In God Do We Trust?

In God we trust? 7/25/2005

Proverbs 3:5-6

I have a riddle for you. What words do we share on a daily basis without even opening our mouths? In God we trust. Those are the words that you will find in all of our current currency.

Our money may have it stamped on it, but do our hearts? It is one thing to say we trust God and then it is another thing to actually trust Him.

A man was out jogging one day and as he passed a cliff, he got too close and fell. Grabbing hold of a branch he was stranded. No way up and certainly no way down. He began to scream, “Help, help, is there anyone up there who can hear me.” He yelled for hours and was about to give up when he heard a voice.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Yes, I can hear you I’m down here.”

“I can see you, are you alright?”

“Yes, but...who are yo and where are you?”

“I am the Lord, I am everywhere.”

“The Lord? You mean God?”

“That’s me.”

“God, help me, I promise that if you get me down from here, I’ll stop sinning. I’ll be a really good person and serve you for the rest of my life.”

“Easy on the promises. First let’s get you down, then we can discuss those.”

“I’ll do anything, Lord, just tell me what to do, okay?”

“Okay, let go of the branch.”

“What?”

“I said, let go of the branch. Just trust me, let go.”

PAUSE

“Help, Help, is there anybody else up there?”

I can give you a lot of reasons why we should trust God. But our text hits the nail on the head. King Solomon tells us the main reason why we should trust God is when we trust God, He guides us. Our part is to do the trusting and His part is to do the guiding. When you trust in God it will make a huge difference in your life. So this morning let me give you three things that will help us to put our trust in God.

We need to be Confident in Gods Care (Vs.5)

Trust here in the Hebrew means to put all of your weight. An example would be like when you go to bed tonight, you lie down trusting that the bed will fully support your weight. Kids will run and jump into bed, and then when you get my age you just fall into bed, but either way you don’t give it a second thought. You don’t keep one foot on the floor so that you can get up if the bed won’t support you. You put all of your weight on the bed.

When you put your trust in God, you put all your weight on Him. And that is why God says in our text, “with all your heart”. You either give Him all your trust or none at all. Half hearted trust is like wholehearted doubt. But did you ever ask yourself why you don’t give God your complete trust? Ask yourself, has He ever given you a reason not to trust Him.

I think about as a parent raising a child, especially a teenager. You want to trust them but if they give you any reason not to, like you catch them lying to you or something. Then it makes it hard to trust them. But God never has or will never let you down. He has never forsaken you or misleads you. So we should be confident that He is only after our best interest (Even though you might not understand His will) and we should be able to give Him our full trust.

That is why the verse finishes with, “And lean not on your own understanding”. If you put what you think ahead of what God thinks then you will be living in the darkness and not in the light. So you have to ask yourself, am I going to trust God or am I going to lean on my own understanding.

Think about instances we read about in the Bible. When a little boy named David was getting ready to go up and fight someone who was 9’9” tall. He can dunk a basketball and never even jump. So King Saul went and brings his own armor and puts on David and Saul was a full-grown man and David says, “Look Saul, I can’t even walk in this”. So I’m sure that Saul was thinking let me see if I can find one your size. But David said no I don’t need them. I trust in the God who killed the lion and the bear to protect me more than I do your fancy armor.

So David when out and chose five smooth stones and he took his sling to go out and face this giant and he took one stone and stuck him in the forehead and killed him. Now that was not under nobody’s understanding, just David trusting in God.