Trusting God, Part 1

One of the toughest, yet most vital things that a Christian must learn to do is trust God with every aspect of our lives. It's easy to say that we trust God. But do we? Do we really put everything we have in His hands?

This morning in church, Bill Dripps, an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in State College said: if someone today told you that something you had would be worth nothing tomorrow; but today someone offered you a ton of money for it, would you sell it? Of course we should. - This is what God has already given us. As much as many people hate to even think about it, we will all surely die. And when we do, our bodies will rot and memories of us will fade away. But if our stock is in Christ, if we trust Him, we are given everything in exchange for something that will be worth the value of dirt tomorrow.

A resource that has been incredibly helpful for me in terms of learning to trusting God is a book by Jerry Bridges called "Trusting God". I would really encourage you to read it if you haven't already, but simply because I tend to go back and read over the notes I took while reading the book (possibly every other week) I'm going to do a 14 part series summarizing each chapter.

Chapter 1: Can you trust God?
Life is full of large scale problems that cause us to be anxious, as well as many daily and frequent small scale issues. These small mundane events are temporal and insignificant in comparison to the major events but we should not overlook them. - we tend to say things like "If God really loves me, why can't I get my locker open?" It is easy to apply prosperity gospel to these situations if we wrongly apply a verse like Psalm 50:15 which says: "And call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor Me."

We don't know what any day will bring forth (Proverbs 27:1). So then (rhetorically) "how can we trust God when pain and adversity fill our lives?"

We can trust him because of promises like that made in Psalm 32:10 which says "Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him."

Jerry asks: "do you have such a relationship with God and such a confidence in Him that you believe He is with you in your adversity even though you do not see any evidence of his presence and His power?" It is not easy to trust God in times of adversity because no one enjoys pain.

Ecclesiastes 7:13 says "consider what God has done: who can straighten what he has made crooked?" - God puts us in situations and he can get us out of them. Often times we cannot get ourselves out of situations...only God can.

It is much easier to obey God than to trust Him - however both are equally important. Disobeying is to defy his authority and despise his holiness. To fail to trust is to doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness.

"In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense". We must learn to trust God even when we don't understand.

We must believe the following in order to trust God:

1. God is completely sovereign - He has the power to bring about what is best for us. Lamentations 3:37-38 says "Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?"
2. God is infinite in wisdom - He always knows what is best for us. We should be comforted with the fact that God is in control of our lives because He has a purpose for our adversity. Isaiah 38:17 says "Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish"
   
3. God is perfect in love - He always wills what is best for us. Lamentations 3:32-33 says "Though He brings grief, He will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men"
   

We need to learn to appropriate these three truths in ALL of our daily circumstances.

"Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you" - Psalm 9:10. We need to know God - not just facts about him. We must have a close and personal relationship with God in order to trust Him.