8: My name's Clay and I'm one of the pastors here at Hope.
And if you're walking in for the first time,
we are wrapping up a series that we've called trust Issues.
'cause what we've said is this, that that we all have trust issues.
We've all been disappointed or let down maybe by an organization,
an institution, whether it's the church, a government or a school,
or we've been disappointed or let down by someone,
maybe a family member, maybe a coworker,
maybe somebody in the neighborhood or we've been let down by
something. So someone or something. And in the something department,
let me tell you about a story that I experienced this summer. Um,
it involves my dad's temperamental riding lawn mower.
And, and by temperamental, I mean it's old and it breaks down a lot.
And on a typical mowing day, on a typical mowing day, I reach out to my dad,
I send him a text and say, Hey, I'm thinking about mowing today.
And so this starts the process of him prepping the mower to
see if it's gonna be a live option.
And that usually means charging the battery and pumping up one of the front
tires that has this seemingly perpetual leak.
And then I drive over and I take the mower and I go to my house and I mow my
yard, and then I come back in and then I mow his yard.
And that's what it looks like on a typical day,
on the day that I want to tell you about this particular day.
Everything seems to be going okay. It,
it seems to be going according to plan.
And I'm mowing in the front yard and I'm mowing near the ditch. So there's,
there's a little bit of an angle and then all of a sudden I come to a grinding
halt and the front tire rolls in front of me into the
ditch. Fortunately,
I had a friend from small group,
so you should be in small group for just such an occasion.
I had a friend in small group,
he had a six inch pry bar I had borrowed for a different project.
And so I can't do it by myself.
So I get my wife to come down and she's gonna give me a hand.
So I'm prying right in the front yard,
in front of God and Jesus and all the neighbors.
And I'm prying this thing up and she's trying to push the wheel back in place
and it's just not working. And I say, what I need you to do,
you need to sit down, just, just get on your,
on your rear end and kick it with both feet.
And so she's sitting down and I'm prying,
and then she's kicking and it looks like it's not gonna go well.
And then it goes on. And then there's the problem. See,
I don't have one of those carter pins that goes in place that you bend around
and holds that holds it in place.
So what I find is a nail that I think will work,
and I jam that in there and I bend it. Now,
welcome to Harnett County.
But if you're thinking that he's probably in good shape at this point, if he's,
you know, he's got it together and this is gonna go well, you,
you would be wrong. So a few minutes later,
I make a turn at the top of the driveway.
I make the turn at the top of the driveway, which resulted in this loud,
unpleasant screeching noise.
And that same wheel has come off and it is rolling down the driveway at a good
rate of speed. . Now my wife,
who has previously helpful is not being helpful in this moment.
And you can imagine what she is doing.
She is laughing at me and the situation in the middle of me having
trust issues with this mower. Now,
this, this, this,
this is funny and it's fixable in the greater
scheme of life, most of us, you and I, most of us,
we can navigate circumstances and situations like this
without losing our mind. And by not losing our mind,
I mean we don't do something extra stupid, we can handle this.
But the question that I want to ask you,
and the question that I want us to wrestle to the ground today is this.
But what about when it gets serious?
What about when it gets beyond our ability to control the outcome
when it, when it is, it is no longer funny.
There's not a pry bar big enough to pry what you, you found yourself in.
And just to give you a glimpse, this is what my summer looked like.
My summer looked like I was on vacation and,
and my sister was part of the vacation and she left for a doctor's appointment.
And then she came back and let us know that she has been diagnosed with stage
four cancer.
This is coming on the heels of my mom who has this rare autoimmune disease
that has put her in the bed. And then after that,
we find out my dad has been dealing with AFib
and is struggling with some other heart issues.
And in moments like that, I don't know about you,
but in moments like that,
I can't help but start looking around and asking the question,
what the heck is going on here? And, and, and then even beyond that, I said,
have I done something that has resulted in this situation?
And I don't know if you've ever been there in that type of thing. You, you,
things start happening and they start cascading. You're looking around,
did I do something to do this? I'm dealing with uncontrollable unknowns.
I've got the, there's a level of tension here.
I'm dealing with anxiety and there are doubts.
Now, this is what you need to know about me. I, I grew up in a,
in a Christian home. I grew up in a Christian home in the South.
I've been following Jesus for uh, a while.
And what that means in the south is, and you need to understand this,
this is what it means in the south.
It means you went to church on Sunday morning,
you went to church on Sunday night,
you went on Wednesday night and you went to revival maybe twice a year.
And if you're not sure what revival means, well what revival, first of all,
you have to say revival. You can't just say revival. It's revival.
And you say it that way.
And then what you do is you go to church every night in a week.
So it's pretty intense. And so that's what I grew up.
And we also had what was called a life verse. Now I get it.
If you're walking in here and you're checking out church for the first time,
you're probably thinking church people. Y but we,
we called it a life verse. Anybody, life verse life verse, yeah. A life,
a life verse. The earliest life verse that I can remember is Proverbs three,
five and six. This is the earliest one I can remember.
And a life verse is like a verse that gives you guidance and comfort.
And it's sort of, uh, you know,
framework for how you live your life in a season. And so in Proverbs three,
beginning with verse five, this is what it says,
trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own
understanding. In all your ways,
acknowledge him and he will make straight your past.
So as a church person who grew up in church,
and I've been to church a long time, I know what I'm supposed to do.
I'm supposed to trust. In fact, I even know who I'm supposed to trust.
I'm supposed to trust God.
But what about when trusting doesn't seem right?
It doesn't seem natural, it doesn't come easy,
it doesn't seem based on your circumstances warranted or justified.
What do you do then? Now I get it. As a follower of Christ,
we begin to wonder having trust issues with god's, we begin to wonder,
is having trust issues with God something that we can even talk about?
Maybe you're thinking, is that even allowed? Can you not trust God?
Can you have trust issues with God?
Because in your circumstance and in your situation and how you're living and
carrying yourself, you're searching hard,
but you're struggling to locate any evidence that would make a case
for trust in anyone or in anything
or even God.
In fact, if you're honest and you look into it,
it seems like the opposite. It seems like the opposite.
If you look at your situation trusting,
trusting could be viewed as irresponsible, it could be viewed as irresponsible.
And maybe it's not that bad for you, but you're in the situation and you're not,
not trusting, but you're trying to trust.
And even in the space where you're trying to trust, it's massively challenging.
Come on, have you been in that spot? Have you lived in that place
that trying to trust seems so hard?
And so today I want us to look at a story from the Old Testament about the life
of David, about the life of David.
This is the David that famously defeated Goliath. And one day he'll be king,
but he's not king yet. So if you have your bible, your electronic device,
go ahead and grab that. And if you'll meet me in first Samuel chapter 30,
first Samuel chapter 30, we'll get the verses on a screen near you as well.
And while you're looking there and getting there,
let me give you a little bit of context about what's going on in this situation.
In this situation.
David is on the run from King Saul and the reason he's on the run is because
King Saul is trying to kill him. Yes, there's a lot of drama.
This is good stuff in the Bible. You should read it. Uh, so there's,
and the great prophet Samuel has died.
So this doesn't help bring stability to the situation.
This doesn't stabilize things.
And the Lord has seemingly pulled his divine support from Saul.
And Saul fears David because it looks like the hand of God is on David.
And everything that he is touching is turning to gold.
It looks like he's experiencing God favor, God's favor.
And that is upsetting to Saul. And now Saul,
because of his disconnection with God, this is what he's done. He's turned to,
what we see in the Bible is called a medium, a medium like a fortune teller.
Someone you would go to to tell your fortune and what's gonna happen.
Now here's the thing, now Saul,
as king has made a law that this occupation is illegal.
You can't have this job. And in fact, if you get found out,
the punishment is death. Nonetheless, that's where he's going. Meanwhile,
meanwhile, David has cozied up to the Philistines.
Now the Philistines are the arch nemesis or one of the enemies of Israel.
So there's a lot of things going on here that seem and feel pretty sketchy.
There's a lot of drama going on, political intrigue.
And so David is with the Philistines, and on the eve of a battle,
he's gonna fight with the Philistines.
The Philistine commanders decide that they have trust issues with David and
his men. They fear.
They fear that they are going to turn in the middle of the battle and fight
against them.
And their fear is so great that they decide we would rather that you guys would
go home. You don't have to fight with us, you just go home.
So David and his roughly 600 men are released to go back to their family.
And so that's all the background to bring us to where I want us to get to today.
This is where we pick up our story. David and his army are, are away from home,
but they're on the move and they're making good time. So they're on their way.
And as we work through this story to, as we work through this story today,
I want you to see three traps.
Three traps that can prevent you from trusting God.
Three traps that can prevent you from trusting God. I want us,
I want this for you,
that we would be able to recognize and avoid these traps because the problem is
they will derail your faith journey with God. And I don't want that for you,
and I don't want that for me. I don't want our faith journey derailed.
So can we recognize,
can we identify these traps and learn how to avoid 'em?
So if you're at first Samuel, let's dive in there beginning with verse one.
It says, and now,
when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day,
the Amalekites had made a raid against the naab and against Ziklag.
They had overcome ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women
and all who were in it, both small and great.
They killed no one but carried them off and went their way.
And David, and when David and his men came to the city,
they found it burned with fire and their wives and their sons
and daughters taking captive.
This is the first trap that can prevent us from trusting God.
And it's our circumstances.
The first trap is our circumstances because we find ourselves in a situation and
we begin to question and wonder, why did God allow this to happen? How did we,
how did I get in this situation, in this predicament? This doesn't seem right.
It doesn't feel right. If God is a loving God,
why would he allow me to experience this? And I then you begin to think,
you begin to question,
I can't trust God because of the circumstances that he has allowed
to happen to me. So while David and his men are away,
things haven't gone as planned. And when they arrive back to their base,
what they arrive to is a big mess.
What they arrive to is a scene of utter devastation.
The place that they come to is burned out. It's a deserted, ruined,
it's a ghost town.
Now the Lucites are this nomadic group of people who can trace
their lines back to Esau.
What they have done is they've taken advantage of the fact that David and his
army are away. There's this opportunistic, um,
situation for them and they take advantage of it. They take advantage of it.
And what we see in verse two is that they've taken the David and the men's
families from them.
They've taken captive the women and everyone that who was in it,
but the absence of the bodies that there are no bodies.
It says they didn't kill anyone. So there have been no deaths.
The people were taken and they weren't killed.
And while at first glance we may think,
well that seems like a kindness that seems like, uh,
it okay, this is less comprehensive in the negative way than it could have been.
But what we need to understand is that the amyloids are the bad guys and their
likely intention was to take their prisoners and sell them into slavery.
But even so,
maybe the restraint that we see here is an indicator or a hint
that God in his providence as is at work and the the severity
of this trial is not as great as it could be.
Maybe there's a limit to it. Clearly the situation is bad,
but maybe just, maybe it's not irreversible. Verse three, and David is men.
They come to the city and that's when they find it's just a disaster.
Their world has literally been burnt to the ground.
Everything they know has is gone.
And the fact that it says they showed up and they found it conveys the idea of
surprise and shock. This was not part of the plan.
As they take in this scene before 'em, the un,
the upbeat mood during their travel,
singing the songs and looking forward with great excitement to see in their
family and hanging out with their friends and doing, uh,
cookouts in the backyard, that's gone. That's gone.
It quickly vans. And here's the thing. This is not the dream.
This is not the dream. This is not the plan. And when reality,
when reality sets in and it's less than our dream,
that's when our trust can be rattled because we have expectations of things that
we think God will do for us and that he should do for us.
And when it turns out to be different than that,
we begin to look at God and it's like, hmm hmm.
So David and his men,
they're upset and they're devastated because of their circumstances.
That's the first trap.
The second trap that that can prevent us from trusting God
is our pain
when they show up the shock and s of smoldering rubble and the loss
of wives and children has created an unbearable pain,
a pain that we don't know what to do with,
it's overwhelming and it can only be expressed through
wailing. Look at verse four.
It says that David and the people who were with him raised their voices and
wept until they had no more strength to weep.
They prayed it all out. They exhausted themself in grief.
But come on here, the the, the reality is, and it's hard,
I know this is gonna be harsh, but the reality is that you got life,
you got problems, you got, you got life, you got problems.
Yet pain always seems to sneak up on us and catch us off guard.
We tend to think that pain is for someone else. Some uh,
somebody else will deal with that. That's someone else's family issue.
It will not hit me. So it sneaks up on us and catches us off guard.
And in that place, that's where we begin to question God,
whether we're questioning his power or whether we're questioning his kindness,
can he be trusted?
Because this doesn't seem right or this doesn't seem fair.
It makes me think of Jesus's statement that John captures when he says this.
He says, in this world you will have tribulation.
Not that you might have tribulation. He says you will have tribulation.
But he goes on to say, but take heart. I have overcome the world.
And why is it our tendency to lock in on the first part of that verse and
overlook the second part?
We lock in on the tribulations and we grumble about it and we blame God about
it. But with eager expectation, we don't look forward to the overcoming of it.
Because in our mindset, when we're in it,
pain seems so random and so unfair.
But this is what we do know about pain. It always, always, always,
always gets our attention. It always gets our attention
and it always demands a response.
So we see him grieving in verse four and they weep until they can't weep
anymore.
And then verse five lets us know that David doesn't go through this unscathed.
We learn in verse five that his,
his wives are mentioned and they are taken as well.
So this is a blow to him personally.
Everyone has been affected by this situation.
Everyone is in pain because of this circumstance.
But now what? Now what do you do? What do you do?
Because this wasn't part of the plan. You've been traveling, you're excited,
you get home. And then what? Where do you start?
Have you ever been in a mess that was so messy and so big that you didn't even
know where to start? You didn't even know where to begin?
Is there a broom big enough for this?
We see in verse six that David was greatly distressed.
David was greatly distressed. But this statement is not about his feelings.
This is about the precarious situation that he's in.
You're not gonna believe this
for the people spoke of stoning him.
And what that means is they wanted to throw rocks at him and kill him.
People in pain, I mean come on. We know this by experience.
People in pain will not only be a pain,
but they'll look for someone to blame because pain
demands a response. And come on, we are people. We are people
and people are fickle. We are fickle. We have mood swings.
David and his men have turned swiftly and completely against
him. Their bitterness has turned to anger.
And David is in the crosshairs. He is the target.
This is your fault. Come on.
You imagine yourself in that group and you're looking to David, David,
you are the one. We should do something with you.
So the situation is very serious, it's very tense.
And David is isolated and David is threatened.
His once loyal men are no longer his faithful supporters.
That's all gone.
No happy little car ride on the way to Ziklag that's passed.
But what is David gonna do? Look at the end of verse six.
Look at the end of verse six. It says,
but David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.
And let's just pause there a minute. What does that even mean?
What does that even mean? And how do you do it?
Because I feel like that's something that we should know.
So David turned to God because he doesn't have anywhere to turn.
He turned to God, he didn't have anywhere to turn.
And it's like Dwayne mentioned last week when we talk about the poor in spirit,
David is poor in spirit.
He doesn't have anything to offer anything to bring to the equation
that will change anything in a positive way. But I wonder,
but I wonder when we find ourselves in situations like this,
could God be using the hardship? Let's leave it at David and not us.
The hardship to remind David of his frailty and his
inability to rescue himself.
Maybe he's using the unpleasant situation to remind David that
he's not the one who is all sufficient,
that it's God who is all sufficient because sometimes
we forget.
So David is forced to abandon his own abilities and his own wisdom
and he's forced to seek assistance from the only one who
can truly provide and the only one who can truly
deliver.
And that brings us to the third trap and the third trap that can prevent us from
trusting God. is our wisdom.
It's our wisdom. When a crisis hits, I don't know about you,
but this is true for me. When a crisis hits,
our first reaction seems to seems to be to go into fix it mode.
What can I do to clean this up? What can I do to tidy this up?
What can I do to get this back? Come on back to normal.
If we could only get back to normal, are you kidding me?
When was the last time we had normal? And would we recognize normal,
normal if it was here?
But we're always on the search to get back to normal.
So instead of turning upwards towards God and his ability,
we are we,
we tend to turn inward and try to apply our
abilities to the situation.
And as you've heard some of my stories,
you know that when I bring my abilities to the equation,
it doesn't always make it better.
But let's look at what David did and understand that David is incredibly
gifted and he is extremely smart.
But what we see here in this story is that he didn't start by looking within.
Look at verse seven. And David said,
tohar the priest, he says to him,
bring me the EOD and then look down to verse eight.
And David inquired of the Lord.
Lemme just push into your business a little bit. In times of crisis,
in times of pain,
in times when the circumstances of your life are not the ones that you hope for,
dream for or plan for, where do you turn?
Where do you turn when your circumstances and your pain make it difficult to
trust anyone? Who will you trust?
Who will you trust?
Now I wanna speak to you if you're a follower of Christ for a minute because I
want you to notice here that David called to the priest.
David called to the priest to come to him as a follower of Christ.
If you're a follower of Christ in the room,
you have access to the great high priest,
you have access to the great high priest.
Look at how the writer of Hebrews capture this. He says,
since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, where we fall short,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are
yet without sin. Let us,
let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we
may receive mercy and find grace to help
in what? In what? What does it say?
Class in our time of need.
In your time of need, there is a place that you can go in your time of need.
There is a place you can take your trust
in this space and in this moment,
it is no time to uselessly recount all the things that you
don't know, all the things that you don't understand,
all the things that are not fully clear.
All the things that you don't have answers for here in that moment is when you
need to recall and pay attention to what we do know that God is on the throne,
that he loves you and that he is for you.
Look at the reminder that Jeremiah gives us. He says this,
this is in 17 five. He says,
thus sayeth the Lord cursed is the man who trust in man and makes
flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord cursed. We don't want that.
Two verses later he says,
but blessed is a man who trust in the Lord whose trust is the Lord.
And here's the big takeaway. I want you to get this.
That trust can only be found in the one who has proven trustworthy.
Trust can only be found in the one who can be proven trustworthy in our greatest
need. God sent his son to rescue us from sin and death
where we had no chance and no hope and no way out. He shows up.
And the result is that we gain new life, that we have victory over death.
We have freedom from sin.
Everything has changed at the end of the day for us though,
as we try to figure this out and live it out, faith is trust.
So how do you put your faith into action so that you're
displaying trust in how you carry yourself? How do we put our faith into action?
How do we try to trust?
I want to give you two actions that we can take,
that we can take to try to trust, to display our trust in God.
The first one is this, we trust God.
We trust God by turning to him in prayer.
We trust God by turning to him in prayer. When we do this,
we are acknowledging that we can't fix it. When we do this,
we are acknowledging that we need help. And when I say turn to him in prayer,
I'm not talking about some little weak quick five second prayer. Lordy Lord,
he help me, help me over now. Amen. No,
I'm talking about a deliberate pounding on the doors of heaven with
desperation, with persistence,
doing it relentlessly because you need some help.
Because on your own power and your own strength, you can't do it.
I want to point out something going back to the story of David in seven and
eight. So, so unlike Saul who sought answers,
who sought answers from the fortune teller,
David calls the priest to bring the the EOD so that he
might gain divine guidance.
David wants to hear from God. Who do you want to hear from?
Where do you turn for wisdom and understanding? See,
this eod was this ceremonial vestment worn by a high priest when they were going
after getting a word from God when they were seeking divine guidance.
And understand that David is not the hero here.
It's the Lord in whom he put his trust and he has turned to God
in prayer. Why? Because he desperately wants to hear from God.
Do you desperately want to hear from God?
Do you want to invite him into your situation?
Because if you desire to strengthen yourself in the Lord,
if you desire spiritual recovery,
it starts with a connection with God.
Prayer turns your perspective away from loss. It turns it away from guilt,
it turns it away from shame,
it turns it towards God who is the ultimate source of help and hope.
And that's what we need.
That's what we need as we navigate life through tricky circumstances and
experiences of pain.
Here we regain perspective and find strength and the courage to
persevere in our time of need.
Writing on prayer. Ronald roll Heiser points this out. He says,
we cannot sustain ourselves all on our own.
We cannot do it by ourselves. He says we need prayer. We need prayer.
Not because God needs us to pray, but because if we do not pray,
we will never find any steadiness in our lives. Come on.
Who's hunting and looking for some steadiness in their life?
If you're looking for nor something normal,
it's gotta be something around being steady.
We will never find any steadiness in our lives. Simply put,
he writes without prayer, we will always be either too full of ourselves
or too empty of energy, inflated or depressed.
And so we see David cries out in Psalm 25. Turn to me and be gracious to me.
For I am lonely and afflicted,
the troubles of my heart are enlarged.
Bring me out of my distress. I need some help.
I need some relief. When we, when we trust God, we turn to him in prayer.
That's the first action. The second action is this,
we trust God by waiting on his timing.
Now this is problematic for us because this requires patience.
Prayer is the place to start, but we can't rush back and say, you know,
right after the amen, we can't rush right back into fix it mode.
We got to leave some space for God to work,
which requires waiting.
And waiting is such a massive challenge when you don't have an answer and there
does not appear to be an end in sight.
Zach Aswin says it this way. He says, without patience, love is distorted,
faith is not possible and hope fails.
Impatience violates love hurries us into
walking by sight
and usurps God by putting the fulfillment of our hopes.
Listen to me, by putting the fulfillment of our hopes into our own
hands. Again,
when I keep certain things in my hands, doesn't always go well.
When we are find ourselves in difficult circumstances in a place of pain
and we're tempted to use our own wisdom to navigate it.
What if we put it in and left it in God's hands? You see,
waiting on God,
waiting on God is leaning into his pace and trusting him in that
place. It's believing despite what you see,
it's believing despite what you feel,
that the result, his result
Will be best. In seasons when we can't trust ourselves,
we need to turn to the one who is proven to be trustworthy.
David turns to God and chooses to trust him.
He says this, when I'm afraid, I put my trust in you.
In God whose word I praise in God,
I trust I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?
What can the bad guys, what can the enemies do to me?
What can my own men who are emotionally and upset right now,
what can they do to me without you allowing it?
So David turns to God and trusts him and then God guides
and God restores. When you go down in chapter 30,
you come to verse 18 and you come to verse 19.
And what we discover there is that David recovered all that the amite had taken
in verse 19. And it says, and nothing, nothing was missing.
And that's a great end to a story. But here's the reality.
This is what you and I know by experience that it doesn't always clean up so
nicely. Sometimes our stories,
they don't have a nice bow,
They don't have a nice bow. What do we do then?
What do we do then? This is my encouragement to you,
that you would choose the trust. That you would choose the trust.
The one who has proven to be trustworthy.
Hear the words of the prophet Habakkuk. He says,
though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor the fruit be on the vines.
The produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no
food.
The flock be cut off from the fold and there be no
herd in the stalls. That's bleak.
That's a bleak situation. But look at verse 18. Yet
yet, I will rejoice in the Lord.
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
I will remember who he is and what he's done for me. God,
the Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deers.
He makes me tread on high places.
God is greater than your circumstances. God is greater than my circumstances.
And in those places where it is uncomfortable and it's weird and it's painful,
let's choose to trust him. Let's choose to trust him. Let me pray.
Dear heavenly Father,
we thank you again that you are a God that we have access to
because of what your son Jesus did for us. Lord,
help us to not be timid to come to you.
You have made yourself available. Lord,
let us use that and us come and bring our cares to you.
Grow us in our trust. Lord,
help us to navigate the pitfalls that would derail us from growing
and thriving in our faith journey with you.
And we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.