Establishing Your Plans for the Future.

Baccalaureate - Crystal River High School 2022

Let me begin by saying that I am honored to stand before you this afternoon. I know a lot of you have never met me before, so I will introduce myself. My name is Chris Priest. I am the pastor of Red Level Baptist Church, and it is a real honor and privilege for me to be speak this afternoon.

This October will mark 22 years since I graduated from high school, as I graduated from what is now W.T.C. in Inverness, I attended Crystal River high school my freshman and half of my sophomore year. But hated school and wanted to drop out and so my mom enrolled me in what was then W.T.I. I did not attend my graduation ceremony as I was in Nashville, TN going to a one year Technical College at the time. But I did attend the graduation service for my Technical college.

So I finished high school in October of 2000 which I graduated with a low C average, before you graduates were born, then in January of 2001 just as I turned 18 I started the year long technical college for auto-diesel technology, a technology certificate I have never officially used. I had to retake two classes, therefore, I ended up not finishing until the end of January 2002, instead of before Christmas of 2001. After I finished I came home, applied to all kinds for mechanic jobs, with no luck. I got a job at Office Max right up here at the mall, worked there like 10 months, worked for my dads commercial mowing business off and on, opened my own business, that lasted about 6 months, then worked full time running my dads business for about 4 years, I then meet my wife, we started talking, I started working under ground utilities, I have worked for a contractor at the power plant, then under ground utilities, then for Progress Energy, which then turned into Duke Energy, which was my dream to follow in my grandfather’s and Father’s footsteps to make a career out of it, but God had other plans for my life, He had called me into the ministry. I started Bible college while working night shift at the power plant, when I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, I had the highest G.P.A. for my area of study, and I graduated with Magna Cum Laude and it was all God, then He lead me to go on for my Master’s Degree which again was all God.

I do not know your individual stories, I do not know how well you have succeed in school, or how hard you have struggled, and you might be thinking what does this guys story have to do with us. Well, I hope that I can encourage you this afternoon, that even though it has been almost 22 years since I was in high school, and I know a lot has changed, but there is still one thing that is still the same, and that is that we can trust in God to get us through anything that we face.

As I was think about the fact that it has been almost 22 years since I graduated from high school, I though about the things that were happening back around the time you were born, so I did some research, what happened in the year 2003, what were some significant events, popular culture, prices.

The first thing that came up was what was called the Human Genome project, which was where scientist identified over 20,000 individual genes and base pairs that create the basic DNA composition of humans.

Second was the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, as the shuttle was re-entering the atmosphere it disintegrated, and tragically killed all 7 astronauts on-board.

The Department of Homeland Security officially began its operations.

Average cost of a new house in the U.S. was 246,000; average median income was 45,000; cost of a gallon of gas 1.83

Apple launched Itunes, The fifth book of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released.

Popular movies - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Finding Nemo; The Matrix Reloaded; Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: Bruce Almighty; The Last Samurai; Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines; The Matrix Revolutions; X2: X-Men United; Bad Boys II; Lost in Translation.

The reason I am telling you all of this, is because you may not remember who I am, or what I say today, but throughout life, what we often remember, are events and occasions. For instance there are occasions of joy, or sadness, occasions of remembrance, and reflection. And believe it or not, today and the next few days, and graduation, marks one of those types of occasions. This is a time in your life that you will never forget. You may not know it now, but your parents do. And I would bet that over the next few days your parents are going to be doing some of that remembering and reflecting. Remembering the day you were born, or your first loose tooth, or maybe your first day of school. They might be remembering how their hair began to show a bit more white or grey as you went from tween to teen and began to practice your independence more and more frequently.

Also, there maybe some of your teachers here today, and they are remembering as well … how over the last few years, they have poured their lives into you, and taught you, and hopefully inspired you to be life-long learners.

So this is a time of reflection. It is for them, and trust me … it will be for you. Some of you might reflect on what is about to happen, and how your life is going to change, some of you may not do that right now, but in the years to come you will look back at this time and reflect on it.

And so there are three things I want to stress to you today, and I hope and pray that you will remember them, and that I will not be just some old guy who said something that you do not remember.

I want to look at two verses for our text, that come from the book in the Bible that is written by the wisest man that has ever lived on the earth besides Jesus, and that man is King Solomon and the book is Proverbs and it is chapter 3 verses 5-6

Proverbs 3:5–6 CSB

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

There is three things that I believe will help you succeed in life. They will help you thrive in life and not just get by.

The first of our three things is trust in the Lord with all our heart.

In just 2 days you are getting ready to go out into life and hopefully do something awesome! But the thing is; none of us know what the future holds.

When I was 16 my pastor at the time asked me if I had ever felt like God was calling me into the ministry to be a pastor, and I was like nope, no way, there is no way I will be a pastor, I cannot get up in front of people an speak. If someone would have came to me 15 years ago and said you are going to pastor Red Level Baptist church, I would have laughed at them, at that time I was not really living the way I should have been, and I still would not have gotten up in front of people to speak. I have always been shy, and honestly without God, without the power of the Holy Spirit, I could not do this today, it scares me to death.

See we do not know what tomorrow holds. But listen, make sure you get this, God knows what tomorrow holds, He knows the future, because He holds the future. God knows what tomorrow holds, He knows where you are going to be, Tuesday night, a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and 20 years from now.

Trust the Lord with your future. With all your heart, trust Him.

Matthew 6:34 CSB

34 Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

We need to take care of today, and trust God with all of our hearts, because he already has tomorrow taken care of, today has enough to do in it, enough work to accomplish, and tomorrow will have its own.

Jeremiah 29:11 CSB

11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your well-being, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

See The Lord has plans for us, he knows what tomorrow will bring, and he has already went ahead of us and prepared what is needed for us, if we will just trust in him with all our heart.

Second: You can trust God with your Failures:

If there is one thing that we can be sure of in life, is that we will make mistakes. We are going to mess up at times, weather it is we forgot to turn in a assignment, or we forgot to read a chapter, we forgot that there was a quiz today, or that we were supposed to do a certain thing for the project at work, we will make mistakes, sooner or later.

The Bible tells us in Romans 3:10

Romans 3:10 CSB

10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.

And what that means is no one is perfect, no matter how hard we try, no matter how had we try to make it look like, we are not perfect, we are all sinners, everyone of us here, have fallen short of the glory of God.

1 John 1:8 CSB

8 If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

You see we have a sin nature, and because of that, we are going to mess up from time to time. We are going to blow it from time to time. We are going to stumble and fail and make mistakes and sin and yes, even fail sometimes.

But here is the thing, God tells is that we can trust Him with our failures. In-fact that is why Jesus came. Jesus came to save sinners. You see; it’s because of this sin, that we are in direct rebellion against God, and because of our sin we all deserve to be punished. We have offended our perfectly holy and perfectly righteous God, and we deserve to be punished. But because of God’s great love for you. He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and Jesus took your punishment.

In our text of Proverbs 3:5 we are told do not rely on our own understanding, see it is when we rely on ourselves, on our own understanding that we fail, that is when the sin nature pops its ugly head back up, but if we will follow the first point, the first part of the verse, trust in the Lord with all of our heart, then things will go right, when we keep our eyes on Jesus and not on our self, then that sin nature is pushed down and out of the way, those failures are pushed down and out of the way also.

Yes, we are human, we get to going in life and we begin to lose our focus on Jesus, and we start to trust in our own understandings, our own abilities, and next thing you know we have made a mistake, we have failed at something and then we are wondering why, and sometimes we are even asking God why He allowed it to happen.

Well, it was our own fault, we took our eyes off of Jesus, we stopped trusting in him with all our heart, we started relying on our own understanding and that is when things started to go down, but if we will turn our eyes back on Jesus place our trust and understand back in the Lord than everything will workout.

God is a loving and forgiving God, but He is also a gentlemen and when we start to take the lead over He will take a step to the side and allow us to see how it works for us, but He is right there waiting for us to realize that we messed up.

I think of the story of Jesus walking on the water.

Matthew 14:28–31 CSB

28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter answered him, “command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand, caught hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

The disciples are out on the Sea of Galilee when this storm comes up and the boat is being battered by the waves and winds, when they see Jesus walking on the water, but at first they cannot tell that it is Jesus and they think it is a ghost.

So Jesus calls out to them, Have courage! It is I. Do not be afraid. That is when Peter is like Lord if it is you command me to come out on the water to you. Jesus said come.

The part I want us to see is, that Peter has the faith, he keeps his eyes focused on Jesus and is also able to walk on water, but then the reality of the world kicks in, see Peter was a fishermen by trade, that is what he has done all his life, he knew people just do not walk on water, and it hit him, the waves are splashing against him, the winds are blowing against him, reality hit.

He took his eyes off of Jesus, see he allows the things of the world to grab his attention, as we also do a lot of times, and he failed, he began to sink into the water, and as he began to sink, as he began to fail he cried out, Lord save me.

Now Jesus grabs his hand immediately, Jesus was right there, he did not let Peter to go under water, he did not let Peter drown, but He grabs Peter’s hand pulls him up and says, you of little faith why did you doubt.

Jesus did not say you of no faith, but of little faith, why did you doubt. The reason Peter doubted is because he took his eyes off of Jesus, he had little faith in that moment, because he doubt and he doubted, because he took his eyes off of Jesus and allowed the things of the world to distract him.

Jesus helps Peter into the boat, Jesus did not just leave Peter in his failure, but he brought him up out of the failure. He to will help you out of times of failures, of mistakes, just trust in him with all your heart.

You can Trust God with your Fears:

Fear is a driving force in our world today. Everyone warns of those who do not do what is right and the consequences that they will face. We are familiar with fear. Fear sells. If you want to be safe then you will buy this car. You want your health protected, so you will buy this particular brand of vitamins. You want your looks preserved so you will buy this abb machine. You want the world to be safe for coming generations so then go green. Let me tell you, fear works.

Fear works, everyone has a fear of something, now I know, a lot of men will say, oh I am not afraid of nothing, I will tell you right now, there are things I am afraid of, I am afraid of people, of speaking in front of people, in meeting new people, in engaging new people, in being in large crowds. I am and always have been a shy person, and you probably think how does that work your a pastor, and you are up there right now speaking, It is all God.

Fear works, Here is a little Bible trivia for you. The one command Jesus gives us in the Bible, more than any other command. More than love your neighbor, or love your enemies. More than being kind or showing compassion. The one command Jesus gave more than any other command was to Fear not! He tells us over and over again, Fear Not! Do not be afraid!

Fear not is in the Bible 365 times, that is one time for each day of the year, You see that’s the thing about God. He made it all! And He’s in control of it all.

See in our text, in Proverbs 3:5-6 it tells us to trust God. Trust Him with all our heart. And then in all our ways know Him. What that means is … to pray … go to God for everything. Pray, and praise Him for who He is and for what He’s done.

If you are doing that - if you are trusting in God, and going to Him in prayer, and seeking His will for your life, and for the decisions you have to make … you know what happens?

Look at the last part of our text it says He will make your paths straight. Another words, He will show you where to go. He will show you what to do.

So you can trust God with your future. You can trust God with your failures, and you can trust Him with your fears. Because after all, He is God, and He is an ever present help in times of trouble.

No matter what life brings your way, no matter what circumstances or situations you go through in life. No matter if it’s smooth sailing or stormy seas. Trust God.

If you want to succeed in this life, then you must trust God.