The Trust Factor

Building Lasting Values

“The Trust Factor”

{Listen to the audio at https://mega.nz/#!HQ8HQSiA!BtI7iq0eee8l6zTpgyeZOOP7Cyy-ms9qbBMjg1ecg_U }

In our series on building lasting values, we’re looking to develop those standards and values by which we are to live our lives by in order to build up the House of God within us. Last week we looked at accepting responsibility for our lives. Now we need to ask, “Who are we going to trust?”

There’s a dramatic decline of trust in our society: nobody trusts anybody, and we wonder, “What’s the truth.” We’ve become skeptical of everything and everybody, and there’s a high price to pay for such low trust.

Customers don’t trust businesses, employees don’t trust their bosses, and nobody trusts the government. And that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because in politics, telling the truth gets politicians in trouble.

In a survey they discovered that the least trusted professions are telemarketers, used car salesmen, and at the bottom is politicians.

But overall, what’s really behind this decline in trust is when we hear all these bogus claims and promises over and over again, but they never come about. They aren’t true. The answer is what we talked about at the beginning of our series, and that is Truth Decay. Our society doesn’t value truth. Instead it values convenience and pragmatism, or, is it easy and does it work, and it really doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.

Think about these two words, truth and trust. Did you know that there is only one letter difference between them, which to me means that you only trust those who tell the truth? The only problem is that we are human beings who make some pretty dumb mistakes, and say some pretty dumb things, and being honest isn’t part of our sinful makeup.

But, still, when God made us, He wired us in such a way that we have the capacity and the desire to trust someone or something, and since we are all sinful and liars by nature, we need someone who is greater than ourselves to trust, which fits into God’s original design, and that is in our need to trust in and have a relationship with Him.

And here’s the kicker, if we don’t learn to trust God, then we’ll end up creating something else to trust in. It may be a diploma on the wall, or money in the bank, a spouse or child. It may be a career, a goal, or any number of things, but we will create something to place our trust in. It’s built into our operating system.

The Bible calls it creating an idol. Whenever we trust a person or a thing more than God, they become an idol in our lives. Now the second Commandment in God’s Big Ten, that is, the Ten Commandments, is “don’t make for yourself an idol,” and that’s because it isn’t healthy.

“Watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol.” (Deuteronomy 4:15b-16a NIV)

Another version says, “For your own good don’t sin by making an idol in any form.”

?Today I’d like to look at three basic questions when it comes to the issue of developing trust.

• What happens when we trust something or someone more than God?

• Why does it seem so difficult to trust God?

• Why we need to trust God?

What Happens When We Trust Something More Than God?

Actually, two negative effects happen.

1. We’ll Become Disappointed

Anytime we expect other’s to meet a need that only God can meet, we’re going to end up disappointed. Even if what we choose to trust is a good thing, like family and friends, we’ll end up disappointed, because they don’t have the power to fully fulfill our needs.

We say stuff like, “If I could just find Mr. or Mrs. Right, then I will be fulfilled,” or “If I could just get this job,” or “If I could just make X amount of money, then I’d feel significant.” But what we’re doing is creating idols.

To those who create idols, the prophet Jeremiah said, “Everyone is senseless and without knowledge; every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. His images are a fraud; they have no breath in them.” (Jeremiah 10:14 NIV)

Jeremiah is saying that those who make and put their trust in idols will be disappointed, because there is no real life within them.

When we look at natives in remote locations who carve wooden idols and bow down to them, we think, “How primitive.” Yet, we do it all the time. We carve out for ourselves careers, relationships, and money market funds only to end up bowing down to them.

And so, if we don’t trust God, then we’ll create something else to take God’s place. And it’s pretty amazing what we end up putting our trust in. We spend billions of dollars every year on all these psychic hot lines, horoscopes, and palm reading mumbo-jumbo, while hanging crystals around our necks and off our rearview mirrors. But none of these help, and in the end we’ll be disappointed.