Loving God Through Trusting Series

Loving God Through Trusting

Series: First Love: Forming Our Love for God

Brad Bailey – March 12, 2023

Intro

Do you remember when someone you consider yourself to love… spouse…parent… friend… when you said… “I want to stagnate this love… ?” “I want my love to fade and fizzle…so that it doesn’t really grab my heart.”

I don’t imagine any of us do… but we know that it can happen…that what once had taken a dominant place in us… has faded.

> And the same is true with God.

When I first heard… my soul was home… and my heart was stirred by my love for God.

That love was a first love… and knowing that we can loose that first love… our focus during this Lenten season… is that of restoring our love for God.

PRAYER

Today…the role of trust in our love for God.

In our earthly love… there is a process of trust that is essential to forming a true connection… and especially the process of deepening that connection.

If we think about an initial season of dating…there is a process of connecting….and beneath it lies a process of trust. And it can eventually lead to a decision to commit one’s life to the other person.

And then a common change often comes… having declared their trust… the process of growing to know the other…to share and risk more deeply often slows down.

This can happen with God.

And the truth is that we can’t just go back to the initial rush of when we fist began a relationship… neither with another person…nor with God.

But trust is something that we can always deepen… something we can continue to develop.

Trust is not something we just have… it is something we develop.

Trust is not something we are often conscious of… or focused on…but it is at work beneath our lives all the time.

> Every day you are exercising trust…in nature…in things and people.

Sun would rise….Gravity. Chair. People.

Every exchange… between people….involves trust…from a simple greeting…to major commitments.

Some level of trust is required to carry out basic roles and functions within a society.

And the trust is about the role that someone is in.

• We need trust in those we buy things from to properly exchange money with.

• We need trust in an employer to treat us fairly.

• We need trust that a driver or pilot can get us where we’re going safely.

We are extending something…and when we extend our trust… and in so doing, we are honoring that we believe another will be trustworthy. [1a]

And so our trust in God…is that which honors that God is God.

Our trust in God is what honors God as God.

Trust establishes the nature of a relationship…who one really is to us.

When people feel that someone doesn’t trust them to fulfill the role they are to have in their life… they naturally may come to that point where they stop and say… “Do you trust me?” One is recognizing that despite what we may claim someone is in our life… they really can’t be that if we don’t trust them.

• A coach… I need to know if you trust me or I can’t really be your coach.

• A dentist might say…” You won’t open your mouth… if you don’t trust me then I really can’t be your

dentist.”

And in the most ultimate of all relationships… God is calling us to trust Him for who He actually is.

When God calls us to trust Him as God… it is because that is who He is… … and what only He can

actually be for us… God. [1b]

“Trust is the very dynamic that reveals whether God is our God.”

He seeks our trust because He seeks us to know Him as God… because He is God.

This is a vital opportunity for us to be honest with God… and ourselves.

We probably all recognize that words can be easier than reality….that it is easier to say what we

believe…than to actually believe… and manifest that reality with our actions… our trust.

The Bible uses another word that refers to trust… it is “faith.”

Now the word “faith” in our current culture is often used to speak of the set of beliefs…or

propositions associated with a religion. in this sense people speak of “The Christian Faith.”

And as fitting as that use of the word may be… it’s vital that we don’t think that we can simply believe in

some set of propositions as some form of academic agreement.

We can form a way of accepting such beliefs without actually exercising faith in any way.

And we can use the word “faith” in a very sentimental way.

• “Faith” is a nice word… positive… popular… but it has no real meaning until it it is given