Trust is a Must

Where do we honor grads, interject towards grad throughout, shorten

Proverbs 3:5–6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”

Intro: Discussion on the Bible giving direction due to the fact that our natural tendencies causes us to act in a way that is in opposition to the direction that is being giving. Real life example with parenting children. During the early years especially, our direction is typically telling them to do something that they might not naturally do, or we direct them to not do things that they might have a propensity or leading TO do. For example, we might say to one of our children in their early years, hopefully their early years… “Don’t put that in the toilet.” But why is it that all of us wait until our children put something in the toilet before we tell them that is not Standard Operating Procedure. God loves to give us instruction ahead of the task so that we don’t find ourselves constantly plunging our issues out of the toilet of life.

TEXT -Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.

Human Carnal Version: Trust in your judgment when it comes to your own passions and desires and if your way doesn’t work out fall back on God. When you get a new idea, don’t check with God if it seems to makes sense to you, and failure will surely come your way.

· Trust in the lord with all of your heart

· Do not rely on your own understanding

· In all of your ways (time, money, thought life) acknowledge Him

· He will direct you

As I mentioned just a moment a go, the Bible is quite often a remedy for the condition of human nature.

We often live backwards to the very words the Bible has given us to live by.

We set out and try to direct our own paths, while we are doing this we fail to acknowledge God and instead we use our own reasoning, We set out and try to direct our own paths, while we are doing this we fail to acknowledge God and instead we use our own reasoning AND THEN when that doesn’t work… we try to trust in God. So we get it backwards and naturally try to fall upon our own thoughts and desires. So these two verses are placed in the scriptures to help us see the correct way to go. This is very relevant to all of us so for today’s discussion let’s break down each section of the passage.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

There are a few reasons today why we struggle to trust the Lord, I’m going to refer to them as issues if that’s ok and I believe the first is our…

Worship Issues – (NOT JUST SINGING, ANY AREA OF YOUR LIFE, QUICK TEST ON YOUR WORSHIP, ANY AREA OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU HAVEN’T AND ARE NOT CURRENTLY COMPLETELY EMPTIED OUT OF YOURSELF< THERE’S ROOM TO WORSHIP MORE… Now, Worship is a healthy exercise that causes us to remember how and why we have what we have and who it was that gave it to us. Furthermore, it causes us to remember how immensely big God is and how unbelievably small we are. You can be sure that you are currently putting your trust in the person, place, or thing that you worship the most. This could be a spouse, your finances, and especially your own power or rationale. What do you really look to for security? Worship is sometimes very simply those ideas which we commit our thought life to. If you consistently find yourself concerned with finances, you may find that you trust in money more than God. There is probably nothing more ironic in the world today then the fact that some of our currency bares the phrase “In God We Trust” when one of the ideas that causes us to trust God the least is our concern for our financial well being. Very simply we should realize that the ideas we are putting our trust in today are receiving our worship, and the things we worship will be the things in which we put your trust. Did you catch that? Let me repeat it. The ideas we are putting our trust in today are receiving our worship, and the things we worship will be the things in which we put your trust. If you want to gauge your level of trust in God today, pay attention to how you react when something within your everyday life (your job, finances, relationship) are shaken. If your trust is in God you will not be shaken. We struggle to trust in the Lord because we do not worship him as much as we should, and we do not worship him as much as we should because we do not truly trust him. Secondly, we don’t trust in the Lord because we don’t want to let go of the controls.

Control Issues – I used to fly on a plane most every week in my previous job. I always loved when someone would tell me to have a safe flight. I can still remember one time when someone told me to have a safe flight, and after a brief pause, they said, not that you really have any control over it. I’ve heard people say that they are afraid to fly because they are not in control. But we never are, are we? God is control. I really believe that having to be in control is the most exhausting job or attitude that we can have. We try to be in control at work, we try to be in control at home, maybe we even have to be the one that is in control at church. YOU… CAN… HAVE… IT. My perfect environment in this life, is the one where I don’t have to be the boss. When I can come into his presence, when I can open His word and rest in His promises, that’s when I find peace. When I can say God you take the wheel, I’m going to sit in the passenger’s seat and enjoy the ride, that’s the good stuff. But too many of us have struggles with that today. We can’t trust him because we don’t worship him, we can’t trust him because we have control issues, and thirdly we can’t trust him because we simply don’t TRULY desire to trust Him.

Desire Issues – It has been said that an excuse is always present where desire is lacking. If you don’t truly have a desire to do something, you will always have an excuse as to why you are not doing it. Just by show of hands, would anyone in here mind being 20 pounds lighter? I heard recently that someone wished the weighed what they did when they were 21. Well if that were the case then I need to go down 40 pounds. Anyhow if most of us were asked how to lose 20 pounds, we would say something about eating fish and broccoli and moving more, right? It’s no secret. It’s the desire. I’m just going to square with you when it comes to the desire to lose weight, my desire tends to be more with chocolate chip cookies than it does a 34 inch waist. For the most part we are going to have just about what we want, and DO just about what we truly want today. The verse here today says trust in the Lord with ALL your heart. The word heart here speaks of the seat of our passions and desires. And many of us have never allowed our passions and desires to be transformed since the time of our conversion. We start talking like Christians, we come to church, we might even let it leak out there to the general public that we are one of those Jesus people, but for many our desires have remained back with our sinful nature that was supposed to be buried in our conversion and Baptism into Christ. We must trust in the Lord with ALL of our passions, desires, hopes, and dreams. Trust in the Lord with ALL of your heart, and…

Do not lean on your own understanding

There are two categories in which I want to make this leaning our own understanding more specific, and the first is…

Relying on the rational

In the Old Testament we frequently see a phrase that goes something like this, “Everyone did that which was right in their own eyes.” Often that phrase is related to the fact that there wasn’t a king or a ruler. You see, when authority is properly understood, respected, and in its proper context, the opportunity for unity and forward movement is the result. But when we all do, think, or say what we think is best rather than consulting a common authority, tragedy is the outcome. The authority of a stop light brings unity and movement, the lack of one creates tragedy. We are all ok with stop lights right, I’m very thankful for them, unless I’m running late, right? But stick with me here, sometimes there is more than one opinion about what is right. In this room we could simply ask a question about what football team is the best, or what restaurant is the best, and people could argue their case, and while that would all be fun and games, the reality of it is that disunity can often come from discussions or concerns on lesser things. But when we see God and His mission as the true authority of what needs to take place our rational, perspective, and preferences take a back seat because rather than arguing about disagreements or opinions we stand unified about the task at hand. Our own understanding, our own emotions, our own opinions are dangerous to lean on because they are flimsy when not backed by the Word of God. Leading us to a second category of leaning and that’s

Unlimiting God

more specifically in regards to the way mankind in general relies on their own understanding. It’s always been an awesome thing to see the way that God uses hopeless and painful situations to do some of His greatest work. Remember how the people questioned why God allowed Lazarus to die? His sisters were undoubtedly frustrated and upset, they questioned why he hadn’t come sooner. I believe that God must reserve ideas like this for himself because if there is any rational solution at all man finds a way to take credit for it. The miraculous is not rational, that’s what makes a miracle. If we want to see something great in our life today, we must quit limiting God by relying on our own understanding and reasoning. Trust in the Lord with ALL of your Heart (passions and desires) and do not lean on or rely on your own reasoning and understanding, but instead…

In ALL your ways acknowledge Him

ALL IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

When we say ALL let’s look at 3 quick hitters...

Time –We don’t give him enough time to even justify an acknowledgment of him. I don’t have time. Building on that desire we talked about, We always always always have time to do what we WANT to do. Someone once said if you want to know who or what someone worships just look at their calendar and their checkbook, you will spend your time where your heart is. And that checkbook idea leads me to the second area of our lives where we need to acknowledge him.

Money – We want God to bless our finances but how can we ask God to bless our finances when we won’t allow him to have any of our money. Someone once spoke to John Wesley saying, we give God 10% and he trusts us with 90%. John Wesley replied, it all belongs to God we just decide much of it we are going to waste. The truth of the matter is that we give God in any area of our life only as much as we can give and still keep reasonable control of the situation. We should acknowledge Him with our time, our money, and thirdly our desires. We talked about desire issues earlier… the psalmist…

Desires –. Last Arrow 178 – The psalmist David tells us that we are to delight ourselves in the Lord and he will give us the desires of our heart. This means we need to know our hearts, we need to know our desires, and we must allow those desires to first be informed and then formed by our love and worship of God. He shapes his will in us far more than he speaks his will to us. (REPEAT) If we want to know what God wants, we need to give him our hearts and let him build desires in us that we want more than anything else in the world. That is why the asking is so important. If you don’t know what you want, then when God tries to give you what he wants for you it is just a wasted effort. You have to want what God wants in order to receive what he wants to give you. So do the math here with me if you have to want what God wants in order to receive what he wants to give you, then when you aren’t getting what you want from God, maybe your desires aren’t in line with His? That’s pretty good church. If you aren’t getting what you want from God, maybe your desire aren’t in line with his, but when we align ourselves with Him, we will walk with God. We walk God’s intended way for our life.

Walking God’s Way

He will make our paths straight, He will direct our paths, the way I like to think of this, is that we are in step with Him. When we will in step with God he will give us enough clarity to see the next step but not so much that we don’t need to keep trusting Him.

Conclusion: MAYBE? Worthy of it all, is He worthy of trusting Him with everything

When we are waiting for God to show the way… PREACH IT. Money, timing, spouse, kids, ideal situation. The truth of the matter is God won’t move you, until He is confident that you are content resting in Him. Because if you are not resting in Him, no situation, no location, and no earthly thing will cause you to be content. Instability will continue to rule your life. Find peace in the directions of this passage (Quote passage, altar call) INVITE THE TEAM?

Trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. If you are in Jesus today, and you aren’t happy there’s something off. Let me dig in here, (everyone smile at me right now, I mean it.) If you are in Jesus and you aren’t happy, excited, joyful, you are either not trusting Him like you should, or you aren’t obeying Him in something. Prayer today, God help me to turn over what I haven’t, or help me to quit delaying and start obeying.

Maybe you don’t even know how to start trusting Him. Remember what I said about how my heart truly wants that chocolate chip cookie more than the 34 waist size? If you truly want all of God, your prayer today is, God in spite of all that I have been or done, in spite of my pride and need for control, God I want my trust to be so fully in you that I reach a place of healthy hopelessness. Did you get that, healthy hopelessness? That’s the place where you recognize that the hope you have placed in every idea other than Him is worthless. That’s where He gets all of you, and you get all of Him. And when you get all of Him everything will be changed. STAND? Are you not experiencing that joy? Where are you not trusting Him? Where do you need to obey? The big things, the small things, the whispers in the night from Him, error on the side of forgiveness and reconciliation, let nothing be between you and another or between you and Him. Trust Him, Obey Him, Let Him bring health, joy, and peace to your life as you let go of the pride, the controls, and your own rationale. SLet’s pray today church.

POST REPSONSE: Invite Josh and somehow tie message to grads as he comes.