Series: “How to Make it Through Tough Times”
Part 7
"Learning to Trust in God"
Pastor Jerry
------------------------------------- Message Synopsis -------------------------------------
Do you Trust God?
Have you ever wondered, how could a loving God allow the Pandemic, or the war in the Ukraine, or babies to die? Every fiber of our being wants to trust God.
To trust or not to trust, isn’t that always the question?
Whether we know it or not, we all trust in something every minute of every day.
What are you trusting? Hopefully,
when we trust God it’s not about us and what we can do,
but about Him and what He can do.
Repeatedly in Scripture the Bible says God has promised to help you – help you with every need of your life. In fact, one of the Hebrew names of God is
Jehovah Jirah, which means
“I am the God who provides for you.” God says,
“I will meet all your needs.”
One of the promises He gives is in Philippians 4:19
“My God will supply all that you need from His glorious resources in Christ Jesus.” What a Promise! He says,
“I’ll meet all your needs.”
The problem is this. You look around and obviously not everybody’s need is met.
What’s the problem? Is God teasing us?
Why is it that sometimes our needs go unmet?
The Bible tells us that with every promise there is a condition.
One of the conditions for this promise is you have to trust Him. The Bible says there is a
faith factor involved. Matthew 9:29, Jesus said,
“According to your faith it will be done unto you.” God says, “You get to choose how much He will bless your life.
It’s according to your faith. The obvious question then is how? How can I learn to trust God?
How can I learn to have greater faith?
Faith is like a muscle. That means it develops by being used. The more you use a muscle the stronger it gets. The more you use faith, the more it gets stretched. And the more it gets stretched, the more God is able to bless your life.
We call the circumstances that God creates to stretch our faith:
trials. And the Bible says in 1 Peter 1:7
“These trials are only to test your faith to show that it is strong and pure.”
Today I want to look at
four of the most common trials. Chances are you’re in one of these tests right now. In life
you will go through these four tests over and over again. They are an opportunity to develop faith so you can trust God more.
- THE PRESSURE TEST
The pressure test asks the question, “How will I handle stress?” Will I depend on myself or will I depend on God? Psalm 50:15
“I want you to trust Me in your times of trouble so I can rescue you and you can give Me glory.” God says, I want you to turn to Me when you’re in trouble, not to other things.
Sometimes under stress we go to the medicine cabinet, or complain to a friend, or fill up on comfort food, or go shopping, or binge TV watching, or drown ourselves in work. We all have our own little stress relievers. And after trying every way we can think of, then we come to God and hear Him say,
I want you to turn to Me. T
his is a test.
We have needs in our lives that need to be met. The problem is we try to meet our own needs ourselves. We don’t wait for God to work in our lives.
Jeremiah 2:13
“My people have done two evils. They have turned away from me the spring of living water and they’ve dug their own wells which are broken wells and cannot hold water.” Imagine this: God offers you, refreshing, fulfilling, living water, but you say, no, I’ll get my own.
We do this all the time.
How many times do we go ahead of God. We figure out our own plan to meet our needs and ask God to bless that plan.
God isn’t going to do it. Some of you right now are struggling with pressure in your life and the temptation is to do it your way.
“If you’re walking in darkness without a ray of light, trust in the Lord, and rely on your God.” We need to trust in the Lord.
This is a test!
- THE PEOPLE TEST
God often uses people in your life to test and stretch and develop your faith.
This test is “How will I handle disappointment?” Life is often disappointing. Things don’t turn out the way we planned them. Careers don’t, marriages don’t, our health doesn’t. But the most disappointing thing in life are people. Why do we get disappointed by people in life?
You get disappointed by people when you expect them to meet a need in your life that only God Himself can meet.
People are not the problem and they’re not the answer to the problem either. The answer to our failures, our lack of purpose, our boredom with life, our deep dissatisfaction is not another person.
The answer is God. The Bible says this in Isaiah 2:22
“You should stop trusting in people to save you because people are only human.” Don’t expect a person to be the answer to all your problems.
There is only One who can help, Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah 17:7
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made Him [not other people]
their hope and confidence.” What happens if you do this? Look at God’s promise in Isaiah 49:23
“Anyone who trusts in Me will not be disappointed.”
Do you know why you’re disappointed? Because you’re trusting in other things besides God.
Any time you are disappointed, it is a warning light that you have trusted in something else for your happiness besides God.
And if the truth were known, you often hide disappointment.
God has a loving plan for your life, that
God loves you and knows what you need more than you do, that
He’s in control. And that even the disappointments in your life have a positive purpose whether you understand it or not.
It’s a test.
Are you going to trust God with the things that disappoint your life? The Bible says,
“Anyone who trusts in Me will not be disappointed.”
- THE PERSISTENCE TEST
Will I keep my commitments? Life is about making commitments. Your life is shaped by your commitments. Your character is developed by your commitments. Your eternal destiny is determined by your commitments.
You become whatever you’re committed to.
For the uncommitted person there’s a word for this behavior: selfish, immature. Some of us need to understand that no commitment that really matters is easy.
They’re hard if they’re important. Your faith is being tested. I know the right thing to do but am I going to do the easy thing and the convenient thing.
It’s a test of your character.
Ecclesiastes 5:4
“If you make a promise to God don’t be slow to keep it. God is not happy with fools, so give God what you promised.” What commitments have you failed to follow through on? This is a test of your character and your faith.
Eccl. 8:5
“The wise man will find a time and a way to do what he says.” The wise person figures out a way to keep committed. Weak people give excuses. The Bible says in Psalm 15 that
“God blesses the person who keeps his vows even when it hurts.” That’s the kind of person God blesses and it’s a test of your character and a test of your faith.
- THE PRIORITIES TEST
This is the most important test of all. You will have this one many, many times.
The priorities test in life is Who will be first in my life? What will be first in my life? One of the great promises of the Bible deals with this test. Matthew 6:33 (NLT)
“Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs and He will give you all you need from day to day if you live for Him and make the kingdom of God your primary concern.”
You have legitimate needs in your life. Yet, God has promised to meet every one of those needs if you put Him first in every area of your life. How do you know if God is really first priority in your life? The way you spend your time and the way you spend your money and what you think about most often is what’s really top in your life. Those reveal the priorities in your life.
What is your greatest need? Which of the four tests is God’s testing your faith in how you’re going to trust Him.
Look at God’s promise. Isaiah 30:15
“This is what God says: ‘If you come back to Me and trust Me you will be saved and you will be strong.’” Notice two things God is interested in for you: salvation and strength. In James 1 it says,
“God blesses those who patiently endures testing. Afterwards they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those that love Him.” Trusting God is simply believing that He loves you and knowing He’s good, He has the power to meet your needs, and He wants to meet them.
Trusting is a choice, not a feeling. When circumstances tempt us to believe something different, God doesn’t change.
He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Because He does not change — because He is always loving, caring, powerful and almighty — we can trust Him.
God’s not asking us to ignore our feelings and to pretend that everything is alright when it isn’t. What He is asking us is to acknowledge that
He is God, the
God of creation, to
realize our need for Him alone, and today, turn and trust Him.
