Trust In the Lord
Notes
Transcript
Trust In The Lord
Trust In The Lord
Introduction
How ironic is it when you say you trust God and then you are challenged by stepping out on faith to keep trusting God? I spent this past weekend at a retreat pouring over scripture and prayers and spiritual direction sessions. In the end, the focus point became trust. It came down to the questions: Do I trust God? and how and Why? In my prayer time, the simple phrase “I am with you and that is enough” was the only answer to my prayer of how do I build trust in God. While this may not make sense to you, it is all I needed to hear from God to know, God is with me in this season and that is the only assurance I needed to trust God to lead me.
Songs
As I spent more time in evening wrestling with whether my current sermon was right or whether I was being blocked from completing it because there was something else God wanted to say. I want to the chapel to pray. I am a shy person in case you didn’t know and I am very shy when it comes to singing, especially by myself and without any music. I felt God telling me to pick up the hymnal and sing. There was nobody here but me and God so sing these songs. While I started with one song and then flipped to another and then sang the one next to it, I realized something about these songs. By no coincidence, these songs were about trusting God.
Think about Amazing Grace, this grace, the gift from God and the way in which we trust this grace to be sufficient. It is grace which covers all, restores all and gives hope to all. You must trust in God to accept grace. Grace has made me to see God is trustworthy.
What about It is well with my soul? Is this not also about this gift of peace that we trust God to provide in the worst storms of life? Isn’t it well with our soul because we believe and trust God to sustain us and grant us that peace. Our hope is based on trusting in the blood of Christ to redeem us. We trust God. We trust in Christ.
While we haven’t sung the third song yet, I still want to mention it. Have Thine Own Way Lord - is this phrase by itself not a submission that I trust God with my life. In all things, God have your way because I trust in you. We trust all the ways in which God shapes and molds us, washes us clean. We trust God in the ways he is working on us.
Passage
While I won’t say my singing was on key or on tempo or that it met any of my standards for good singing, I was obedient to trust God to sing these songs out loud in the chapel. After I finish these songs, I pray. I am asking God what do you want me to do. God spoke to me and asked me again, Do you trust me? I answered yes. God asked me if you trust me are you willing to simply walk up to the pulpit without a prepared sermon? I answered again yes Lord I trust you. I will do what you ask.
What came next was a sense of both anxiousness and excitement. God spoke to me and shared with me that those songs were what was to be sung. I got a bit nervous because I knew the bulletins were printed, the screens were likely built, this was going to cause extra work on others.
As I left the chapel to go with my stuff to start the process of communicating this change, a passage came to me. The partial verse was “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. Over and over in my head as I head back to my room, I am hearing this verse. When I get back to my room, I learn the full verse and realize this is the passage for today.
Pick up your bibles and turn to Proverbs 3:5-6. What I want to do is something a little different. What I would like to try is to have people read different translations. I want you to hear these two verses several times till the words are written on your heart. The first part of verse 5 was already written on my heart and surfaced as God was working with me.
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.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.
6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, on your own intelligence do not rely;
6 In all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.
6 Acknowledge him in all your ways, and he will make your paths straight.
[Volunteers - Read passages]
Is this passage now written on your hearts? My goal is that it is written on all of our hearts. Do you notice that in all these different translations there is a resounding commonality in the first part of verse 5? Every single one of these say “Trust in the Lord with all your heart”. They do not vary one bit on this point. This is clear, this is the key to growing. If you don’t trust God, then how can you expect to grow? As the rest of verse 5 states, my own understanding, my own intelligence, my own insight… none of this I can rely on. None of this I can fully trust.
If we trust in the LORD, verse six says show it. Acknowledge this. Seek God and show the trust in God. This is the way forward. This is the way we as individuals and we as the body of Christ must do. We must not rely on what we know. We must not rely on simply what understand. Instead, we show God we trust God when we acknowledge God as the one we place our faith and trust in. In all our ways, show our trust in God.
Trust and Control
As I spoke last week, I mentioned changes were coming and that we are trying to find our way forward. The question I got hit with this weekend was whether I trusted God to lead us forward. What I learned is that change requires trust and in order to trust you have to give up control. When you don’t trust, you want to keep control to make sure things are kept right, done right. I was hit hard when God was asking me whether I trusted Him. I was faced with answering the question, am I willing to give up control in something like the sermon and the place where I am confident now. I was put in the place where I am not confident and the place where I am uncomfortable. This is where I had to acknowledge that I trusted God. We could not move forward without this acknowledgement of God being trustworthy. I bring this up because I believe each of us has to answer this same question before we can go any further. Do you truly trust God in everything? It is easy to trust God in some things but it is serious stumbling block when we realize we are fully trusting God in all things.
Mourning
If we can begin trusting God in all things, including this church, then we can begin to walk forward into this church’s future. What I mean by this will be both truthful and blunt to a certain extent. What I am about to say, I want you to listen carefully to so you don’t misunderstand me in any way.
First I want to say how much this church means to me. I love this church and I love the people that call this place home. In the same vein, I hurt for this church and the brokenness from the past. I have listened to many stories of the past where the Spirit of God was moving powerfully. I have listened to the many ways in which this church has reached out and helped so many others in need. I have listened to the many ways in which God has used the people of Asbury.
I used the work brokenness earlier on purpose because all of these stories are in the past. All the things in which people feel God was working with this place was in the past. I feel the sense of mourning of what used to be in this church of what the people of Asbury were.
People mourn the loss of these experiences with God. People mourn the loss of people who are no longer with us. People are looking back at what was and wondering when O God are you going to take us back to that special place, that special time where we felt close with you.
On one of my faith walks, a friend used an analogy that I thought was perfect. The scripture we were meditating on was about living waters and quenching our thirst from those living waters. This is what we experienced in the past. this is what we crave to experience again in this place. Yet, where we gather does not have the look and experience of a well of life giving waters. I am not talking about the building when I say this but of the way in which we are trying to keep afloat. The analogy used was comparing a beautiful moving spring with a stagnant muddy one. The stagnant muddy one was at one stage, the beautiful bubbling spring of living water but loss over time, it changed over time slowly into not what we want. We still gather in hopes it will become the same spring it once was but the source that made it that way has dwindled down.
This statement is not meant to say we as a church are no longer a church God loves or is present in. The pain and hurts of the past have affected many. The hanging on to the past has in essence clogged up the spring. While I know I keep saying this phrase, i truly mean it because this is delicate to navigate through.
Healing and letting go
I want to say this carefully because I say this with love, there is no going back there. What I am going to ask you today is going to be hard. What I am asking of you today is to help this church move forward, to unclog the spring.
What I am asking of you today is to take the past and lay it down as a sacrifice at the altar. What this represents is that you love God, you love the way in which God has been part of your life and has moved in this church. These memories are good to keep as memories. What I ask is that we lay down the pain and hurt we feel from the loss of these in our present lives. What I ask you to lay down is the idea of returning back to those same times. I ask you to let go of the past and let God lead us into our future. Healing can only begin when we let it go and lay it down on the altar. Letting go requires all of us to let go of control, let go of the hurt and frustration, let go of that habit of looking back at what was and asking God when we will be that again.
Trust God with all your heart
This is new territory for all of us. This requires us to trust that God is leading us. This requires we trust God to lead this church and the people gathered. This requires us to seek healing by laying it all down at the altar. I would not be asking you to do these things if I myself were not convinced God is in this with us. God can renew this church into a life giving wellspring of living water. This won’t look the same as it did in the past but trust God is capable and desires this for us.