What To Do With The Mess (4)

How To Live When Life Is A Mess

This morning we continue in our study on How To Live When Life Is A Mess.Obviously by the feedback I have received this teaching has challenged many of you. Praise God for that.So far we spent the first two weeks looking at How to not let the mess control you.That is difficult. When Life Is A Mess we often get to a point where the mess controls us.Because of that David tells us Fret Not Yourself.That means don’t get worked up over the mess.We have all been there.It’s where the mess is all we can think about all day long.We wake up in the middle of the night and think about the mess.That means the mess is controlling you.David said don’t have to let that happen.Rather learn to trust God.And whatever you do don’t put your life on hold because of the mess.Last week we moved to stage on How To Live When Life Is A Mess.What Do You Do With The Mess?This is where the battle happens.We learned the goal is not to pretend the mess doesn’t exist or that it isn’t effecting you.But we need to learn to Commit The Mess To The Lord.The way to commit your mess to the Lord is to first of all Name your mess.David did, Evil people doing wrong things. Probably Absolam Once you have named it, we do what David said.You commit to The Lord.The picture there is that when you have a big mess that is too heavy to carry you roll it to the Lord. (act out)This passage tells us if we do this The Lord will act.Now this brings us to today.It’s the second half of What Do You Do With The Mess. Still there.Our take home for today will be:Be Still and Wait Patiently - two more don’t fretsBe careful who and where you take your advise.(Sit Down And Shut Up)Read

Psalm 37:5–8 ESV

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

Psalm 37:30–31 NLT

The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong. They have made God’s law their own, so they will never slip from his path.

5  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.

6  He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

7  Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!

8  Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

30 The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong.

31 They have made God’s law their own, so they will never slip from his path.

Last week we spent our time looking at verse 5.We need to roll our our mess to the Lord.The reason for rolling is the picture that these are too heavy to carry.Then we trust the Lord.We looked at David and how He didn’t trust the Lord to do what he wanted but trusted God and said whatever you think is best you do.And now comes the promise - He will act.This where we need to learn a few big truths.He will act. That is a promise from God that you can trust.Most of us will start predicting how God will act.Right? Surely God will solve my problem by providing me money, saving my job, making my wife apologize, getting rid of the bond notes, heal me of my disease and make sure I have ZESA for my party tonight.That makes sense doesn’t it? He is God after all.This is where something important comes in.There is a passage that we love to quote

Isaiah 55:8–9 ESV

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

8  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

You all have read this passage before or heard it haven’t you.Do you see what it says: My thoughts are not your thoughts.A big problem we have is that we think God thinks like us.We think when God looks at our mess He will fix it the same way we would.Provide the money, get me the job, heal the relationship.This passage in Isaiah tells us that’s not what God does.He does not think like you do and He does not do things the same way we would do things.Do you all see this?I am not asking if you all like this but do you all see this?So our first big issue when it comes to What To Do With Our Mess is we expect that God will solve it the way we would.We almost can’t help but look at it that way.Let me tell you how I think.When I see a mess I think clean up the mess.Make the mess better.The first week I saw the mess on the stage I said Zeni clean it up.That is how I think and that is how I would act.Not God.Often when God starts to act, listen to this: Things get messier.Good examples of this are the children of Israel.God wanted to send them to Egypt to make them a nation.Why not just tell them to do pack up their bags and go.That’s what I would think of and how I would do it.Not God, His way was to get Joseph sold into slavery, sent him to prison and finally made him the number two man in Egypt, and then cause a bad drought that caused the people that sold Joseph into slavery to come and ask for his help.It’s not what I would have done, the mess got worse before better.Or God sent Moses to fix their mess of slavery, told Pharaoh to let His people go.My way of thinking would be that God would move on Pharaoh’s heart and say ok you have been slaves long enough, go.God’s way was let me harden Pharaoh’s heart and so it will get a little messier before I do some big miracles and have them drive you out of Egypt.Finally David. He certainly experienced this in his life.God has David anointed King at when he was a young man.Why not just after David killed Goliath make him king.Makes perfect sense.That is not how God did it. David’s mess got messier.Had to flee. Then wait 15-20 years before becoming king

When we Name our mess, roll it to God and trust Him, He will act.Often the first steps of God acting the mess gets messier.May I ask you a very honest question.If you have a mess in your life right now, and you claim to trust God and have named your mess and rolled it to God.Will you trust Him even if your mess gets a little messier for a season?Let me tell you what is next in this process.

Psalm 37:7 ESV

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!

7  Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;

Here is the truth with this once we start to put all this together.While God is acting, doing it His way not our way which means it might get messier for a while.We need to be still and wait patiently.Let me tell you what this means.#1 Be still means to be silent before the Lord.Don’t get worked up in His presence and certainly know:God does not need your help once you have rolled your mess to Him. #2 We don’t just wait but we need to wait patiently.Do you know how hard this is?See what this is telling us. Not only does God not think like us, not only does God not do things the way we would do things, LISTEN; God also doesn’t tell time the same way we do.God’s not in a hurry to clean up the mess.Again David knew this. He experienced it. Waited a long time.So he gives us more advise.Ready: Don’t fret yourself. Don’t get worked up even when God takes a long time to act.Then comes the warnings.There are two dangers we need to be careful of while we are waiting.#1 Don’t get angry. Look at verse 9

Psalm 37:8 ESV

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

We will spend a week on the danger of letting your emotions control you while in the mess. Whatever is causing you your mess or whoever is causing your mess, the sign that you have not rolled your mess to God, the sign that you are not trusting God is that you start getting angry and doing evil.The mess takes control of you again.If you think you had a mess before this just makes it messier.David learned. No matter how hard it is, when you trust God you also need to be patient and wait for Him.There is one final truth we must learn while we are waiting for God to act.Be careful where you get your advise about your mess.Look at verses

Psalm 37:30–31 NLT

The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong. They have made God’s law their own, so they will never slip from his path.

Here’s why this is important.Good advise isn’t always the right advice or good advice isn’t always godly or Biblical advice.We need Godly Biblical advice while we patiently wait.We can see this all through the Bible.Sarah’s advice to Abraham - God made us a promise that we would have a child.Well nothing was happening and so Sarah gave Abraham some advice.Take my maid Hagar and have a child. It was a common custom in their day so it was good advice but it was not the right advice or godly advice.Think of David.David was anointed King by Samuel the profit.He had to wait 15-20 years before that was a reality.Talk about patiently waiting.David had a big mess while he waited.It was King Saul.Two times David had a chance to kill him.Once was in a cave.Saul was by himself and one of David’s men said David, God has delivered your enemy into your hand. Kill him.That looked like maybe God had done that. Good advice but not godly or the right advice.David knew it was God’s job to take care of Saul.Later David saw Saul camped and went into his camp while he slept.One of David’s men said God has delivered your enemy into your hand let me just strike him dead.It was good advice, Saul was trying to kill David, certainly it would be justified self defense.But although it was good advice it was not godly or the right advice.So often while we wait people will give you good advice but it is not the right advice or godly advice and if you act you will get in God’s way.We have a great gift in God’s Word the Bible.We need to learn to do what the Bible teaches us not just take good advice.God’s Word teaches us:Don’t get worked up about your mess, trust God, roll your mess to Him and He will act.While God is doing His thing wait patiently.That is not in our nature but it is what we need to do if we don’t want the mess to control us.If the mess controls us we get angry and evil will follow.