My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength and my refuge, is in God. Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. Selah. (Psalm 62:5–8—NKJV)

“Trust in Him at all times.” Let that phrase catch your attention. Unbridled trust is not something we normally do. As a matter of fact, it is not normal for anyone to trust in anything or anyone at all times. While trusting is a human behavior (trusting a favorite chair, a good friend, a successful doctor), it is not something regularly bestowed without question and without regard to consequence.

Trust is the most valuable commodity in any relationship. Without trust love does not function. To trust is to relinquish and deliver the responsibility of something you cherish and treasure into the total control of someone else. It is like handing the car keys to your newly-licensed driver.

When my kids were teenagers, there was an oft-repeated question on their lips: “Why don’t you trust me?” To which my wife or I responded with clear, impeccable logic, “Because you are a teenager!” Trust, when it is required in a circumstance of consequence, is something that should be earned and verifiable at will. Because of this peculiar quality, trust is not something we easily bestow. But it is easily lost. Trust is only as good as its object.

“Trust in Him at all times” is not something we do in anything in our lives. The first time the car lets you down it feels like a “chunk” has been taken out of your confidence and trust in the car and you do not think of it in the same way. We trust our parents, good or bad, when we are small, not because we want to, but because there is no other choice. We are rightly taught not to “talk to strangers” as we grow up; we learn not to implicitly trust the word of acquaintances through bitter experience; and we trust our doctors until we deal with pain or do not heal as quickly as we thought we should. Once you learn the nature of sinful man, you learn not to trust those with power and can hurt you, no matter what form that power takes. Sadly, when there is a way of verifying trustworthiness, like with our government, we can’t be bothered for we think matters are out of our control and there is nothing we can do about it. Even a house, retirement provisions, or a favorite chair, given enough time, will let you down. Trusting at all times, in all circumstances, is just plain counter-intuitive.

Every Christian knows he is to implicitly trust the Lord, his God. The big problem is that we, like Paul, recognize “for the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” Unaided by the Spirit of God, no man is capable of “trusting Him at all times” All men need to trust God because there is nothing else we can do, nothing else we ought to do, nothing else we should do, nothing else we must do, nothing else we want to do, and nothing else we will to do.

David, the author of Psalm 62, provides marvelous observations about extending this trust to our Creator Savior. Within the chapter he rightly warns against trusting in the usual haunts of men. Verse 10 reminds any thoughtful believer that he ought never trust in the exercise of strength to suppress others, or taking matters into his own hands to his own advantage over the rights of others, nor to place his heart in riches.

Believers can do nothing else but to trust God as Psalm 73:25 states, “Whom have I in heaven but You? There is none upon earth that I desire beside You.” This is why trusting in God at all times is what believers ought to do, “Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation (Psalm 61:1).” David further declares that believers should trust in God at all times: “God has spoken once, twice I have heard this; that power belongs to God (61:11).” This obligatory trusting settles into a necessity in that every believer must do nothing else but trust God: “He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved (61:2).” As this conviction in heart matures in the believer, he really wants to trust God at all times: “My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him (61:5).” Finally, trusting in God is the one thing every believer must will to do: “In God is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God (61:6–7).” Trust in the Lord at all times! Trust and obey.