Have you ever had a problem with trusting someone? Whether they did something to break your trust, or never had it in the first place, it can be difficult to establish or reestablish a healthy level of trust. The more intimate your relationship is, the harder it is to rebuild broken trust. When a lack of trust is not addressed, it can quickly lead to other stresses and might ultimately lead to a completely broken relationship. A marriage could end, an employee might resign, or a child might rebel or even run away from home.
As a man, I naturally want to find the solutions to problems. I want to fix what is broken and if it’s not broken, I want to fix it anyway. Unfortunately, there is no step by step guide to repairing broken trust. There is no instruction manual to regain the trust of a peer. There is no time-tested method to learning to trust again. Whose responsibility is it to rebuild the trust in a relationship? Like any other problem that can arise in relationships, it is not up to one person to fix the problem because it is not just one person’s problem.
Rebuilding trust in a relationship is particularly hard when we are the ones who have lost the trust of another. Apologies can only go so far, and sometimes we have to go as far as rebuilding the foundation of the relationship. It’s even harder when the trust was lost over something out of our control. It can be hard and painful, but the only suggestions I can make are to be open and honest about everything, ask for forgiveness, keep communication open, and pray. Being vulnerable is difficult, but what else can you do?
We are all broken people, and trust is bound to break when we put our faith in others. When our trust in someone else has been broken, we need to start by making sure our faith is in Jesus first and foremost. Beyond that, we have to truly forgive. Any attempt to rebuild trust without those two things is an exercise in futility. North Way Christian Community is starting a two-week series on forgiveness this weekend.
In Matthew 18:22, Jesus told Peter that we are to forgive up to seventy times seven times. That doesn’t mean to stop forgiving after four hundred ninety times, but that we should always forgive. Join me at North Way this weekend as Kent Chevalier kicks off our new series, 490.
