Psalm 9:10

Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.

“Faith is a living well-founded confidence in the grace of God, so perfectly certain that it would die a thousand times rather than surrender its conviction. Such confidence and personal knowledge of divine grace makes its possessor joyful, bold, and full of warm affection toward God and all created things — all of which the Holy Spirit works in faith. Hence, such a man becomes without constraint willing and eager to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer all manner of ills, in order to please and glorify God, who has shown toward him such grace.”  Martin Luther

God asks us the question, do you trust me? Every day we place our trust in people and possessions. We trust our cars to get us to our destination, we trust our careers to deliver paychecks, we trust our doctors to heal our illnesses. All of these have one thing in common, at some point they fail our trust. But what happened to those who placed their trust in God? Moses trusted God to deliver the Israelites at the Red Sea. Joseph trusted God while he waited in pharaoh’s prison. David trusted God for a victory when he was facing Goliath. Jonah trusted God to answer his prayer in the belly of the fish. Peter and John trusted God as they stood before the Sanhedrin and gave their defense of the Christian faith.

Trust is a dependence on someone or something, a belief that it will happen. Trust is found in our unswerving belief that the God of Heaven will indeed work on our behalf to bring His perfect will for our lives to pass. What does it mean to trust? It means to depend on Him. We say that we trust God and yet there are times when trusting God does not seem so simple. Trusting God means we believe in that which we cannot see and sometimes may not understand. Trusting God seems to go against our human nature because trusting God means that we have to admit that we are not in control of our lives. We are very independent creatures that crave control and that in itself is one of the greatest obstacles to trust. Far too often we become completely focused on the trials and tribulations of life and we lose our focus on trusting Christ. When Peter walked on the water he was doing well until he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked at the waves. The same is true of us today, God can get us through the most impossible situations but we must keep our focus and trust on Him. Are you focused of the trials or the trust? How can we ever expect to find help and healing when we will only focus on our difficulties and not our deliverer? So God asks the question, do you trust me? Disasters strike and tragedies will happen in our lives. Life can indeed be hard, it can be uncertain, it is beyond our control, and in difficult times it is beyond our understanding. Sometimes we are left with raw emotions, and tough questions and the answers are beyond us as we grapple with the question of why. Yet nothing that we go through in this life is beyond God, the truth is that we can and must rely on Him in every situation. There will be times that just don’t make any sense in human terms and the more senseless life becomes the greater our need to trust in God becomes. God wants you to trust even when you don’t understand, when life just doesn’t make sense and the future seems uncertain. In 1887 John H. Sammis wrote the great hymn Trust and Obey:

When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,

What a glory He sheds on our way!

While we do His good will, He abides with us still,

And with all who will trust and obey. Refrain:

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

Not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies,

But His smile quickly drives it away;

Not a doubt or a fear, not a sigh or a tear,

Can abide while we trust and obey.

Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share,

But our toil He doth richly repay;

Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross,

But is blessed if we trust and obey.

But we never can prove the delights of His love

Until all on the altar we lay;

For the favor He shows, for the joy He bestows,

Are for them who will trust and obey.

Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet,

Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;

What He says we will do, where He sends we will go;

Never fear, only trust and obey.

Are you trusting today or trying? God promises that He will never forsake those who seek Him and the treasure we find in trusting Him is love from the God who is love, grace and peace from the God of all comfort, security from the God who never changes, protection, provision and His presence from the God who is all powerful, acceptance from the God who knows everything. Our treasure is eternity with the God who sacrificed His own Son so we could be forgiven. God is asking only one question, do you trust me? What is your answer today?

Psalm 37:3-5

3 Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.5 Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you.

In what do you trust? Where can you place your trust and know with complete certainty that what you have put your faith in is absolutely dependable? Every day we experience things that fail, that let us down, even the small things like a flat tire can leave us stranded.  Material things are not trustworthy and yet we are constantly tempted to place our trust in the things of this world. In 2000 Tom Hanks played Chuck Noland, a fast-paced FedEx executive who gets stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific after his plane crashes in the movie “Cast Away” In one of the packages that washes up on shore is a Wilson volleyball. As Hanks tries to start a fire with a sharp stick he cuts his hand and in anger, he takes the volleyball and throws it as hard as he can. When it lands he sees that his bloody hand has made an imprint, which looks like a fiery head. With his finger he draws a face in the blood and he talks to his new friend. All through the film he communicates with this volleyball, asking for his help and friendship. Yet nowhere in the film does Tom Hanks ever talk to God. Why would he have more trust in a volleyball than God? It just doesn’t seem to make any sense but it happens all the time, people put their trust in all kinds of things rather than God. They turn to friends, listen to Oprah and Dr. Phil, read self-help books and Dear Abby, but they never turn to Jesus. What you trust in will be what you end up with. If you trust in administration, you will get what administration can do. If you trust in hard work, you will get what hard work can do. If you trust in your personality, you will get what personality can do. If you trust in prayer, you get what God can do. Many of us struggle to commit our lives to God, we think about being all in but we never jump. Psalm 37 reveals some of the blessings or benefits of putting your trust in the Lord:

• Delight and Desires

Desires and delight go hand-in-hand and the desires of the heart are in direct relation to our delight in the Lord. It seems that you can’t have one without the other, no delight, no desires. Yet many of us have heart desires with no delight. We think that if God would make our desires come true then we would have delight. But the scripture says that what happens in our hearts starts first with our relationship with God. We first have to ask, what does scripture mean when it talks about the desires of the heart?

When most people think in terms of the “desires of the heart” they often think of what they want, what would make them happy. Many people day dream about winning the lottery because they think their hope of a better life rests in money. The psalmist is not declaring that if you are in the will of God you will get everything your heart desires, money included. This is not the “health and wealth” gospel where we delight in God and our dream comes true.  Our true happiness and joy comes from discovering the direction in which God is going and following Him. When this scripture talks of getting the desires of our hearts, it means that when we trust the Lord and follow Him, His desires will become our desires! Not the other way around. This means that we will receive the desires of our heart because they will be His desires! Our desires are often self-centered, but the Lord’s desire deals with ministering to others and serving one another in love. Jesus wasn’t interested in making himself comfortable or acquiring worldly security. He wasn’t interested in retirement so he could take it easy, His focus was on ministering to hurting people who were enslaved to sin and Satan! The more we put our trust in the Lord the more our desire will be to help hurting people. The greatest delight in life comes from helping others, from serving others in love!

• Divine Help

5 Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you.

We want God to come through and then we will follow through with our commitment but that is not faith. Many times we trust in God and … ourselves, others, our job, you fill in the blank. We trust God for some of the things but we don’t commit everything we do. Proverbs 3:5-6 says “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.” Trusting God gets into the very fabric of our lives, it should be flushed out in each step we take toward eternity. When God called Abraham to step out in faith in His plan for Abrahams life, Abraham had to trust God. Have you ever imagined what that dialogue was like? I imagine God saying “Abraham, this is God speaking. I want you to leave everything and go to the land I will show you.”  “Where’s that?” “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” “Try me.” “Its many miles from here in a place called Canaan.” “Never heard of it.” “I know, and guess what else?” “What?”  “I’m going to make you the father of a great nation.” “That’s impossible. I don’t have any children.”   “Don’t worry.” “What do you mean, don’t worry?” “Just trust me.”  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You want me to leave everything, travel across the desert to some place I’ve never heard of, and become the father of a great nation.” “Right.” “Is this some kind of joke?” “No.”  “What am I supposed to tell my wife?” “That’s your problem.”

Our greatest question should not be what are others going to think if I trust God but will I completely commit to trust Him. Because who we trust will determine the direction of our lives and our trust needs to be in the Master, not man or material things. What do you delight in? What are the desires of your heart? Whose strength are you doing life in? Are you leaning on His divine help? What direction are you really heading? Who are you trusting in?