There is a question that most of us have asked at some point, usually in the middle of a sleepless night or during a season of life that feels like it is unraveling. The question is simple but cuts to the core of our faith: Can I trust God with this?
Not with life in general. Not with the easy stuff. But with this specific thing, the one that keeps your mind racing, the one you have been gripping tightly because letting go feels more dangerous than holding on.
That question deserves an honest answer, and the answer begins with understanding what stability actually is.
We Have Stability Backwards
Most of us define a stable life the same way. There is enough money in the bank. Health is good. Relationships are solid. The future feels predictable. Comfort is the measuring stick, and when life delivers comfort, we call it stability.
But what if that definition is completely wrong?
What if the most stable place you could ever be in your life is not a place of comfort at all, but rather a place of complete trust in Jesus, even when everything around you feels uncertain? True stability is not the absence of storms. It is having a foundation that holds when the storms arrive, and storms will always arrive.
Jesus in the Boat
In Mark 4:35-41, there is a scene that captures this tension perfectly. Jesus has spent a long day teaching crowds of people from a boat on the Sea of Galilee. When the teaching is done, he tells his disciples it is time to cross to the other side. So they go. And in the middle of the crossing, a violent storm rolls in. Waves crash over the sides of the boat. The situation is desperate.
And where is Jesus? Asleep on a cushion in the stern.
The disciples wake him in a panic, asking whether he even cares that they are about to drown. It is not a polished theological question. It is raw, frightened, and completely human. Maybe you have asked something similar. Maybe you have looked at your circumstances and wondered whether God has simply checked out, whether he has left you to figure it out on your own.
Jesus wakes, speaks to the wind and waves, and the storm goes completely calm. Then he turns to his disciples with a question that is far more unsettling than the storm itself: Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?
These were not strangers to Jesus. They had been listening to his teaching. They had seen his power at work. And yet when the storm came, their fear revealed something important. Hearing good teaching and actually building your life on it are two entirely different things.
The Foundation That Holds
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus draws a sharp contrast between two kinds of people. Both of them heard his words. Both of them experienced storms. The difference was not what they heard but what they did with what they heard. One built on rock. One built on sand. When the storm came, the difference became obvious. The house on the rock stood. The house on the sand fell.
The storms of life do not create the weakness in our foundation. They reveal it.
This means that the time to build a solid foundation is not during the storm. It is before the storm arrives. The question worth asking right now, in whatever season you are in, is this: What is my life actually built on? Not what do I say it is built on, but what does my life demonstrate when things get hard? What remains when life shakes?
If the answer points to comfort, financial security, the approval of others, or your own ability to manage outcomes, those are foundations made of sand. Not because they are evil things, but because they can all be taken away. Jesus cannot.
Trust Is More Than a Statement
It is easy to say that God is trustworthy. It is much harder to live as though that is actually true. Trust is not just a belief we hold. It is something made visible through our actions.
Think of it this way. If someone watched your life without hearing a word you said about your faith, what would they conclude your life is built on? Would they see someone who hands control over to God in every area, or would they see someone who trusts God in some areas but quietly insists on managing others alone?
Trust involves belief, but it does not stop there. It moves into action. It takes the risk of obedience. It steps out onto the water when Jesus calls, even when the wind is still blowing and the waves are still moving. And over time, as we act on what we believe, we experience the faithfulness of God in ways that deepen and strengthen our foundation.
What Is Your That?
There is likely something specific that has been sitting in the back of your mind throughout all of this. An area of your life that feels too risky to release. A circumstance you are white-knuckling because letting go feels like losing. A situation where you are quietly asking, does God even care about this?
That is your that.
Jesus does not promise that following him will always be comfortable. He actually calls his people into uncomfortable places with some regularity. But he does promise something far more valuable than comfort. He promises his presence. He promises that he will have the final word over whatever storm you are walking through. And he promises that the life built on his words and his ways is the most stable life available to any human being on this earth.
Comfort is here one day and gone the next. Stability is found in Jesus alone.
So the question is not simply whether you believe God is trustworthy. The question is whether your life, your actions, your choices, and your obedience reflect that belief.
Can you trust him with that?
Will you?
