Cool.
Okay. Thank you so much, Josh, for sharing that. Let’s begin our word with some prayer.
Lord, we do humble ourselves, and we want to acknowledge that we need Your Spirit to reveal Your Word to us. So I ask that, as You use me for the next thirty minutes, You will glorify Thyself, glorify Thy Son. In Jesus’ name, amen.
All right. So, hi, everyone. I will be talking about trust today.
I have picked out a theme verse. I hope the letters are much larger so you can actually read them now. People in the back, can you see it? Good, perfect.
This is from Proverbs 3:5-6. This is a verse that has carried me through this past year. I’m not just here talking to you guys about a cool verse I found the other day. This is a verse that I’ve been meditating on, and I have seen it in reality. That is why I want to share it with you guys.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
So, I first of all want to encourage both young and old to go ahead and memorize this verse if you haven’t already. Memorize it and own it for yourself, okay?
Now, as you guys probably know, I’m probably on the younger side in this room right here. But I am making sure to own this verse for myself because I know that, as I live this Christian life, this will continue to help me just walk with the Lord.
Because, guys, this Christian life—I mean, I think some of the older brothers and sisters in this room will tell you younger ones—this Christian life isn’t easy. So memorize the Word of God. Put it in your heart so that when trials and hardships come up, you’ll be able to lean back and fall on Him.
So once again, I’m talking about trust, right? What kind of trust am I referring to? “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
Michael, can you come up here for a second? Back in the day, there was a game called Trust Fall. Can you catch me? Oh, wait—you’re 160? Yeah? Okay. All right, cool.
So, Trust Fall: I basically stand, and I have somebody behind me, hopefully, right? And I just fall back. See? Just like that. Okay, Michael, thank you. You can sit down.
I think that is the type of trust we need to have in the Lord. That’s what it means when we should trust in the Lord with all our heart. It ruins the point of the game if Michael is behind me and I keep looking back, like, “Oh, is he going to catch me?”
So that’s the type of trust that the Lord wants us to have in Him, right?
Some additional facts about this verse: King Solomon wrote this to his own son. He literally addressed his son, like, “My son, I write to you.” Likewise, Galatians 3:26 says that we are sons of God through faith in Jesus.
So take this verse as though God is writing to you: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Trust in our heavenly Father with all our heart, and lean not on our own understanding.
I want to take that second part: “Lean not on your own understanding.” As humans, we grow up, right? With a baby, you go ahead and potty train them, and eventually you hope that they will learn how to use the toilet themselves.
You know, with Noah and Sarah, eventually you’re going to have to potty train Carter. But hopefully, one day, he can just go and do it by himself. It is our natural human tendency to build up experiences.
But why does it say, “Lean not on your own understanding”? I think it is good that the Lord actually disciplines us and gives us experience so we can grow. But even when we are the age of Sister Dora here—we should still, I say that very kindly, you know, praise the Lord—we should still rely on the Lord.
Even though, Sister Dora, you’ve been blessed with many years by the Lord, all this experience—you shouldn’t just lean back on it always, but always go back to the Lord, right? Because the Lord is the One that the experience comes from. I tried to say that in the nicest way possible. If I said something wrong, you can talk to me afterwards.
All right, the last part: “In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” In all your ways—whether you like to go to the gym, like Elias, or you like to cut wood and go fishing, like Patrick, or I don’t know what other hobbies you guys have—whatever it is, acknowledge the Lord, and He will direct your path. Okay?
It’s kind of strange because I went on Google the other day and searched up motivational quotes. What popped up was, “Believe in yourself. You are enough. If you need something to believe in, start with yourself.”
At face level, this looks pretty motivational, pretty inspirational. It looks good, but hold on a second. Should I really be believing in myself? Am I really enough?
I think, from a couple head shakes in this room, we as Christians—or we people who have been raised with the Bible—would know that, hmm, I don’t think I’m enough. If I can’t save myself for eternity, why would I lean and trust in myself?
So here is what the Bible says in rebuttal to our current culture.
The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart;
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.—Jeremiah 17:9-10
So you’re telling me I can’t even trust my own heart. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Guess what? Fun fact: you and I, we don’t really know our hearts, and so we can’t trust ourselves.
Whatever the culture is trying to tell us—“Oh, believe in yourself. You’re enough.”—no, guys, we’re really not. We’re really not. That’s a big reason why most of us here are saved now: because we realized we had a big lack. That’s what drove us to Jesus. That’s the gospel right there.
We are not enough to save ourselves; thus, we have to run to Jesus.
Once again, I’m talking about trusting in the Lord, right? Why? Why should we trust in the Lord? Here is a verse that I think gives us a beautiful image of it.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And shall not fear when heat comes;
But its leaf will be green,
And shall not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.—Jeremiah 17:7-8
Whoa. Patrick, you love agriculture, right? Is this a good location for a tree to be planted? Oh, yeah. It’s right next to water, right? Josh talked about it in his message, but water gives life. The Lord is our water. He is the One who gives us that type of life.
Think about it, right? The verse says the tree will not fear when heat comes. What are some types of heat in our life? How about trials? How about tribulations? How about persecutions? How about just tough times? That is heat.
Heat kills a plant if it is not well protected. In the same way, we as Christians can have a lot of heat blasting on us that can hurt us, right? But this type of tree that trusts in the Lord will not fear any heat.
The same thing applies in a year of drought. Plants need water. We all learned this in elementary school, or even before. But water, once again, gives life, and without water, the plant is just going to die.
We know from the promise of God that if you trust in the Lord, you will not fear times of drought—times where it seems like you’re just going to fall flat on your face—because the life of God is always flowing to you, right?
Part of trusting in God is recognizing that He is our Father, right? A father will discipline those he loves. There is a verse for this in the same chapter of Proverbs, literally a couple verses after.
My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor detest His correction;
For whom the Lord loves He corrects,
Just as a father the son in whom he delights.—Proverbs 3:11-12
Raise your hand if you love discipline. Oh, we’ve got some people doing this. All right. Well, I think you would learn to love discipline if you realize that, hopefully, it is for your own good, right? In the meantime, it is not fun at all.
When we walk with the Lord and learn to trust Him with all our heart, He is going to be like, “Okay, but My son, because I love you so much, I’m going to bring some things into your life that will feel kind of uncomfortable at first.”
There will be things where you will be asking Him, “Father, why? Why is this happening? I thought You loved me. I thought You cared. What’s going on?” But these are all for our greater good, and they will actually make us more like His Son, Jesus.
Let me just tell you guys a quick story of how I got disciplined. This was quite harsh discipline I received from the Lord last fall.
I had just moved into college, and I was going through orientation. I looked at my phone and had just gotten an email from my PayPal account. PayPal is a place where you can hold some money, right?
PayPal sent me an email that said, “Somebody changed your password. If this wasn’t you, do all this.” Then I got another email: “Somebody changed the email to your account. If this wasn’t you, do all this.”
I was like, “Wait, wait, I did not do that.” So I opened up the PayPal app, and sure enough, I couldn’t log in. I tried everything. I even tried to reset my password, but guess what? Somebody had hacked into my account and reset everything.
They reset my account email, so I couldn’t even recover my password or change the password. I was totally helpless.
This whole process of getting my account back took a whole month of contacting customer support and praying a ton about it. But after thirty days, I finally got everything back.
I was actually quite thankful. I said to the Lord, “Thank You. Thank You for disciplining me.” Because this whole time, I didn’t know I needed it, but I was starting to fall in love with money, just a little bit.
The Lord used this incident, where somebody had hacked into my PayPal account, to show me, “Ryan, My son, money can only bring you temporary joy. It can be taken away just like this with a hacker, and then it’s gone.”
You can spend all your life working for money, but what is it going to amount to, right? It can be taken away just like that. So don’t put your hope in it. Don’t put your trust in it. Trust in Me.
Once again, I bring up the theme verse, right? Let’s read this all together, okay?
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.—Proverbs 3:5-6
All right, thank you, guys. Once again, I think I shared a little bit about this in the beginning: this verse really does mean a lot to me. The reason I want to share it in front of all of you guys, both young and old, is because I believe that it is so true, and I have seen in my own life that it is a reality.
It doesn’t do any good for me to just pick out a cool motivational quote from the Bible and blast it at y’all without actually experiencing it.
Here we’re going to get into a little bit of story time. I’m going to share some evidence in my life of the Lord answering my prayers.
As you guys may know, this past fall I went ahead and went to college for the first time to attend my freshman year. There is a picture of me. I look very happy and everything. This was my first day of moving in.
Fun fact, though: I had zero friends at that time. I didn’t know many people at all who went to this college. An even funner fact: I took this picture myself. You would think it would be my mom or my six-foot dad, but no. I set my phone up on a closet, and I just posed awkwardly as the timer went down. That’s how we got that photo.
Going into college, I was kind of nervous. It was a whole new world and all this stuff. But the most important thing I knew I needed was some good friends—not just good friends, but some godly friends. Some friends who would lead me in the way of the Lord.
The whole summer, while I was a little scared of all these college classes—“They’re going to be tough. How am I going to balance this and that?”—one thing I prayed about all the time, one thing I trusted the Lord with, was this: “God, I need some godly friends when I get to college. Please, if it is Your will, when I get there, surround me with people who will build me up. Surround me with people who will sharpen me, as iron sharpens iron.”
You guys might be thinking to yourselves, “Oh, Ryan, you just want some godly friends. That’s cool. Maybe I don’t need godly friends, though.” But here is what the Bible says about friends.
Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
But the companion of fools suffers much.—Proverbs 13:20
Do not be deceived:
Bad company ruins good character.—1 Corinthians 15:33
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin,
But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.—Proverbs 18:24
Now, in preparing these slides, I had to cut out a ton of verses, but I could go on and on and on about the Bible saying that we need to surround ourselves with good people—not just good people, but godly people.
Going into college, I was like, yeah, I know how easy it is to make friends at college. But I wanted some genuine friends—those friends that are a little harder to find. I wanted friends who not only say they are Christian, but actually live out a life reflected in the Bible, right?
Because I will say, guys, in college there are a lot of people who will say, “Oh yeah, I’m Christian. I was raised up in church.” But you just take a look at their life, examine the fruit, and you will see very quickly: are you really a Christ follower, or are you just somebody who uses the name of Christ?
So anyways, I went ahead and prayed a ton, as you guys know, and praise the Lord.
Here are a couple photos. Once again, I struggled with compiling all of these because I had too many photos. I was like, “Oh, okay, which one should I keep? Which one should I delete?”
But I don’t want you guys to focus too hard on the photos themselves. Just know that the Lord, throughout this year, did not bless me with a ton of great friends on the first day at college. No, it was a process.
Little by little, week by week, I would make one friend, and then another week, another friend. By the end of the year, I could look back on my phone and see all these photos.
The Lord has surrounded me with so many wonderful brothers that we can do so many things together. We can play basketball. We can go out to eat. One awesome thing is that we read the Bible every single week, and continuing on during the summer, we even have our own Bible study every Tuesday online. That’s something so special.
This is a group of guys that the Lord has blessed me with to the point where I don’t have to eat dinner alone. Every single time I go to the dining hall, I just send a text to the group chat, and boom—as you guys can see, there are some photos where we are all eating. That is so joyous, and that is the Lord answering prayers.
Now, you might say, “Oh, Ryan, you went to a college and got connected with a Christian community there, and voilà, you have great friends.” No, that’s not the case. Just because I got connected with some campus ministries—oh, this was definitely the work of the Lord.
Previous groups like this, previous small groups, have all failed. It’s really sad, but they would just meet together one day a week, read the Bible, and then not see each other until next week.
But this is a group of guys that holds each other accountable for reading the Word daily, and we confess our sins to one another. This has to be the work of the Lord. It’s nothing else. It’s not any work of man or any campus ministry that has been able to do this. This is the work of the Lord.
While I was preparing for this sharing, one thing that popped into my mind was this: if we trust God with our eternity, why do we sometimes struggle to trust Him with small life matters?
Salvation, eternity—it’s the biggest deal. It is the greatest concern we should have as humans. I would say a majority of us in this room are saved and walking with the Lord, but we still sometimes—I myself very much included—I am very guilty of becoming anxious and not being able to always trust the Lord.
For example, let’s say I have an interview with somebody coming up next week, okay? That interview will then determine this, this, this, this, this. But in the large scope of things, what I think of as a very important interview is really not that much in eternity, right?
Because you and I, our lives right now on earth, believe it or not, are just a speck of our existence. Then the rest of eternity is with the Lord. Right now, I see our time on earth as our training ground for what is to come in eternity.
I had a conversation with somebody the other week who, surprisingly, thought we were just going to be floating around in clouds in heaven. I was like, “No, no, that’s so boring. We would not be doing that. It would be so much greater.”
We must realize that everything we have—all the cares, all the worries—we can give it to the Lord. Here are some verses to back me up once again.
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,
That He may exalt you in due time,
Casting all your care upon Him,
For He cares for you.—1 Peter 5:6-7
Even to your old age, I am He;
And even to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry, and will deliver you.—Isaiah 46:4
We know here that God promises we can cast everything on Him—all our worries. Maybe you have a driver’s license test coming up, one of you old ones, right? Cast that worry on the Lord, and He will take care of it.
Once again, we know that even to old age, the Lord will sustain us and deliver us from our troubles.
Here is what God wants you to know: none of us are perfect.
Everyone around you—we are all broken people. We are all people who are here because of the grace of God.
I want to let you guys know that, even for me personally, it is pretty easy to go through a hard week but then just come here, put on a smile for a couple hours, and pretend everything is okay.
But, guys, you don’t have to hide anything. Especially, you don’t have to hide anything before the Lord, because He knows deep down in our hearts. He knows what is going on.
Realize that none of us has to perfect ourselves in order to come to God.
You know the picture of the prodigal son and his father, right? The reason I chose this was because the prodigal son was living where the pigs were. So he was probably smelly, stinky, just disgusting.
But when he came back to the Father, the Father did not say to him, “Oh, son, welcome back. First go and shower, then we will go ahead and throw a feast.” No.
The father saw his son, probably having not washed his hair in months and probably reeking of pigs. He saw his son, and he said to his servants, “Bring out the best robe for him.”
That is exactly what Christ did for us. Christ is that robe of righteousness for us. The Father saw us in our disgusting state, and He said, “My son, I love you so much. Here, let Me put on Christ for you. Now you are robed in My best, most beautiful robe.”
Here is another analogy, right? You never clean yourself before you hop in the shower. Therefore, why in the world do we think that, in order to go to God, we have to take care of these sins, take care of all this stuff that is going on in our lives?
No, God just wants you to come to Him how you are. When you come to Him, when you trust in Him, when you walk with Him, He will transform you. He will make you more like Jesus.
It is not us who are able to first tidy up and then come to God and be like, “Okay, God, I’m ready to be in Your presence now.” Please do not make that mistake, my friends.
The Lord just wants us to come, and He will cleanse us, right?
Here are some more promises of God that I hope will show you that He really does care for you and has taken care of all your sins.
I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions,
And like a cloud, your sins.
Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.—Isaiah 44:22
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life,
Nor angels nor principalities nor powers,
Nor things present nor things to come,
Nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing,
Shall be able to separate us from the love of God
Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.—Romans 8:38-39
You may not be at a place right now where you are like, “I’m completely trusting in God.” Believe me, I’m not either. But the Lord just wants you to know that He has made you clean. Therefore, you can just come to Him.
Don’t worry about all these other things. Don’t hesitate to come to Him. Our culture, once again, tells us that you can help yourself, and we know that to be a lie. We cannot help ourselves, so we have to come to God. God is the only answer, right?
To encourage everyone: keep on seeking God in His Word. Read His Word, meditate on it, memorize it, because it is God’s promise for you and me.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
And a light unto my path.—Psalm 119:105
That is such a wonderful promise: His Word shows us the way in which we are to walk.
Lastly, to conclude, there is a song called “Trust and Obey.” I think the lyrics are easy to memorize, and they remind us, when things do get tough, to sing it to ourselves. This kind of summarizes everything I just said.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Let’s pray.
Lord, I just thank You so much that we are not called to cleanse or perfect ourselves when we come to You, but You call us to You when we are broken and in need.
Lord, when You tell us to trust in You with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding, help us to have the faith to be able to live it out.
Help us to see in our lives that You are the One who cares for us, so we can put all our cares on You. We can tell You everything because You know us in and out. You know us better than ourselves, Lord.
Renew us and make us more like Your Son. In Jesus’ name, amen.