not exist. Because a lie is just that—it is the opposite of the truth, and therefore it has no real substance. There is nothing to a lie. If you try to stand on a lie you will fall, because it does not exist. So, and here is the dangerous part of this: the more you fight with an illusion, the more real it becomes to the one fighting it.
Do you see why this is bad? It’s not very difficult to see. The more a person fights with something that is not real, the more real it becomes to him because he is focused on it. As any fighter will tell you, you must never take your eyes off of your opponent, lest he slip one in on you. Therefore, in an honest and honorable attempt to do the right thing, he actually only digs himself further and further into a hole that is going to be harder and harder to get out of the more he continues to fight. And the sad part is, that he really never needed to fight it at all, because it was never true in the first place.
This is why it is CRITICAL to build inside of your kids the ability to trust. It is absolutely critical. It is not just important, it is absolutely critical.
Jesus was a Truster. Because He knew God perfectly, and knew all the truth that there was to know, he never believed a lie. And therefore he never fought with a lie. And therefore he never wasted any time fighting battles that didn’t need to be fought.
I believe that massive amounts of humans are walking around every day fighting battles that do not need to be fought, because they are only faulty responses to lies. I also believe that a large majority of sin in the world is not a result of people’s bad intentions, but of people’s belief of lies. Specifically, lies about themselves. Which result in mistaken identities, which result in actions based on those untrue identities. Which is why you have a whole bunch of people, good people, doing bad things, all the while knowing that they are bad things!
A friend of mine used to tell me this principle long ago, and I never understood it. He would say to me that a person living apart from God and/or in sin was simply a case of mistaken identity. And he is right! That’s what it really is!
The solution to all of this is trust. And, unfortunately, it is harder for me to write about the trusting aspect than it is for me to write about the fighting aspect. Why? Because I had the fighter identity. That is how I learned all of this. But I know that the solution is trust. Because when you know how to trust, and even more importantly, when trust is your natural reaction, you will never even consider the lie in the first place. Your natural reaction to it will be one of disregard, because you are so grounded in the truth... as Jesus was.
When Jesus was tempted, his reaction was to rely on what God said was true. This account is given in a couple of the gospels. When the enemy lied to him, Jesus’ response was, “No, here is the truth—what God says.” Jesus response was one of trust.
See, real victory is not beating an opponent. Real victory is never being affected by your opponent in the first place. When you let yourself be affected by your opponent, then you will have to fight him. If you just ignore him, then there will be no fight.
This is important because when you are fighting, it is taking your time and your energy to do so—time and energy that SHOULD be employed in doing the productive things that you are created and called to do. Fighting is simply a diversion from productivity.
The important point in all of this, that goes with everything else I have said in this book, is this—teach your kids how to trust. Instill and literally build this trait inside of them their entire lives. Build it inside of them intentionally, the entire time that they are in your care, so that it becomes their natural way of operating. Do this for them so that they trust naturally, so that they don’t have to ever even think about it—they just do it, naturally—and this will save them WORLDS of heartache when they are grown adults.
And, on a related note, this is why we are admonished over and over again in the Bible to not judge people. Because we really have no idea how a person came to be involved in whatever "sin" they are involved in. I love it in Romans 1 where Paul states that, "we know that the judgment of God for those practicing such things is according to the truth" whereas our judgment is not according to the truth, because we cannot see or know all of these things that go on inside of human beings like God can, and does!
