Trust in the Lord - Not in Yourself

Intro

-Proverbs - wisdom

fearing God

Applied Knowledge

Wisdom is crying out in the streets and we heard the wise words

This week we are talking about trusting in God

Help Me Maze - Me Section

When I was a freshman in high school I volunteered for the Junior Staff program at Wesley Woods which is a church camp in Indianola

And when we were doing volunteer orientation we got to go through the low ropes course.

It is a team work and challenge course and you go through these different obstacles together and one of the things you teach is how to trust each other.

Many of you probably think that I am about to talk about the trust fall activity but I actually want to talk about another one of the obstacles.

As a team we were doing different obstacle course all day that involved balancing on things and jumping over things, and climbing on things working together that sort of stuff, and we came to portion of the path and our leader stopped us this next challenge is a maze and it is called the “help me maze” now some of you might be laughing because you know about the “help me maze” but I as a young person didn’t. They said in order to go through the help me maze you would be blindfolded and the obstacle is to find a way out of the help me maze.

So they blind folded me I couldn’t see and they led me to a rope, and said go ahead and walk along this rope until you find you way out of the maze

And I heard murmurs and between the sound and just cues that I could take in I knew that there were other around me

I started following the rope and I kept following the rope, and I kept following the rope and 20 min. went by

soon enough 40 minutes by and an hour into the activity I was fairly certain that I was the last person in the “help me maze”

And I said I give up will you please help me to find my way out of this maze.

And as it turns out that is how you get out of the “help me” maze is by asking for help

In this maze I thought I had all of the information that I needed to succeed.

I thought I was going in a direction that felt like there was some progress

when in fact I was just spinning my wheels

I was wasting a lot of energy being busy but not having any progress

I wasted everyone else’s time as they had to sit on the side lines and roll their eyes at me thinking that I had the right answer.

We section

I wonder if there was ever a time like that for you a time where you thought you had the right answer and you were so sure that you were going in the right direction until someone corrected you

I think we like to feel independant, we don’t frequently like to think about relying on other people for help

I think we often as the people of the church wish to be the helpers rather than the one’s being helped

In this most recent storm - We would much rather ask our neighbors if they need help trimming branches after a big storm than we would ask them to help us

There is a natural craving that we have to want to do everything on our own

And this is where our scripture meets us

God

Proverbs 3:5–10 NRSV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. 7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. 8 It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body. 9 Honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; 10 then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.

1.) When we fear God we trust God

We started this series a couple of months ago talking about fearing God and now we are onto a different word trusting or to trust

This word Trust - the word for Rely is like literally leaning. If you have a cane and you are leaning against it you are trusting it.

Trust not your own understanding

Proverbs 1:7 NRSV

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 3:5 NRSV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

We talked about fear being reverence or awe but this word Trust is new

Trust literally means to lean on

I remember exploring the woods as a child and more than once my friends and I would come across a stick that was forming a makeshift bridge over some type of body of water and we would ask do you trust that?

God is the only being that is ultimately worthy of our trust

This passage hang in many living rooms and is printed on many book marks because it is a foundational piece not just of wisdom but of Christianity

We don’t have all of the answers or even most of the answers on our own

The goal isn’t to be the one that can follow the rope the fastest in the help me maze the goal is to realize that we were never in control

That when we lean on our own understanding that is a foundation that will always be shaky

When we fear God that means we depend on God. We don’t rely on ourselves, or someone else or circumstance, we rely on God so the second point today is that....

2.) Dependance on God = Independence from Worldly Things

When we say to God “help me” we become less bound to everything else in our lives that offer us solution

When we become more dependent on the ways that God has already forgiven us we can become more independent of our own sin

We become less bound to things addictions when we turn to God and say that I trust in you and I know that if it were up to my own will power and if it were up to my own abilities I would not be able to do this, so I trust in you.

When we lean on God to hear that we are beloved children, beautifully and wonderfully made we can become a little bit more independant of what others say about us

So that when the storms pass both the methaphorical storms of our lives and the more literal ones that we experienced this very week we can stand firm because what is hold us is God.

What we are trusting in is God

When we become dependent on we can become more independent of everything else.

And this act of leaning on God is not a light switch

3.) Trusting in God is an acquired skill

Meaning that when we begin to lean on God we realize that it will hold our weight so we lean a little bit more on God, and a little more, and a little more

Proverbs 3:9–10 NRSV

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

This is a statement in financial stewardship, and something that we still practice today

When it says “with your substance” it is referring to money

But I think that for this passage money is just one of the examples

If we become more dependent on God and we offer the first fruits of our harvest, we will become more independent of our money

If we trust God with our money and say God I know that you know how to use this better than I can so I sacrifice this first fruit of the harvest to you it completely changes how you view money

More than that though if we give God the first fruits of our calendar it reframes how we see our time

If we say God I don’t know what next week will hold but I am committed that the first thing that I am going to put on my calendar is to spend time in prayer to you. To spend time worshiping you next week. I will spend time connecting with others to hear what you are doing in our community, I will spend time loving your people. When we do that it completely alters how we see our calendars.

We talked a week ago about teaching about God’s wisdom to your children and maybe for you this is an opportunity to think about trusting God with the first fruits of the ways that you teach your children

As education is entering more into a hybrid format and we are thinking a lot more about what we are teaching the young people in our community maybe this is an opportunity to pause and say the first thing that I am going to teach the next generation is the wisdom that I have found in trusting God and in following Jesus.

Trusting in God is an acquired skill

it is not a light switch that goes on and off or for many of us this week goes off or off

Trusting God is something that happens over time

Where we trust God with more and more of our substance until eventually we become independent of all of those other things we were holding on to.

Wisdom is Trusting in God/ conclusion

Trusting in God to say Help me when you don’t have the answer

And beginning to lean more into God

The wisest thing we can do is to lean on God

End in Prayer