Who is in Control?

Background

Proverbs 3:5-8

Proverbs - A collection of wise sayings in the form of poetry

There are multiple authors who contributed but there is no doubt that King Solomon had significant influence

The overall purpose of Proverbs is to gain wisdom

Starting in Proverbs 1:8 - 9:18 there is a focus on two roads

Roads are righteousness and wickedness / wisdom and folly

Proverbs is mostly all practical - there is direct application to our life

Today, being in chapter 3, we are still in the beginning part of this focus on the two roads

In this focus we are going to see direct application of trust, wisdom, and see how it directly links with hope

Here’s the thing - Today, there is someone in here that may be discouraged in the process of life

The process of life has high points, has low points, moments of success and failures, and at times as christians, we can lose sight of what matters in the process

Illustration - I may have used before but it was brought up in our community group of just how much money influences things in our lives

On that note, I want to use the illustration of investing your money

Since I am a real estate guy, I am going to use the analogy of investing in real estate

Investing in real estate is a process, there are ups and downs, successes and failures, its a daily grind that can sometimes take a toll. There are times when I was up at 6am ready for the day and there were times when I woke up and didnt wat to get up thinking, “What the heck am I doing”.

No matter how I felt or where I was in the process - there was a goal in mind for the process and for better or worse, I’m in it

In the first verses of chapter 3 we find the goal that the author is intending for his son

Proverbs 3:1-2 “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.”

How can we have hope for length of day and years of life and peace

And I want to focus on the peace part for today as the goal

Because at the end of the process of investing you are out of the process and hopefully now your at peace with your earnings

What about peace through the process?

In the process of life, we are searching for peace

Lets read todays text:

Proverbs 3:5-8 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”

Trust the Process

Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”

Trust is the third thing listed in this Proverb as Proverbs 3 lists steadfast love and faithfulness

And we arent necessarily not focusing on these because they are easy, we know it is hard to love sometimes and sometimes we waiver in our faithfulness.

But verse 5 of this Proverb really starts to question our abilities as humans

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart

Trust in the Lord 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays

Trust doesnt just happen on Sundays nor does it only exist when you need help from God

Trust is not passive, it is an action

Firm belief in the reliability - truth

We are to rely and believe in the truth exclusively, only on God’s word and promises

What does it mean to do it with our whole heart?

God wants complete love, reliance, and trust in him

Lets look at some verses having to do with the heart

Matthew 22:37 “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

1 Samuel 16:7 “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.””

Lets fastforward to Proverbs 4:23 “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

Lets rewind to Proverbs 3:1 “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments,”

What we find from these verses is that the Lord wants our heart completely dedicated to him

We cannot hide our heart from God, and further our thoughts, words, deeds are a reflection of the heart

What our heart dwells on, what we fill it with, is what spills out

When our hearts are only partially for him, divided between God and the things of this world, you are vulnurable and suseptable to doubt Him, to not trust him,

And so we are to guard it, to fill it with love, to fill it with the commandments of God, to fill it with God’s truths and promises

When your heart is completely dedicated to Him, it becomes easier to see him move in your life and to trust him

This is hard when our flesh and desires want earthly things, when our time is so divided, when life throws us curveballs

The struggle is the process

I have never said yes to a real estate deal and thought that nothing could go wrong.

I have never said yes to a real estate deal and said with 100% certainty that there wouldn’t be any struggles

And so I know I have this goal to make money, that there is a process I must go through to make money, and when I say yes to a deal I know that there are bound to be barriers.

Becuase of this, I have never said yes to a real estate deal based solely on my own understanding.

I look at the other houses that have sold in the area, I look at the house and get projections of cost to fix it up, I get opinions from partners, sometimes I talk to the neighbors to get information, I try to get a full picture by finding out information that I dont know.

I dont rely solely on my limited knowledge

In the same way, we arent to rely solely and exclusively on ousrself

Second part of this verse reads and do not lean on your own understanding.

Even in the garden, Adam and Eve were perfect but they weren’t God and so they were limited in their understanding.

The very tempation laid before them was to be like God knowing good and evil

Even in their perfect state they had to have trust in God

Their limitations allowed for there to be trust God

In our own pursuit of trusting God esclusively, the author knows that you can’t possibly be perfect in trusting the Lord 24/7, and that we can’t rely exclusively on ourselves to reach this kind of trust, so we need help.

Many times its hard to admit it, the spanish word for stubborn is terco - I have been called terco many times!

And if we could just admit that we need help, if we could put aside our stubborness, if we can admit that we arent fully in control of things, then it becomes easier to rely and trust in God.

God is Sovereign

Proverbs 3:6 “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

When we admit that we are not in control, we can then acknowledge that God is.

In real estate I had mentors, teachers, men and women that were experienced.

Older, wiser, experienced, understood exactly where I was at and what I was wanting

They walked with me through some transactions to help guide me and keep me from making mistakes

Heres the thing - They could only give input when I acknowledged them and let them into what was happening

When I gave them a full picture of where I was at with the project, how I am looking at financially, what my future plans were, they could give me sound advice

But all of their advice hinged off of how much I acknowledged them and the input I gave them

It is impossible for them to give sound advice if I witheld pieces of information

What is crazy is that there is an all powerful, all knowing God, who exists outside of time.

He is sovereign which means all things happen under his control

There is nothing that surprises God and nothing that he hasn’t already thought of.

Before God established the covenant of works with Adam and Eve, knowing that they would fail, he had already established the covenant of redemption within the trinity to reedeem God’s people

So when Adam and Eve did sin, He established the covenant of grace to freely give to his people where he would redeem his people because of Jesus and be saved in grace through faith in Jesus

God knew that humanity needed a perfect sacrifice for our unrighteousness

And so God sent his one and only son to come to earth, to live perfectly, to teach perfectly

Unjustly but willingly, Jesus went to the cross and took upon the penalty for our sins

Jesus died, and was burried for 3 days, and then conquered sin and death on the third day by rising from the dead

Jesus was the redemption for us to God the father and because God first loved us, we love Him who is control of all things

We have faith in Jesus and have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us,

God not only knows us, but he knows our circumstance, and He says, I have the answers

We are not alone in our life, we are not alone in our circumstance, we have a perfect and sovereign God that is wanting to walk with us

He wants to make our paths straight

Yet, I know in my humaness I have the audacity to sometimes think, I got this. Or keep God at an arms length apart. I have the audacity to not acknowledge God

My greatest failures in real estate happened when I didnt seek help

When I didnt let people in

When I thought I can get out of this

And God, is right there wanting to make our paths straight, to make us wise and righteouss, but because he loves us and does not want to control us, he gives us free will, and many times in our will we do not acknowledge him.

The writer is saying if you want to have length of days, years of life with peace, then please acknowledge God in all of your ways.

Have faith, and trust him, acknowledge him and your path will be straight.

Our sovereign God is promising you a straight path of righteousness, submit to him and trust him

I would venture to say that everyone in this rooms trusts me, you know me, you like me, ive proven Im not crazy

If you were guaranteed a return on investment, if you knew with 100% certainty that you wouldnt lose money, would you not say yes!?

Forget the process, it doesnt matter, I know that at the end I will not lose

Your natural inclination is that its too good to be true

What is the catch here?

You are going to ask questions, what am I investing the money in, how long,

You may have a level of trust in me but you still might reject my offer because of some type of doubt

In the same way we accept Jesus, we submit to him as Lord and Savior, we are thankful to God

We are promised that with God, because of Jesus we can’t lose, we have peace through Jesus and can have joy in righteousness in all circumstances

We have a level of trust in God but when we do not acknowledge Him we are having some type of doubt,

He is going to pursue us, He is still going to be faithful to us, but he will never force us on the straight path

Many times when we turn our eyes from God and we lose sight of God’s word and his promises - we go down a spiraled path

We do things we arent suppossed too, we try to keep things from God, all the while, - uncertainty, axiousness, fear starts to creep in.

The enemy starts to creep in and twists the truth where you think you are alone, where there is no other way out.

That you are worthless, that you are undeserving, that you are insignificant

Your path begins to spiral into unrighteousness

And God is waiting right there for you, waiting for you to call out to Him, to acknowledge him

Restoration

And you can trust that when you do, He will not leave you nor will he forsake you

Proverbs 3:7-8 “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”

There is no amount of human intellect or capacity to fully understand reality

It is only with God’s revelation is this possible and so we are not be wise in our own eyes

At some point in our spiraled path, there will be discontent

There will be unfulfillment

We see this in the world everyday

Turn on the news and you will see the spiral of folly, the spiral of unrighteousness, brokeness

And so fear the Lord and and turn from evil, we reject the spiraled path of unrighteousness

And we begin a process

To those of you who have professed faith in Jesus, you start a process of restoration

In the text it says “It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”

The Hebrew shows the word flesh as being the naval (belly button)

This is an outer sign of your birth, the bones growing and strengthening is an inner sign of growth

Together, the outter and inner is depicted here to show that you are whole

You are made whole with God, fully restored

Again, this is a process.

We do not believe that once a person is saved, that they can lose their salvation.

However, we do know that a saved person can wander on crooked paths

I dont know about you but sometimes I will get bruises and I have no clue where they came from, what I bumped into etc.

There can be times when we will be on a path or wandering where we arent suppossed to go and at first its hard to notice

But the longer and further we wonder into folly and unrighteousness, the more bumps and bruises we will find and it becomes more aparent that we are getting beat up

The only way to stop from getting beat up is to turn away and go to the other path

Over time, as we grow closer to God, as we reject unrighteousness and pursue righteousness, our bruises will heal

Wounds will heal

In case you havent noticed it takes a lot longer to get rid of a bruise than it is to get it

But what God promises, what he wants to do, is to restore you to righteousness

To a whole and complete healing

To those of you who have not professed faith in Christ

There is a promise from God that if you surrender yourself to his son Jesus.

If you put your faith in trust in Jesus Christ, he will make you a new creation

Our God and loving father wants to save you from the destructive path you are on

Matthew 7:13 ““Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.”

The spiraled path of folly and unrighteousness leads to the wide gate of destruction, the way to it is easy and many enter through it

The world promises you so many things for contentment and fulfillment

Everything the world promises you leads to the wide gate

But the narrow gate, that gate is through the Lord Jesus Christ is the one that leads to everlasting life and peace

John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

We have souls that will last forever, they will either last forever - dwelling in the presence of the Lord, or in torment because of your own unrighteousness

God wants you to find new birth in Jesus, to find rest in Jesus, to find peace

Application

I am calling on everyone here to do at least 1 of 3 things

1. Examine your heart and discern wether or not its completely for the Lord - If not, what action steps do you need to take to get it there.

How can trust God more if you arent praying to Him, reading his word, keeping his commands

2. Acknowledge God as the supreme ruler of the universe - He is the creator of all things and is worthy of all praise.

We are under him and so we are to submit to Him in all of our ways.

3. Have hope through Jesus Christ -

Every time I have said yes to an investment I had hope of making money.

If there was no hope I wouldnt do it.

Even though I had hope in every single deal, I didnt always make money, I wasnt always successful

God does not operate like this

God being the author of all things, wanting relationship with us, gives us hope both here on earth and for eternity

Gods promises are sure, you can trust him 100%, He will never waiver

God does not promise riches here on earth, he also doesnt promise poverty. He doesnt promise success by worldly standards,

What he does promise is that whatever you go through in life, if you have trusted in Jesus, you can know that God is always with you

That he will be faithful, that He will continuously pursue you, that he will bring you peace

Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

There is hope for when you fail, and there is hope in an everlasting promise

Closing

(Call worship team up)

There is going to be a time of prayer and worship

A time to start your path towards restoration

A time to repent, to acknowledge God

A time to say yes to Jesus