Can I Trust You? You Trust Me?

Luke 16:10-12 "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?"

Because God trusts us, we should trust others.

I don't know about you, but I can be pretty skeptical. Even though I did not grow up in Missouri, sometimes you just have to show me. Part of my skepticism certainly comes from managing hundreds of people in the last 30 years. When you have managed people that long, you have heard pretty much every excuse in the book: why your employees were late for work, why something did not get done in time, why the work they performed was not up to your standard.

 While I certainly have become use to a certain level of baloney and inaccuracies, my trust level definitely correlates with the amount of “baloney” I hear—the more baloney I hear the less I am inclined to trust. One person I employed got the best of me, and before I realized that he was a habitual liar, he stole $40,000 from me. If it were not for the fact he left the title to his $25,000 Harley Davidson bike in the company vehicle, I would have not gotten anything back. I found out later that no one, not even his wife, trusted him with anything.


God Trusts Us—Through His Grace

 I guess I wonder if God trusts me, the wretched sinner that I am. How in the world did I get the privilege of leading the followers I lead the way I am in his eyes? Friends, you and I "who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4). So what came first—His trust or our faithfulness?

 Certainly this verse and in primary scripture for today’s lesson show that God is asking us to be faithful with the trust that He first gave us. But why would He do that? Oh that is right, only by His grace do I get the privilege of leading the followers I lead. It was by His grace He allowed me to start with the small stuff, with leading in a small way.

 He then continually combines His grace with some of my faithfulness and increases my leadership from time to time. It’s hard to imagine, but every time I turn around, there is His grace staring me in the face. The more you think about it, the more amazing it becomes. 

 "I try my best to begin our relationship trusting [people]. I only begin to mistrust them when they give me a reason to."

We Should Trust Others—By Starting with the Small Stuff

 Our scripture today tells us not only that trust came from God first but also how to identify who to trust. It tells us to start with the small stuff. Is that not the way we all began our leadership journey? Did not someone trust us enough to give us something little to lead?

 But what about the person we just met? Do we trust that person right off the bat? I may be skeptical, but when it comes to people, I try my best to begin our relationship trusting them. I only begin to mistrust them when they give me a reason to. I could not imagine the stress of mistrusting everyone till they proved themselves faithful!

 However, we also need be careful that we don’t give others a reason to mistrust us. True, some of us have moved on from the small aspects of leadership; we are now leading bigger stuff because God has entrusted us with bigger things. But how are we doing with the small stuff? I just attended a church conference, and I am fairly confident that a church leader there lied to me. Not a big lie, just a little one that he could use to cover himself. Friends, those of you who lead big stuff cannot forget to be faithful in the small stuff—all of time. After all, it’s through being faithful with the small stuff that you were entrusted with greater stuff.

 Let us eat our baloney for lunch, then, and not bring it into our lives.


Photo courtesy of genvessel.