Lately, I’ve been reflecting on trusting God rather than trusting man. I was reading Ed Welch’s book, When People Are Big, and God Is Small, and came across a passage that impacted me something special. The Scripture Welch quoted was Jeremiah 17:5-8; here it is in the ESV:
“Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. ‘Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
Now, that is an incredible passage about trusting man versus trusting God. It’s also pretty jarring.
Notice the word and condition Jeremiah uses to describe the one who trusts in man: cursed and shrub. Basically, a person who trusts people more than God is a cursed shrub. That’s terrible. However, he does not end there. Strikingly, Jeremiah says that this kind of person does not see good, lives like he’s in a desert, parched places of a wilderness, and alone in a salt land.
Seems like a devastating consequence, doesn’t it? It does to me. But that’s me with a limited perspective and selfish tendencies. We see from our vantage point: limited, fickle, and distracted, to say the least. Our lenses need clearing.
On the other hand, God sees everything. He is omniscient, and he is eternal. One Christian thinker described God seeing all things in the eternal present. That’s sort of a mind bender, but it seems to get the point across well. God’s lens is beyond panoramic; it is sovereign, and He is good. Therefore, He alone must have my trust.
Here’s why not trusting in men more than God is important:
- Trusting in something or someone with limitations rather than in God is, to put it nicely, vanity–weightless.
- We know this, and so why do we struggle? Easy. Trusting in what I can see explicitly is easier than waiting on God.
- God is the Creator and Sustainer of all things; He holds everything together (which does not mean that His delays are His denials or direction).
- Waiting is so hard. Waiting for a diagnosis, recovery, job, house to go through, children to wise up, relationships to improve, hard hearts to melt. We’re often confused as to who holds things together.
- Therefore, our trust ought to be, indeed must be, in God alone.
I don’t know about you, but being like a cursed shrub seems pretty awful. I much prefer being like a tree bearing fruit in years of drought and having green leaves when the heat comes. But it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard when things don’t go our way, expectations go unmet, and more. We need a bigger perspective. We need a God-exalting perspective.
Enter the gospel of Jesus Christ. God did not leave us alone in our hopeless, cursed shrub estate. Instead, He became a curse (Galatians 3:10-14). Indeed, the cross, on the one hand, appears terribly unthinkable (Peter thought so, see Matthew 16:21-23) from our perspective. Yet, from God’s sovereign perspective, the cross and subsequent resurrection were the means through which God offers reconciliation with sinful humans to Himself. Incredible.
And so, the gospel brings our eyes up to trust God, not man. We must see beyond our moments.
In conclusion, another way to think about this is how my wife recently put it: God brings a greater good from any bad things we experience. I think that hits the nail on the head. God is trustworthy because He alone has the power to pour out His grace, turning bad circumstances into good. Thus, trusting Him is my greatest good.
— June 11, 2026