You Gotta Give God All Your Marbles! Series

Date Written: July 31, 2006

Date Preached: August 2, 2006

Where Preached: OZHBC (Wed - PM Service)

Series Title: Basic Bible Study

Sermon Title: You Gotta Give God ALL Your Marbles!

Sermon Text: Proverbs 3:5-6

Introduction:

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

6 in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

Prov 3:5-6 (NASB)

There is an old Indian proverb that tells a story about a young boy with a bag of marbles. One day the young boy was approached by a young girl and she offered to give him ALL of her bag of candy for ALL of his bag of marbles.

At first the young man refused but the more he thought about that candy the more he wanted to make the trade. So he agreed to make the trade… all his marbles for all her candy…

But the night before they were to make the exchange the young boy took his favorite marble and wrapped it in a cloth and put it under his pillow.

The next day they met and exchanged bags. That night the young boy did not get any sleep at all but the young girl slept peacefully and soundly.

The young boy lay awake wondering if she had given him ALL the candy. He never had the assurance that she kept her end of the bargain because deep down he knew that he did not keep his end…

When we read our passage tonight we can find that God makes a wonderful promise to those who trust in Him. He says, if we will lean on Him and not lean on our own understanding that then He would direct our steps…in other words God is saying that if we will trust Him He is going to make our path in life straight.

We will be able to go to sleep at night knowing that God has taken care of everything… knowing that God has marked our way clearly that we would see that way and know which way to go…

But the fact of the matter is that we ONLY have this assurance and peace when we know that we have placed ALL our trust in God… and that we are NOT trying to lean on our own understanding!

In this particular passage the word trust means ‘to cling to’… so if we ‘cling to’ the Lord and His wisdom and providence and reject our own view of self-worth and wisdom… then we can realize this great promise of God in our lives…

Today you may be wondering if God is keeping His promises to you… you may think that you don’t have any assurances of Him keeping His promise and you may wonder why your life is out of kilter…

But understand that the doubt that you are experiencing is there only because you know that deep down inside yourself you have NEVER truly given Jesus ALL of who you are! You are holding back some of your marbles… but yet you are expecting God to give ALL of His!

When we learn to fully and totally surrender to God that is when we are going to experience the peace that Paul tells us that passes all human understanding. I hope and pray that tonight we can all sleep well and sound because we know that God is leading us and guiding us and we are NOT holding any of our marbles back from God!

Are you having trouble believing in or trusting in God and His promises for you? Are you sold out to Him today? Are you holding anything back?

Don’t allow ANYTHING or ANYONE hold you back from God! Turn it all over to Him right now… let’s pray!