How to Trust God When You Don't Know If You Can

Dr. Ingrid Faro shares how even in the darkest hour, it is possible to find faith again.

(Today, I welcome my dear friend Dr. Ingrid Faro [that’s her above!] to the blog! Ingrid’s story is so powerful and represents what it truly looks like to work to find your faith again when you have been hurt. Ingrid is a gifted teacher and writer and I have been encouraged by her time and again. I wish she had not had to go through what she has experienced, but I am thankful she is willing to share it to encourage others. That’s so like God — he wants to use our pain and hurt so that others can be healed, too. Oh, you can study with Ingrid at Northern Seminary as well.)

One of the first Bible verses I memorized as a teenager was Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.

But my path was anything but straight. My world kept falling apart. I was trying to do everything right as a Christian. Yet, life was confusing, chaotic, painful, and traumatic.

After years of trying to do the right thing, I unraveled.

Trying to be a “good Christian,” I married a man who was studying to be a pastor. My church at the time told me that the only way a woman could be in ministry was to be married to a man in ministry. (Thankfully, I learned better later!)

He had a third of the New Testament memorized and we even started studying Greek and Hebrew in seminary together. He got angry when I did better on the tests than he did.

Far tougher, though, was the fact that he was unfaithful and increasingly violent toward me. He had all his excuses: his mom had a hereditary degenerative disease, he wasn’t seeing the success he wanted, we had financial pressures even though we were both working.

There wasn’t always a reason or an excuse for his violence or other behaviors that escalated. He started drinking and going to bars and strip clubs at night. Eventually, he quit working altogether while investing in sketchy schemes.

I thought I was doing the right thing by continuing to try to comfort him and keep quiet about his hidden life. I was wrong, but I didn’t know it yet.

When I finally called our pastor after my husband broke my nose, my pastor’s response was, “Go home and love your husband!”

At that point, I felt completely alone. My sister suspected something was very wrong, but I isolated myself from church, family, and friends. Instead, I tried to bury my pain by working harder so I wouldn’t have to hear my thoughts. Surely there was something I could do to rescue my husband and our marriage, I thought. If I just did this or tried that, or said or didn’t say this…

I was wrong.

I thought God abandoned me too. The only reason I still believed in God was that I knew I had encountered God when I was younger. There was a time when I had felt God’s love, and I couldn’t deny that. But now, I didn’t know if this God was good. I didn’t know if this God loved me. So I kept working, paying the bills, and putting up with abuses.

Most of those years are a blur of pain and survival. I was disappointed to be alive.

Not until my husband tried to kill me did I get out.

God intervened, saying to me, “If you stay, you will die. But you will not die, but live, and tell of the works of the LORD! In my distant memory, I knew that the last part of what my heart heard was from Psalm 118:17, a passage that had meaning to me from a near-death experience as a teenager.

It took me six months to plan my escape, because my husband followed me everywhere, including to my work. Eventually, however, I found a way to leave and hide from him. That’s when I began the long journey of finding out how to trust God when bad things happen.

But the journey was long. Life didn’t suddenly get easier. Although I was physically safe, I had no idea how much I needed to heal, learn, change, and redefine what it means to live.

The Process of Healing

There were three main parts in the process of healing.

Step 1: Self-Discovery

The first part was self-discovery. I sought counseling and allowed myself to ask questions that I didn’t think I was allowed to ask. I began to let myself feel what I was feeling and to hear the thoughts in my head. 

I began to recognize harmful ideas and thoughts and the need to unlearn them, and I discovered that my emotions were neither good nor bad — what mattered was what I did with them. Anger or anguish were red flags that let me know something needed to change.

And by being willing to change, I began to take constructive steps to address the wrongs, injustices, and harm that was done.

One big “Ah-ha” moment happened when I let myself feel my pain. I realized that if I could feel that much pain, then it was possible that I could one day feel that much joy!

My emotions could become my friends who walk alongside me, helping point me toward healthier directions.

It dawned on me that God gave me both emotions and a mind for good purposes: to think and to feel so that my thoughts and feelings could collaborate for my well-being.

Step 2: Stop Isolating

The second part of trusting God was to stop isolating. Before, I would sing a song I composed with choruses about being alone; now, I began to (carefully) let people into my life. I learned that we can only truly know ourselves as we see ourselves reflected through others.

I began with a counselor. Eventually, I found a few friends that I grew to trust, and they trusted me. I learned that relationships involve both giving and taking. One of my newly trusted friends asked me if I was a giver or a taker and I said, “I’m a giver!” She replied, “Then all you get are takers! You need to be both a giver and a taker.”

We need to give and receive or we won’t have healthy relationships.

Step 3: Give God Another Chance

For the third part, I decided to give God another chance. Although I didn’t trust God at this point, I thought, maybe God was the good and loving One I met early on in my life. What if all the horrible things I went through weren’t done by God, but by other forces at work? Rebuilding trust began with asking questions, being honest with myself and with God, and giving God the space to show up.

All good relationships are based on trust. Trust develops over time through consistently demonstrating that each person wants the best for the other. Trust is built upon shared honesty with integrity. The key building blocks of a relationship are presence, communication, honesty, consistency, and trust happening over and over again.

I remember being honest with God for the first time about how I felt and what I thought. I locked myself in my bathroom even though no one was home and I raised my fist in the air and started yelling at God!

When I was done, I said, “You know what I’m thinking anyway, so, there! Now I’ve said it!” 

I didn’t realize in the moment that I had said my first prayer of lament.

And then I went to sleep.

Wrestling with God

Early the next morning, I heard a still voice gently speak to my heart, “Daughter, what does my Word have to say about what you said?” That began a conversation that has not stopped.

Since then, I learned that about 67 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible are individual or corporate songs of lament — the largest category of Psalms! I also learned that the people of Israel got their name “Israel” when Jacob was on the run and afraid for his life. Jacob had been running from God his whole life, and finally, he was at a crossroads.

God invited Jacob to wrestle with him, and Jacob took God up on it. Jacob didn’t give up, and God gave him a new name — “Israel,” the one who contends with God (Genesis 32:28-30).

God invites us to challenge him and to wrestle with him about our fears, our anger, and our doubts. This is an invitation into honest relationship, to face life’s obstacles and hardships with God. Not to go it alone. God seeks to meet us where we are in our toughest times.

Later, as I was wrestling with some new challenges, the fourth verse of Psalm 23 popped into my head:

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because You are with me.”

As I thought about it, that still, gentle voice spoke to my heart again: “Don’t lay down in the valley of shadows, don’t set up camp there. I’m with you to walk with you through this.”

In our darkest times and most difficult struggles, God tells us to fear nothing bad, because he is with us to help us get through it.

It’s so easy to get stuck in the darkness, the fear, the trauma, and the hurt. God reaches out his hand and invites us to take his hand, to get up, and to walk with him through to the other side.

And…Talking With God

God helps us and speaks to us in many ways. He is always personal. God provides many ways and opportunities to get to know him better and regain our life.

One of these ways is through prayer. Prayer is talking to God. In our conversations with God, sometimes we talk and he listens, and then we listen as he talks to us. God talks to us most often through his Spirit and through his Word, which is always rooted in the Bible.

Unlike us, God is always consistent: his thoughts line up with his words which line up with his actions.

We’re not like that.

We often think one thing, say another, and do something else.

God would like us to heal so we can become more consistent like him. That’s a growth goal. But for starters, give God a chance in your life again.

Enter back into communication with God at your own pace. Be honest. Ask him the hardest questions. He can take it and won’t get mad or walk away.

Invite God into your pain, your struggles, your addictions, your fears. He won’t push his way into your life, but he’s always there, waiting to come alongside you.

In time, your trust will rebuild. In time, I trust that you too will see that he’s worthy of your trust and that everything he says and does comes from his core of goodness and love for you and all creation.

This is the reason God came as Jesus Christ, to show us who God is. Jesus said,

“If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.” (John 14:9)  

Jesus reached out his hand, and laid down his life for you so you can be reconciled to God and find life (1 John 3:16).

As I continued to wrestle, rest, heal, and discover life again, I began to learn where evil comes from and how it gains entrance into our lives and into the world. If you’d like to learn more about God’s goodness and where evil gets its power, I invite you to read my book Demystifying Evil: A Biblical and Personal Exploration or check out my Seminary Now video series on “Demystifying Evil” (you can watch the first three episodes for free). Seminary Now even has a new for-credit try-out seminary course on “Understanding Evil.”

I pray your journey becomes one of peace and that you find goodness in your life.

- Ingrid