The past 24 hours has had a reoccurring theme: trust, or rather, the lack thereof. A daughter of mine is struggling with trust issues with her teachers at school, my wife shared with me how an event that happened several years ago at another church has impacted her willingness to trust people on a deeper level, and I have had two other situations come up about this issue in my church. As I was reading some of the blogs I follow, came across Jayson D. Bradley’s post, Sinners Anonymous: Less Church, More Recovery, where he makes the following comment about the typical church, “For all our talk of grace, community, transparency, and repentance, very few of us have hit rock bottom. And those of us who have, are afraid to be open about it. We, of all people, should be beyond the scandal of sin—but we’re not. We’re so sin adverse and disgusted by swearing, sex, drug use, and the like that we can’t afford to be honest. We gossip, point, whisper, and condemn each other over the smallest infractions.” Unfortunately, I think Bradley is correct.
What I have been learning is that where there is not a lot of trust, truth matters little.
The truth of God’s forgiveness has little practical effect if there is little trust that God’s people will readily give it as God has forgiven them (Colossians 3:13).
Speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) is all but impossible where there is no trust.
You cannot hear the truth clearly if you do not trust the person telling you the truth—even if that person is Jesus Christ Himself (John 8:31-59).
Trust is necessary to live out the love of God together. You cannot carry one another’s burdens if there is no trust between one another (Galatians 6:2). Where there is no trust you will not see people living in loving submission to one another (Ephesians 5:21). Where there is little trust there is little chance that love will show in devotion to one another (Romans 12:10) or in hospitality for one another (Romans 12:13).
The reality is there are precious few communities where the fragrance of trust is heavy in the air. The local church should be one of those communities. It should be a place where the atmosphere encourages us to take off our masks, drop our pretenses, and to share deeply with one another. It should be a place where it is safe to be transparent; a place where people are just as willing to hear about our struggles, hurts, and failures as they are about our blessings and successes. It should be a place where we can be honest about the sins we struggle with; where we trust people will respond with love, comfort, and encouragement and not judgment or condemnation. It should be a place where we can trust people to walk with us through the dark and murky valleys that come, be they caused by personal sin or things beyond our control.
The truth will set you free (John 8:32) but trust must be present for that freedom to manifest itself in us and to the people around us.
Learning To Be Full Of Grace And Truth. 
Very well put Dan! Jay
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Thanks Jay!
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