Trust God

You have heard the words since you were in Sunday School both in words of warning as well as words of encouragement and maybe even a few testimonies — about how the words came to their rescue.

The words appear in Scripture in one way or another, hundreds of times, and you will use the words with others — perhaps in your ministry or perhaps as a counselor, or as a friend, or as a minister of music. Whatever capacity you’ll serve in, on a mission field or at your home, you will use these two words and they are: TRUST GOD. Single syllable words…that you have heard forever but you will discover as time passes how difficult they are to obey. Trust God. Of course I have no way of knowing what the future holds for you. You may lose your home and everything in a fire, you may lose your spouse to a disease, detected but not cured. You may lose your dreams, your hopes, you may lose a relationship that you have cultivated over the years. All losses are painful. And you will be brought back over and over again to the words of Proverbs 3:5–6. I know, I know…you have even memorized them when you were growing up and your lips moves every time someone quote them “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight”. ALL your heart, ALL your ways. Trust. Trust.

Now, we have a problem with this because of several things. First of all we are to blame self-sufficient. We have learnt how to get ourselves out of jams, rather than acknowledging the jam has very well been either directed or permitted by our sovereign God to teach us. And by not trusting Him, we short-circuit the test and go our own way getting ourselves out of our own mess. We’re too self-sufficient. Another reason we fail this test is because we are too quick to call on others. We have a lot of very capable friends. As life unfolds & we leave the school and we are involved in our realm of work and responsibilities we’ll meet other people. Many of them much smarter than we are, most of them richer than we are, better connected than we are…and some of them will become good friends. And they become our crutch. We will trust them rather than the Lord. See, because they are right there and they may have connections and when you are up against it, they will get you through it. Another reason we do not trust is because we feel distant from the God of Heaven. Don’t feel too guilty about that, so did Job. As godly as he was, and yet Job said in the midst of all of the lost: though He slay me, I will trust in Him; though He take me off this earth in the process, I leave trusting Him. The fourth reason I would name is that we have cultivated the bad habit of worry. Many of you are much better at worrying than you are at trusting. If you were to put together a worry list, it would outrun the prayer list. And you are worried right now about something. Most likely it’s related to something about your schoolwork or some test or something at work. Or maybe your financing, you don’t have enough money. I will give you a word of encouragement: you will never have enough money. So you are worried now you are getting good at it, so you can carry that with you when you graduate because you won’t have enough money then…so you worried about that and you do not trust. See how practical it is? And if you think you are going to outgrow the problem, take it from some older guys — you will never outgrow it. It is like lust. You never out grow lust. You just learn to fake it. I remember seeing once an online conference with a 87 or 88 year old missionary gentleman and some young people asked him: please tell us when did you conquer lust. And he answered: Well, I haven’t. You will never conquer worry, it’s part of the flesh. You want to, but the only way you will get through it so that you will learn from the test is to trust. To put the worry on hold, to set it aside, deliberately shoving it away and saying — God at this moment I rest in You and You alone. If you are married-God help my spouse and me to trust You, to lean on You, to wait on You, to listen to You, to endure the the test with You.

I put together a quick list of things that reveal how little we trust.

1. when you choose to worry, you do not trust
2. when you try to fix what is impossible, you do not trust
3. when you hurry ahead and don’t wait for the Lord to move and change something, you do not trust
4. when you lie awake twisting and turning at night, you do not trust
5. when you doubt biblical principles and promises that are right here in the book you love and study, you do not trust
6. when you turn to others first for help, you do not trust
7. when you listen to human counsel and give a higher priority to that and the principles you have just learned, you do not trust
8. when you manipulate and maneuver situations, you do not trust
9. when you step in and take charge without praying and being led by the Spirit of God, you do not trust
10. when you cling to others in order to feel secure and needed and loved, you do not trust

The list may go on and on…it is easy to live in the flesh. It is easy to disobey trust in God with all of our heart. Just thinking: wouldn’t it be a great project over the Christmas season this year to think through ways that we couldn’t begin to trust God regardless. Hopefully it will be a project we can enter together with a family member or with a friend. What is it we do that keep us from trusting God? And how can we break that habit and watch God break through in ways that we would never have expected?