Trust Vs. Suspicion.

One of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned is one that was introduced to me during my season in missions. I was a part of a school called YWAM—Youth With a Mission—that equips young people all over the world to go out into the nations and preach the gospel. Needless to say, I learned a lot of lessons pertinent to my faith during my time in YWAM. But this one. This one holds me accountable daily and convicts me on a regular basis.Trust vs. suspicion.This was a phrase repetitively spoken to us by ourselves, our leaders, and our peers. We became familiarized with it early on in our journeys, when we were getting settled into our rooms with strangers and beginning to do life with dozens of other people on a day-to-day basis. It was a regular topic on outreach, where unity was a choice and sometimes one seldom chosen. It met us every moment in between, in conversations with God and one another, often communicated alongside conviction and repentance. It still walks with me through the mountains and valleys of life and begs me for attention and intentionality.Understanding trust vs. suspicion is a value that unites hearts, frees the skeptic and the anxious, motivates the lover, and invites God to fulfill and lead. At its core, it simply means that we should choose to trust people before we choose to be suspicious of their intentions or actions.I’m a big believer in disclaimers since I have seen one too many people take things way out of context. So before I delve much farther into this article, I think it’s important to express what “trust vs. suspicion” does not mean. It does not mean that we trust people who have violated important boundaries in our lives. It does not mean that we lay aside any and all suspicion, because some suspicion is healthy and keeps us safe. For example, we don’t, in the spirit of resisting suspicion, choose to trust a stranger off of the street with our wallets when they ask to hold it for us. That’s when suspicion plays healthily into our lives and when trust would not be appropriate. So don’t read this thinking that trust is what God is calling us to do with every person alive. Okay, disclaimer over.I am beyond thankful to have learned this principal so early on in my life. Choosing trust has saved me from broken relationships, unnecessary wounds, and pointless arguments. Practically, it has challenged me to have real and honest conversations with people instead of assuming that I know what they mean when they say or do certain things that bother me. It has become the backbone of the current season my love and I are walking through, as I choose to trust Jake with following God in what He is leading us into and out of. In YWAM specifically, it changed roommate dynamics significantly when offense could have run rampant (five girls in one room is hard, people, let me tell you).Choosing trust for the people I love is a difficult decision for me, because I have many reasons not to. It triggers painful memories of when trust came easy only to be broken. Trust is dangerous. Trust is vulnerable. Trust is scary. But ultimately, trust is the initiator that carries us into the most beautiful things in life: marriage, friendship, parenthood, church fellowship, even our occupations. With that in mind, I’d say it’s worth running the risk.Suspicion is a thief. It tricks us into believing the worst about others and robs us of the fullness of relationship. It steals from shared joy and creates painful distance. It lies about the character of those whose lives intertwine with ours. It creates worry when there is no reason to. It is a liar. Far too often, we give it more trust than we give trust itself.We live in a world where cynicism, judgment, skepticism, and pride are commonplace. I’m not interested in any of it. I propose we start a countercultural revolution of unity where we decide that the individuals in our lives are more valuable than our fear of being hurt, than our tendency to be passive-aggressive instead of being direct and honest, than our motivation to self-preserve when God has created us to bravely invite others into our vulnerability. Trust vs. suspicion. I want it. I am learning it. And as I do, I’m convinced it is the DNA of the Kingdom of Heaven.I encourage you to invite the Holy Spirit to teach you to identify any area where you have valued suspicion over trust, to highlight any person that you may be holding offense against that you haven’t confronted or who doesn’t deserve it, to reveal the reasoning behind the distrust in your life, to heal those places. Grab a journal and write down whatever comes to mind. Pray and invite God to teach you the unity of the Kingdom and how you can choose to trust your community, beginning today.words by Olivia Douglas and photo by Kailin Richardson