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?

Proverbs 30:5

Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.

We are God’s creation, He made us to be dependent on Him, we were not meant to go it alone. We need God and He has provided a Revelation of Himself and His ways through the Bible. In it we find the solution to every situation. Through the Word there is wisdom for everyone regardless of poverty or wealth, it provides guidance to everyone whether in the first century or the twenty-first. His word is pure and when we trust in His word we discover our:

• Person

Through God’s spoken Word we not only come to know Him but we have a true revelation of who we are. Many of us struggle through this life because we really don’t know who we are. We get our identity from the wrong place, we get our sense of self and identity from society, it’s part of a process called socialization. We gain our sense of self from the way others view us and social media is one of the biggest contributors helping to fuel many false identities. When we get our identity from the way other people view us, we are guaranteed to end up confused as to who we truly are. One person might say that I am smart; another might say that I am stupid. One person might say that I am beautiful; another might say that I am ugly. One person might say that I am funny; another that I am boring. Socialization will always give us mixed reviews about ourselves and the end product is that we will always end up being confused, insecure, and unsure of ourselves. The question, “Who am I?” is a question that everyone asks themselves at some point in their life and it is a question that desperately needs to be answered. Your understanding of who you are determines how you live your life. The truth is, the only one who knows you well enough to teach you who you really are is not your parents or your friends, but your Creator. The one who made you is the only one that knows you well enough to teach you who you really are. Unfortunately, you cannot sit down with Him as though he were human and interview him and get him to teach you about who he made you to be, but fortunately for us, he has given us a manual in which we can learn about our identity, who we really are. We also discover His:

• Power

Proverbs says that God’s Word is pure but it is also powerful. In the beginning in Genesis the bible says that God spoke into the nothingness and the nothing became the something that He spoke. He said, “Let there be light,” and immediately there was light. Those were some power packed words and we need to be reminded that His Word can change not only our surroundings but our souls. Remember when Lazarus was dead for three days and Jesus came to the tomb and told them to roll away the stone? What did he do? He spoke, “Lazarus, come out!” and instantly, Lazarus stepped forth. He spoke light into darkness and life into death! Do you want to hear the words of light and life so that you can know who you truly are? Is it time to become a student of the scriptures to sit at His feet and have Him teach you through His Word? The Word of God is sufficient for you for whatever spiritual condition you are in today. If you are without Christ, you need the pure Word. Are you are backslidden and battling a terrible mess in your life? You need the pure Word. Are you hurting today? The Bible is the answer. Do you need washed from the dirt of this world? Bathe in the Bible. God’s Word is a mirror that allows us to see Christ and gives us the hope of becoming who God sees us to be. God’s word is pure and powerful and lastly through it we discover His:

• Protection

In Matthew 4:4 Satan tempted Jesus to turn the stones into bread and Jesus said: “People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

In the most extreme situation Satan comes with temptation and God allowed Christ to be in this dire circumstance to demonstrate the sufficiency of His Word. Jesus could have defeated the evil one in a number of ways, He could have overcome Satan with a host of angels. He could have used his own Almighty Power that he used to create the world, yet Christ chose not to exercise the authority of the Godhead. Christ could have defeated the tempter by unveiling his own glory. The brightness of the divine majesty was hidden within the humility of human form and he could have lifted the veil. But Jesus decided to conceal His power and glory and only defend himself with these words: “It is written.” He could have defended Himself with logic. He could have broken down the argument with the greatest philosophy, for there was no greater mind that walked the earth. Satan gave three great propositions but the Lord answered him each time with the same three words: “It is written.” He had only one argument to give Satan: The pure Word of God.

The pure Word of God is not only sufficient, it is superior for every situation. Whose word are you trusting in to discover who you are? Whose words are you depending on, socializations or the Saviors?