What You Don’t Know about Trust In Divine Power Could Ruin Your Health

Bilbo Baggins knew what he was talking about:

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.

The world is a scary place, and trust—trust in divine power—is ultimately the only effective escape from the emotion and physical tyranny of fear and anxiety. That makes it the most powerful of the 8 foundational natural healers: nutrition, exercise, water, sunlight, moderation, fresh air, and trust in divine power. We see Jesus model it by sleeping in the midst of a deadly storm.

Trust In Divine Power Is Crucial To Health

Dr. Bernard Siegel, Professor at Yale University School of Medicine believes that peace of mind is crucial to physical health:

Other doctors’ scientific research and my own day-to-day clinical experience have convinced me that the state of the mind changes the state of the body by working through the central nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system. Peace of mind sends the body a ‘live’ message, while depression, fear and unresolved conflict give it a ‘die’ message.

Our emotions are seamlessly connected to our body. Every cell is negatively affected by fear, anxiety, worry, or gloomy thoughts. Camping out with worst case scenarios and dark imaginings is disastrous. What we focus on, we give power to.

There is a right way to deal with stress and trauma, and it is called trust. Trust brings assurance, hope, and peace. Children in healthy families know about this. Even nature teaches us.

A Study In Trust

Scientists did a series of experiments with lambs that show how essential trust is to our health. They took two lambs, one with its mother and one without, and gave each of them an electrical shock by remote control. The shock didn’t hurt the lamb physically but was strong enough to get the lamb’s attention and make it jump and run away.

The lambs always jumped and ran the first time. The lamb with its mother in the pen always ran to the mother. The lamb without its mother ran away from the spot where it had been shocked and never went back to the same place again. The strange thing is that the lamb with a mother in the pen would go back to the same place it was shocked.

The lamb that had no mother to run to, jumped higher and ran faster each time it was shocked. When it was out of safe places in the pen to run, it just stood quivering and finally fell down in a heap. The scientists described it as being like a nervous break-down. But the lamb that ran to its mother jumped less and ran slower, with less excitement each time it was shocked until finally the shock got no response from them at all.

We’re Part of the Family

Trust in divine power begins with knowing who we are. It changes everything when we realize that we are included in God’s life, that we are intimate members of Their family—gods if you will. If this is true then why wouldn’t our Father provide for us and protect us? Why wouldn’t Jesus and the Spirit befriend us and mentor us? We live in Their thoughts. Why can’t we crawl into bed between our divine parents?*

Healthy parents have their children’s wellbeing at heart. How much more will the desire of a heavenly Father’s be for the wellbeing of His children? When we really get this, then gratefulness and praise takes the place of discouragement, anxiety, and fear. To disbelieve that God is like this, says C. Baxter Kruger, is to “love our children better than our theology allows God to love us.”

My Journey Toward Trust

Trust in divine power doesn’t happen overnight. For me it has been a work in progress. It started out with the Matthew 6 basics, you know, if God takes care of the flowers and the birds, won’t They also provide for my needs? I remember the courage that the manna experience of the Israelites in the wilderness (Exodus 16) gave me, and for a long time my mantra was “there will always be more manna tomorrow.”

Then I began to see that to trust God’s purpose for my life was to believe that I am here on Their behalf, “for such a time as this” and that, as Gandalf told Frodo, I am “meant to have the [perilous] Ring.” This ignited a burning belief that “God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning, and discern the glory of the purpose which they are fulfilling as co-workers with Him (Ellen White, The Desire of Ages). The biblical Joseph is exhibit A.

My most recent lesson in trust has been through the death of my brother. I’m learning that trust is more about praying with God, about coming alongside Them and agreeing with Their good purposes, than it is about getting what I want. It’s about leaning more on Their far-sighted wisdom than on my desires.

Help from the Past—and the Future

It is no small assurance and confidence builder to look back and remember how God has provided and protected us in the past. On the other hand, William Paul Young wrote that to harbor fear and anxiety is to “imagine a future without God, and that future does not exist.”

Practical Trust In Divine Power

So what does practical trust in divine power look like? It’s first and foremost an awakening to our privileged position in God’s family. Once our favored place really sinks in then hard times will bring us to gratitude even before prayer. Celebrating our place of trust calms our heart and clears our mind. It gives us space to catch our breath. When we pause and take a grateful deep breath we find a place in the divine to be still, and know that They are in control.

Trusting in God’s protection, provision, and purpose for us may not take the danger and heartbreak out of Bilbo’s road, but it will call out our gratitude and give us the confidence to align ourselves with God’s far-sighted wisdom. Even more practically, it will give us the assurance and peace to sleep with Jesus through any storm. You can’t find a better natural healer than that.

* from Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance