How to Trust Again After Betrayal

I trusted people with my life before I ever trusted God with anything.

In the the streets, trust was everything.
Trust the wrong person and you end up dead.
Trust the right one, you survive another day.
I thought I was good at knowing the difference.

Until I wasn't.

I've been betrayed by people I would have never thought would ever do that.
Not strangers. Inner circle. People who ate at my table and swore they had my back.

When somebody that close turns on you, it does something deeper than hurt your feelings.

Betrayal goes after the foundation you were standing on.
If that person WAS your foundation, the ground under your feet leaves with them.

That's why betrayal hits different.
When the ground goes, you quit trusting everything and everybody, way past the one person who actually did it.

"I'll never let anyone that close again."
"I'm done trusting people."

If you've said either one, I understand. I've said them both.

Here's what God showed me that changed how I see trust.

The problem was never that you trusted. The problem was what or who you were leaning on.

Think about it.
When one person's betrayal can collapse your whole world, trust isn't the real issue.
Your security, your peace, your whole sense of being okay, all of it was resting on a human being who was never designed to hold it.

Lean your whole life on a person and eventually they buckle.
Not because they're evil. They're human.

Even the best people you'll ever love are flawed. Scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). That's in everybody.

Put a person where your foundation belongs and sooner or later the cracks show.

There's a Hebrew word in Proverbs 3:5, sha'an.
It means to lean your whole body on something, the way you'd lean on a staff and trust it to hold you.
The verse says don't do that with your own understanding.
The same goes for another person's reliability.

Psalm 118:8 says it plainly.
"It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man."

That verse isn't telling you to never trust anyone.
It's telling you people were never meant to be the foundation.
God is.

When God is the foundation, betrayal still hurts, bad.
It just can't collapse you anymore.

The person who left was never the one holding you up.
God was, and He didn't go anywhere.

When Jesus is your foundation, people can fail you without unraveling you, because your soul was never resting on them.

I remember the betrayal that taught me this.

Someone I loved, somebody I'd poured into and trusted with things I hadn't told anyone else.
They used what I gave them against me.

It wrecked me.
My peace was built on that relationship, my security on their loyalty, and when the loyalty evaporated, everything I was standing on went with it.

In the middle of that pain, God didn't give me a lecture.
He gave me a question.

"Why were you building on them instead of Me?"

I had to sit with that.

The truth was, I'd made a person my foundation.
Never on purpose.
Just in how I lived, day to day, that person was the thing holding me together.

When the thing holding you together is a person, betrayal turns into an identity crisis.
When it's Christ, betrayal is painful and that's all it is, because your identity didn't leave when they did.

Betrayal exposes what you were standing on. If it collapsed your world, you weren't loving wrong. You were leaning wrong.

How do you trust again?

Not by building walls so high nobody gets in, or testing every person for six months before they get close.
Those are defense mechanisms, and a defense mechanism doesn't heal you. It just keeps you lonely while you're still broken.

You trust again by changing what you lean on.

Take the security you were getting from people and set it back on God.
Take that "I need this person to be okay" feeling to the One who already said He will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5).

From THAT place, standing on a foundation that doesn't move, you can open your heart again.
With wisdom this time, but open.

A heart locked in a vault is safe from betrayal, sure.
It's also sealed off from love.
God didn't save you to live behind a wall.

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."
1 John 4:18 (KJV)

Perfect love casts out fear.
Not perfect people, perfect love, and the only perfect love in existence is God's.

When you're rooted in His love, the fear of being betrayed again loses its grip.
People didn't get any more trustworthy. Your foundation just quit moving.

From there you can love again and let people in again, not because you're naive, because nobody can take what you're standing on now.

You don't learn to trust again by making people safer. You learn to trust again by standing on the One who never moves.

Here's how you start trusting again today.

1. Get honest about what you were standing on.

When the betrayal hit and your world collapsed, what did that person represent? Your security? Your peace? Naming it is the start of moving back to the only foundation that never cracks.

2. Lean on Christ first, then love people from that security.

Quit asking people to supply what only God can. When your soul is already held, you can love somebody without needing them to hold you up.

3. Grieve without hardening.

You can feel everything that happened and still keep your heart open. Grief moves through you and heals, where bitterness just seals the wound shut. Let God do the healing while you do the grieving.

PRAYER

Father God, I've been betrayed by people I trusted with everything.

It didn't only hurt. It collapsed me, because I was standing on them instead of standing on You.

Today I move my foundation back to You.

You're the only one who has never left and never will.

I don't want to live behind walls anymore, and I don't want bitterness doing a job Your love is supposed to do.

Cast out the fear of being hurt again.

Heal what was broken, and help me open my heart again from a foundation nobody can shake.

In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.