Trust

Trust

Proverbs 3:5-7

Perhaps you have not caught on to what God has had me doing in the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago we had a message on Authority where we were reminded about the authority of every Christian. We discussed teachers, the president, and police as sources of authority. We talked about how power is shared in our government and how that happens in the church as well. This means that Christians have the authority to act on behalf of God in every situation. To be more exact we talked about the fact that we are accepted to do things for God with His authority. IF we don’t use it we will loose it.

If you don’t act with authority or a person with real knowledge, then no one will see you as a person that knows anything about God….That means you are not letting anyone know that you are a Christian…..If no body knows…then are you a Christian? God’s army does not have a secret service.

Most Christians are frightened to live as an authority for God.

Then last week we talked about commitment. How we make them all the time, just an automatic way of life. We avoid commitments using selective listening. Scriptures tell us that we all too often fail to do anything beyond listening. God expects us to be dong something. Our commitment to God actually requires us to listen to God and do something. God is speaking are we listening?

Today we have the third word and it is the last letter of the word that God gave me. Today we are talking about trust.

Trust is not something that we give very easily. I have heard it said that, “Trust is never given it is earned.” That seems to be a true statement to me. In the past few years there has been a fad for businesses to send their employees on team building trips. Berry College has executives come on campus all the time. Lots of other groups do the same.

The course starts with simple things like getting a person to fall backwards and TRUST another person or group of people to catch them.

By the time the weekend is over. people are jumping from telephone pole to phone poll 30 to 50 feet off the ground, trusting their team not the let them fall to certain injury or their death. The team holds the safety ropes as the person takes these serious risks….It’s really dangerous, if the team does their part.

I guess that we learn how to trust as infants. We understand encouragement as we learn to walk. We learn hot, and No and jump from family.

When my children were little it seemed they would never trust me with one thing. When they were in the bath and I shampooed their hair…I would tell them to keep their eyes closed and lean back into the water coming from the bath tub faucet. It would be going pretty good until the trust wore off and the child suddenly leaned up and soap and water flooded their face, getting it into their eyes.

They rubbed their face and eyes with their hands and the crying and anger would start. You would have thought that I had tried to drown them.

It they would just let me help them it would be over in two minutes. But they blamed me when they failed to do as I said.

As I thought about the word trust, I started to notice that in reality we trust things all the time without testing. I trust bridges as I drive my car around town. I trust my alarm clock to keep time and the alarm to go off at the correct time.

I expect my bank to keep the little money I have safe and to process the checks we write correctly.

Do you know how many times I have gotten on a plane and not known any body that built it, the repair people and not even the pilot? Talk about trust…

All the things that could go wrong with that and I got on the plane. What was I thinking?

So where does that leave us with today’s scripture? Starting with 5 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

This passage in proverbs tells us to trust God with all our heart and not to depend on what we understand. That sounds easy enough. But, how often have I had doubts in the trust I have placed in other people, businesses and even objects.

Have you ever been walking and picked up a stick to use as a walking stick and have it prove to be rotten even though it looked sound it failed your purpose. How about when a family member failed to do as expected? Does our trust get destroyed? What about when the new car fails to crank or any other situations where we felt let down? Doesn’t that leave us a little timid on giving our trust to any person or thing?