Trust God In Everything

Scripture: Proverbs 3.5-8; Luke 17.5-10


Have you ever marveled at a sleeping child? It is one of my favorite times to look at my sons. They’re quiet, for one thing. But also, they are beautiful when they sleep. They sleep the sleep of innocence. No troubles can touch them in their beds. No harm can come to them. They are protected. Anyone who has looked at a sleeping baby knows what I’m talking about. Everything about them is beautiful. They drool on the pillow – “Ahh, look isn’t that cute!”. Or they pass gas – “Oh, did you hear that? They tooted! How lovely!”

We grownups aren’t as attractive in our sleeping, I think. We kind of sprawl out and our faces go every which way. And we snore. And nothing is cute anymore. “Look, they’re drooling, eeewww!” I mean, I haven’t watched myself sleep, I’m just going by what I’ve seen in others. But I assume I’m as unattractive as anyone.

But here is what is beautiful about we sleeping unbeauties: we sleep because we trust.

We can fall asleep not just because we’re tired but because we trust that no harm will come to us or to those we care about while we rest. When you have trouble falling asleep, is it more because you’re not tired or because your mind is racing with worries and troubles? When we sleep well, we are implicity saying, Lord I leave it all it your hands now – I’m going to bed. That’s a very spiritual thing.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. . .”

Trust is a better word than believe. Trusting in God is really what believing in God is about. Because trust is so much stronger than “giving mental assent’ which is how we usually think of “believe.” Trust is putting your life in God’s hands time and time again. Trust is saying to God that I know you know what you’re doing, better than I do.

God knows what he’s doing when he teaches us about living. If we are willing to forgo “leaning on our own understanding,” and letting God have a go at it, we might just be amazed at how life begins to work for us.

I have to admit that I am often reluctant to not go with my first instincts and my perceived wisdom. And often God works through experience and insight and intuition that we possess or has been given to us. But there must always be a prayerful request and recognition, “Not my way Lord, but your way.”

“In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Our ways – our habits, our routines, our thoughts, these are the things that must be transformed if we would be changed people of the Kingdom. As we talked about last Spring, our habits and behaviors are the means by which most sin happens in our lives and our world.

The group, Caedmon’s Call, has a song called, “Share in the Blame.” A line in the song goes,

“Don’t blame the president, don’t blame the king, don’t blame your history for what you might have been. We will be free where the grass is green and the lion is tame, if we just hold up the mirror now and share in the blame.”

Our sinful nature is expressed through cracked hearts and crooked minds. That’s really who we are to begin with. Our capacity for rationalizing our sin is self-starting. It’s the Energizer Bunny. And no matter how much we have paid the price for our sinful behavior in the past, our bent minds say to us, “This time will be different. I’ve the got the angle now. I’ll stop before anyone gets hurt.”

“Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.”

Fear the Lord means having proper reverence for his wisdom. Your way is better God. Your way is always better. Jesus, you do everything well. You’re the Master. You’re the One.

In moments of temptation or doubt, if you find it hard to reverence God’s wisdom, then at least fear His wrath so that you can shun evil. If we do this much, just shun the evil that our cracked hearts and crooked minds have trained us for, then we will experience health and life and refreshment.

Hear the Good News: the Lord does not deal with us as we deserve but according to His grace and the character of His love. Grace, his powerful presence, is poured out on the scales of justice like a huge pitcher of iced tea. Hmmmm, beautiful!

Trust is the appropriate response to God’s wonderful grace.

Many of you I’m sure have seen the WWII movie, Saving Private Ryan. It’s the story of how a platoon of soldiers is asked to risk their lives in the middle of the Allied Invasion of German-occupied Europe to find and bring home alive one soldier, Private James Ryan. The movie is based on a true story. The platoon finds Ryan, but at great cost in lives. The captain of the platoon, played by Tom Hanks, before he dies has words of instruction for Private Ryan.

Earn this. Make your life count. Earn this.

The lives of many were given for the life of one. This is the opposite of how God expressed his love for us in Jesus Christ – the life of One was given for the many. And yet the response to such a gift is very similar: Earn this. Make your life count for something. Justify the sacrifice.

Of course we cannot pay back the sacrifice of Christ. But we can live out that sacrifice. We can acknowledge Him in all our ways. We can say thank you for His grace with our trust.

“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. . .Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”