How Can Trusting in God Fill Us with "All Joy and Peace"?
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In life we like to measure things. Measurements tell you how tall, how long, or how wide something is. They also tell you how well you are doing in a certain area. For example, if you are trying to lose weight, the scale measures how well you are doing (hopefully I didn’t just discourage you). As you walk with Jesus, there is one measure that instantly reveals how your walk with him is going. That measure is trust. Consider this verse in Romans:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
This verse tells us that trusting God fills you with all joy and peace, so the question that matters right now is how are you doing in trusting God today? This is your measuring stick, and as you will soon see, it is the catalyst that sets everything in motion.
What Does This Verse Mean?
This verse is about a cause that produces an effect. The one word that drives everything else in this verse is trust. According to the Oxford Dictionary, trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. When you are trusting God, you are firmly believing in his ability to do what he said he would do.
As you trust God, he responds. In this case, God responds by filling you with joy and peace and causing you to overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The real confidence we have in this verse is knowing that your trust in God does not go unnoticed.
When I was growing up, if you put out your hand to greet someone or lifted it up for a high five and the other person didn’t respond we use to say “hey, why are you leaving me hanging.” When God sees you are trusting in him, he will act on your behalf, and he will not leave you hanging.
How Would Trusting God Fill Us with Joy and Peace?
There is really one reason why trusting God fills us with joy and peace. That reason is confidence. I found this definition of joy by an author named Rimi,
“…Joy is a feeling of good pleasure and happiness that is dependent on who Jesus is, rather than on who we are or what is happening around us. Joy comes from the Holy Spirit, abiding in God’s presence and from hope in His word.”
Whenever you are trusting God, it means you are focusing on him instead of what is happening around you. Matthew 14 records the story of Peter walking on the water. The disciples were in a boat that was being rocked by waves. They saw Jesus approaching the boat in the middle of the sea and they were afraid (I’m sure I would have been too). Peter told Jesus, if that is you then tell me to come out of the boat and walk on the water. It was Jesus, and Peter boldly got out the boat and started walking. He was trusting Jesus, even though the waves were raging all around him.
The Bible doesn’t record this, but I can imagine for the brief moments Peter was walking on water there was probably a sense of amazement and joy that sprung up in his heart. He was probably saying wow I can do this. He was able to accomplish this because he was focusing on Jesus and trusting him.
However, that didn’t last because he took his eyes off Jesus, panic set in, and immediately he began to sink. The same holds true for you and me. Regardless of what storms you are facing, when you are focused on Jesus there is a sense of happiness that springs in your spirit. This comes despite what is happening around you because your confidence is in Jesus, and you know he is going to come through.
How Trusting in God Fills Us with Peace
The second byproduct of trust is peace. Let me remind you of this well-known verse in Philippians.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
One way you demonstrate your trust in God is through prayer. When you pray and trust God, there is an exchange that occurs. You take your fears, worries, and anxieties and give those to God, and in return he replaces that anxiety with his peace. This exchange is only possible when you trust God. Remember trust sets a wheel in motion and when God sees you are trusting him, he rewards that trust with joy and peace.
We often think peace means the absence of chaos or trouble, but on the contrary, peace is calm that comes right in the middle of chaos. This type of peace is only possible when you place your confidence in a God who is reliable and who will not leave you hanging.
What Would It Look Like for Us to "Overflow" with Hope?
Hope is an anticipation and expectation that God is going to show up and help you in your situation. The verse in Romans mentions overflowing with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. To overflow means you have so much there is not enough capacity to store it all in one place. Isn’t it just like God that he wouldn’t just give you a trickle but an overflow?
Here is why the overflow is important. There is enough for you, and there is enough for someone else. The reason God causes overflow in your life is so you can share it with others. When you have an overflow of anything, you can be a blessing to someone else. This holds true of overflowing with hope as well.
When you go to a restaurant to eat, you usually order a beverage with your meal. My go to is a glass of water with lemon because I like to live on the edge. When the server for your table comes around, they check to see how much is left in your cup. If the cup is empty or close to empty, they offer you a refill. The reason they can do this is because they have so much supply, they can refill your cup when it is running low. This is what you can do when you overflow with hope.
Our lives can often be like a cup. Sometimes those cups are full and sometimes they are low or empty. Right now, there are people all around you who are filled with hope and some who are running out or empty. When you are overflowing with hope, you can encourage those around you whose cups might be empty. The reason their hope fades is because their trust in God is beginning to wane. Because trust is a catalyst, when that begins to fade, the joy, peace, and hope go right along with it. The way you encourage them is to help them refocus and begin trusting God again. Since trusting in God fills us with all joy and peace, then we need to help people rebuild their trust. When this happens, they can once again overflow with hope.
3 Ways to Rebuild Trust in God
There are three key elements to building or rebuilding trust in God. These elements are not foreign, we just have to put them into practice. Those ways are the word, worship, and prayer.
- The word builds your faith in who God is and the promises he has made.
- Worships builds your perspective of who God is, and as he gets bigger the challenge you are facing gets smaller.
- Prayer demonstrates your trust as you take your situation and place it in his hands. As we saw before, when you make this exchange God gives you his peace.
Often, I have recognized in my life when I am anxious and not filled with joy and peace, it means one of these things is missing, which affects my ability to trust God. It will do the same in your life too. Since trusting God fills us with all joy and peace, then we need to do everything we can to keep building and rebuilding that trust.
Trusting God through life is not always going to be easy. There will be moments when your trust is high and you will see joy, peace, and hope present. There will be other times when trust is low, and you will discover worry, fear, and anxiety present. Should you find yourself in this place, go back and do the things that build trust. Go back to the word, back to worship, and back to prayer. As you do this, your trust in the God who will not leave you hanging grows and this sets everything else in motion. This is how trusting God can fill you with all joy and peace.
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