Study

Announcements:

Young adult Cedar point trip September 1

For kickoff September 7th

Young adult bonfire August 26 next week

This coming fall Growth community Galatians

Leadership Serving opportunities

JTT What team are you part of?

Galatians 5:13 ESV

13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Icebreaker/Game:

Well, let’s go ahead and open up our Bibles to proverbs chapter 3 starting in verse five

Today we’re gonna be looking at what it means to trust to follow and to be humble

We are concluding our proverbs series tonight we are concluding looking at the wisdom literature that this book is, we’ve talked about a lot of different things over the Past few weeks and months

And today we’re gonna talk about direction. We’re gonna talk about what it means to trust him down to follow him and obey him.

But with all that said, let’s go ahead and jump into our text…

Text:

Proverbs 3:5–12 ESV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. 7 Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. 8 It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. 9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 10 then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. 11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, 12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

Lets pray…

What does it mean to trust???

According to our culture and according to the Bible, what does it mean to trust and maybe what are some of the differences?

Do you trust easily or is it hard?

How do we respond to broken trust? How does it feel to have trust broken?

Have you ever had someone not trust you even though you’ve never given him a reason to doubt??

How did that feel? What was your response?

We’re looking at verse five:

Proverbs 3:5–12 (ESV) 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Trust in the Lord… With all you have…

I can’t read this without feeling a heavy conviction of wondering, do we trust in the Lord with all that we have?

Do we lean on him rather than our understanding because the book of proverbs is about understanding and gaining wisdom

And wisdom can only come from humility wisdom can only come from faith in God and trust in his word…

One commentator put it this way:

Exalting Jesus in Proverbs Does Proverbs Preach a Prosperity Gospel? (Proverbs 3:1–12)

That’s the root of foolishness going all the way back to the garden of Eden. Instead, you should fear Yahweh. Thinking that you are wise is foolishness. Wisdom and folly boil down to humility and pride

And the commentator continues to say “what seems right to us usually ends up, wrecking us”

What I’m trying to communicate is that if we are not trusting in the Lord with all we have if we are leaning on our own understanding… We are operating in pride we are operating in arrogance

You and me, if we do not trust the Lord with everything we have we are operating in a self-sufficient arrogant way that will wreck our lives and wreck God’s plan…

So what do you think it means to trust in the Lord with all your heart?

And what do you think it means to not Lean on our own understand??

Each of these passage link into each other often times we start with God makes straight my path God where do I want to go? Where do you want me to go? What am I supposed to do? Is it the right time for this? Is it not the right time for this?

But we need to start with do we trust in the Lord??? Are we leaning and coming from our own understanding or Are we trusting his understanding? Are we trusting his wisdom?

Because we seem to skip ahead asking him to make straighter pads while we do not trust him while we do not lean on him and while we do not acknowledge him VERSE 6

6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

So for us to jump to the idea of Lord, where do you want me to be? Where do you want me to go? We must step back and rest in him… Trust in him even if we don’t like what’s going on right now

This verse saved my life when I was in a job that I hated working with people and four people that did not respect me or honor me, and they treated me like dirt…

I remember being at the end of myself and I was ready to throw a grenade get out of that job get away from those people even though I desperately wanted those people to know Christ

I was ready to just Walk off the job site give up on those people and say God if you wanna save them use someone else…

But I remember at the right time at the right moment, the Lord brought this verse to mind and broke me

It was as if God himself was asking me, Zach do you trust me?

And even though you don’t understand what you trust that I do?

Exactly what you acknowledge me in your life and allow me to make straight your path???

And in that moment, I knew that God wasn’t done with me there, but he would move me in his time and that he had a plan I can’t see… And I am beyond grateful for that.

In life and especially as young adults, we think that we have to do it all on our own that we have to take on all this responsibility and we have to figure it out

But the truth is, we should not lean on our own strength, our own knowledge, but we must trust in someone else who knows far better and has a much greater plan than when we can think of

So what are ways that we can acknowledge God in our life???

We are supposed to in all our ways acknowledge him. What does that mean?

How do we practically acknowledge God in Jesus?

Do we acknowledge God and Jesus do we trust in him? We represent him in the workplace?

Do we represent him in our families and in our relationship relationships? Do we have him as our king as our master as our number one lover of our soul?

Because if you can go a day without thinking about God without acknowledging him in your life, then I can tell you that your path is not straight but crooked

And 1° off over 1000 miles will leave you for FAR FAR away from where you thought you would be…

And the beautiful thing is when we begin to acknowledge God, it gives other people the boldness to acknowledge him as well…

To be upfront open and honest about what we believe in who we follow isn’t just for us, but for those around us…

Story about Justin going to the school meeting

Because My friend acknowledged Christ. It gave those around him the opportunity to show the support for him as well.

But that would’ve never happened if he had tried to be timid and hide his intentions

We must acknowledge the Lord If we ever wanna understand where we’re supposed to go…

But it’s all starts with relinquish control and laying down our pride so that the Lord can do his work…

But when we begin to do this, we can often times come to a place where God has straightened our path and we think we have it figured out now and we begin to get Prideful…

7 Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. 8 It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

What does it mean to be wise in your own eyes?

What does it mean to fear the Lord and turn away from evil?

Have you ever experienced the weight the crushing of sin?

The feeling of dread and that you can’t escape and that your life is over, have you ever experienced that dread that weight about anxiety that comes with sin?

Now on the flipside have you ever experienced the refreshment of turning away the weight being lifted, and you looking at God and hearing his voice of forgiveness experiencing this kind of love? Have you experienced that??

This is going from death to life… From slavery to salvation

Ephesians 2:4–5 ESV

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Salvation brings of this freedom, rings of this new life, and this new ability to live for God, not perfectly but intentionally

It gives us the opportunity to walk in the light with our creator instead of living in the darkness

So when we turn away from sin and turn towards trust your living, but when we turn towards sin and don’t trust God, you’re acting as though we are dead

Have you ever seen a grown person act as though they were a child act as though they didn’t know any better even though they did??? This is what it looks like when we walked and willing disobedience to God

Though we have been purchased from slavery, we submit ourselves to it once again under sin…

So I wanna ask I’ll be living in or living in Christ???

And what would it look like to train away from evil in our life?

How would you define evil?

And how would you define living in righteousness?

To live in evil is to:

live in pride,

Live in lust

live in envy

live in greed

to live in Disobedience

9 Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 10 then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.

11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, 12 for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.