A God We Can Trust - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, June 30. God is a trustworthy guide. He offers wisdom to those who ask in faith. Today's podcast is an opportunity to learn more about the God you can trust.

a God we can trust. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Psalm 37. And in this 37th Psalm, we are admonished to place our trust in the Lord. And if you'll recall, for example, the gospel hymn we sing, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be we can trust. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Psalm 37. And in this 37th Psalm, we are admonished to place our trust in the Lord. And if you'll recall, for example, the gospel hymn we sing, Trust and Obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. And I think most of us have found out that it's much easier to sing that song than it is to trust the Lord sometimes, especially when we're going through some difficulties, some hardship, some trial in our life.

When the pressure's on deeply, we're grieved in our spirit about some hurt. Very difficult sometimes to trust Him. But the truth is, that is the way you and I are to live because the Apostle Paul said, we live by faith, that is, the just shall live by faith. That is our lifestyle, a lifestyle of trusting God.

And so in this 37th Psalm, which is a very well-known Psalm, David says, Do not fret because of evildoers. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers, for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord.

Trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of Him who prospers in His way, because of the man who cares at wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath.

Do not fret, it leads only to evildoing, for evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Well, in this message, I want you to listen very carefully because no matter what you're going through and what you're facing in life, if you'll listen carefully, here's what you're going to find. You're going to find an undergirding that will enable you and help you place your trust in God. When everything in you says you can't, everything in you says don't. You look around you and you don't see any evidence for trusting God.

When everything around you may be falling apart, the answer is still the same. Place your trust in Him. He says, He that cometh to me, He says, must believe that I am. And so therefore, all of us who are believers have decided, we've made a decision to place our trust in Almighty God. And that trust was the most important decision we'll ever make and that is, where are we going to spend eternity? And so, out of our childhood or out of our adulthood, we were convicted of our sins. We made a decision to place our trust in a God whom we cannot see.

And all of us who've done that have had evidence after evidence after evidence, the witness of the Holy Spirit within us, plus a lifetime of living and trusting Him, Almighty God has proven to be everything He says He is. Likewise, when I think about the problems we face in life, there's so many things we can't fix. If we could just fix it all, most of us probably wouldn't even turn to God.

It is those unfixable things in life that force us to turn to someone who can fix them. And that is Almighty God. And so therefore, because of the problems, the difficulties and the hardships that we face that we can't fix, we know that we need Almighty God. We need the God of the Bible. We need Jehovah. We need the God who says, I will help you. I will strengthen you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. This is the God whom we need. And we need Him because of those difficulties and situations and circumstances that we absolutely cannot fix. And if you notice in this passage, he mentions a couple of things here. For example, sometimes we are mistreated by other people. He says in verse 1, do not fret because of evildoers, people who mistreat us. Do not be envious toward wrongdoers, people who would wrong us in different kinds of ways. And then he says in the seventh verse, he says because of the man or the woman who carries out wicked schemes.

All of us at some points in our life and sometimes in our life are mistreated by people. They misuse us or accuse us or whatever it might be or use all kinds of situations and circumstances to work their way and their will into our lives. He says, we are to place our trust in Him. Now, oftentimes that's not what we do. So what do we do? We do the very thing that he admonishes us three times in this passage not to do.

Look at this. Verse 1 says, do not fret because of evildoers. Then again, if you'll notice, he says again in verse 7, do not fret because of him who prospers in his way. And verse 8, cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret.

It leads only to evildoing. So he says, fret not, fret not, fret not because he says three things are going to happen. Number one, if you and I are fretting, for example, it is going to take out its wear and tear on us. You look at a person who is worried all the time and fretting about this and upset about that and doubting this, not secure about anything, has no trust in God. Listen, it'll take its toll on your physical body, on your emotions and on your spirit.

That is, being upset and being anxious and living in an anxious, stressed out kind of situation day after day after day will take its toll on the person's body. So he says, fret not. Likewise, there are not many folks that you want to be around who fret all the time. Every time you meet somebody who's fretting about this and worried about that, sometimes you see them coming, you think, oh my goodness, here they come.

And so you want to run the other direction. Likewise, another thing will happen is this. Look in verse 8, cease from anger, forsake wrath. Do not fret. It leads only to evildoing.

What happens? When you and I are fretting and we are worried and we continue to do that, if we don't correct that, what's happening is we're going, listen, we're going to find ourselves doing things we should not. He says, do not fret. It leads only to evildoing. You can't live a life fretting and worried about this, that and the other without placing your trust in God without ultimately finding yourself doing and saying things that you know do not fit.

So what is the cure for that? Here's what he says. Look, if you will, in verse 3, he says, trust in the Lord and do good. Then if you'll notice in verse 5, he says, trust also in him and he will do it. Now, he's just said, if we commit our way to him, he will handle it. Now, only two, he says, fret not, fret not, fret not, three times, but he says, trust in the Lord twice, but he also uses three other words that indicate and that likewise involve trust.

So I want you to look at these words and let's examine them for just a moment. You'll notice in this most familiar passage when he says in verse 4, all of us love this one, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, it's wonderful to say, well, if I just delight myself in the Lord, he'll give me the desires of my heart and here's my string of desires, God, I just happen to have this list for you and now here's, here are my desires. But what does it mean to delight myself in him?

To delight myself in the Lord simply means this, that I am satisfied with him. I am happy with him. I am at peace with him. I enjoy him. I enjoy his presence. I enjoy his fellowship. I enjoy his purposes and his plans in my life.

If I am delighted in him, it'll only be because I am placing my trust in him. But he says, delight yourself in the Lord, he'll give you the desires of your heart. It is the will and purpose and plan and the goodness of God, listen, to give to his children those things that he knows that we want, those things that he knows we desire, everything that fits within the will and plan of God for your life and my life.

God is most delighted, most enjoyable in giving those those things, no matter what they may be, as long as they fit his plan and purpose for our life. So he says, if you'll notice, first of all, he says, commit your way to the Lord. Then if you'll notice in verse seven, he says for us to do something else, each of these indicate and imply trust. Then he says, rest in the Lord. Well, what in the world does he mean by resting in the Lord? Here's what it means.

It means that in my circumstance, I am to pause until I get further instruction. Resting in the Lord means I'm listen, I'm not going to argue with him. Resting in him simply means that I'm just going to let him handle it. I somehow I just say, Lord, I know that you want what is best for me, what is right for me, what is good for me, I can't fix this, I can't handle it, it's yours.

I just have to give it up God to you. That is resting in him implies submission to his will. And you see, if I am restless in my spirit, and if I'm agitated about something, and if I'm fretting about something, it is a good indication that I'm not trusting God with something in my life. And once in a while you meet someone, you say, how you doing?

Doing fine. And you see that they're agitated, irritated, upset, fretting about this and fretting about that. So when they told you that they were fine, what they meant is, I don't know where I am. Because you cannot fret and fume and at the same time be trusting God. Somebody says, well, I trust him, you may trust him generally, but here's the issue. Am I trusting him over the thing that's troubling me?

Am I able to trust him over something that I can't fix and can't change? And so he says, first of all, we're to commit it to him. Secondly, he says, we're to rest in him. And thirdly, if you notice in the same verse he says, we're to wait patiently upon him.

To wait patiently upon him is to pause waiting for further instruction. It means that I'm not going to move ahead of God and do something in my own strength. Now, it's very easy to tell someone else to commit, someone else to rest, and someone else to trust, or someone else to wait upon the Lord. Probably the most difficult lesson we learn as a believer is to wait upon the Lord. And he says, for example, in the 27th Psalm, you recall he says in verse 14, wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the Lord. Now, why does he say be strong and take courage?

Because David learned, he knew it was very difficult to wait when you want to move. God, why don't you do something? You know how long I've been praying, Lord?

Why don't you do something? Well, if you're not going to do something, I'm going to do something. And what happens when you and I take things in our own hands and we don't trust the Lord, we don't rest in him, we don't wait for his timing. Most of the time when you and I try to manage something, handle something that God has told us to wait about, what happens is we mess it up so badly, then it takes God a longer time to fix it up. Amen?

Most of us have to admit that that's what happens when we get it in our hands and we think, well, listen, it seems that God doesn't answer my prayers. I'm going to take care of this. We take care of it.

All right. And then he has to really take care of us. And so if you notice in all three of these verses, they all imply trusting him. If I'm committing rolling something over to him, I'm trusting him. If I'm resting in him, not arguing with him anymore about it, submitting it to him, I've trusted him. If I'm waiting for him to do it, I've trusted him. That is God's way.

That is the will and purpose and plan of God in your life and my life every day about good things, about difficult things, about trying things. So many things you and I take for granted. We take our good health for granted. We take a safe trip to work for granted. We take our incomes for granted. We take our jobs for granted.

We take a lot of things for granted. When God wants us to live a life of trust, he says the just shall live by faith, by placing our trust in him. That means relying upon him.

It means looking to him. It means believing that he is who he says he is, that he'll do what he says he'll do. If I'm placing my trust in him, I am relying upon God to be to me who he says he'll be. I'm relying upon God to do for me what he says he'll do. And I'm relying upon God to be to me who he says he is. Now, what I would like to do at this point is to move to some very specific biblical reasons that the Bible gives us for which you and I can trust him, a God in whom we can trust.

And so, first of all, I want to say we can trust him because the truth is he's the only God. Everything else is an idol. Men have idols of themselves. They have idols made of wood, stone, jewels, gold, silver. They have idols made of green.

That's greenbacks. They have idols of their position and prominence and prestige, whatever it may be. People worship all kinds of things.

Now, just because they don't bow down and kneel down and bow and scrape before something doesn't mean they're not worshiping it. Whatever dominates, whatever controls, whatever causes me to ultimately make those final decisions in life, whatever is the highest motivating factor that governs and dominates and controls my thinking and my actions, whatever that is or whoever that is, that is the idol of my life. And so, therefore, when we think of our God, there is one true God, the God of Genesis chapter 1. Listen, in the beginning, God, who is this? He is the only God. He is the sovereign God. He is the supreme God. And the Bible says his name is Jehovah. And you recall that Moses said to God when he sent him down to Egypt to release the Israelites, the Hebrews, he said, Well, who am I going to tell my fellow Israelites who sent me? He said, You tell them I Am has sent you.

I Am has sent you. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of creation. You and I serve the only true God. And it's interesting what David said. Go back to 2nd Samuel, if you will, for a moment. In 2nd Samuel, in the seventh chapter, David has been blessed, so blessed by God that he's sitting before the Lord. And I love that phrase that David went, the king went in and sat before the Lord.

Chapter seven of 2nd Samuel and the 18th verse. He sat down before the Lord. And as he sat down and began to think about all the good things that God had done for him. And he says, Lord, who am I, O Lord God?

And what is this house of mine that you've brought me this far? And he began to think about, for example, he used to be a shepherd boy, and God had made him king. And now here he was living in this palace that God had provided for him. And of course, God begins to talk to him about him building him a temple. But at this moment, he's sitting before the Lord and notice what he says in verse 21. For the sake of thy word and according to thine own heart, thou hast done all this greatness to let thy servant know. For this reason thou art great, O Lord God, for there is none like thee and there is no God beside thee.

And you'll recall the Ten Commandments. We are to worship one God and one only. We're not to bow down to any other gods.

We're not to bow down to their names in any fashion. We're to recognize one true God. The reason you and I can place our trust in God is that he is the only God. And there are many, many scriptures in the Bible that that would relate to that. You'll recall, for example, what Paul said to Timothy. He said, There's one God, one mediator between God and man.

That is the person Jesus Christ, God the Father between God the Father and every single one of us is his son, he says, seated at the Father's right hand, continually making intercession for you and for me. Now, not only can I trust him because he's the only true God, but secondly, because he is the essence of truth itself. That is, all truth is going to be found in God.

I may not be able to trust most people for some reason or the other or whatever it may be. But here's one thing I know. God, he says in Titus, God cannot lie. God cannot lie. He does not lie. You know why he can't lie? Because it is not his nature to lie.

Listen, the nature of God is the attributes of God. The very being of God is that he is a God of truth, so that God only speaks truth always speaks truth is truth. I can trust the God that I know will always tell me the truth. Now, the problem is that most of us have we all have it. Sometimes I don't even want to hear the truth. Amen. Sometimes we hear the truth. We think, Oh, dear Lord, don't say that.

Give me a break. I mean, why did you have to come up with that? Because he's a God of truth and because he cannot lie and because he absolutely cannot speak anything but truth. You and I can trust the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible is the God of truth. He is the essence of truth.

He cannot lie. God cannot change his character under any condition. That's one thing God cannot do because the changes character will not be God. There's a third thing I know about him that also gives me a great sense of faith that I can trust this God. And that is that he is absolutely faithful.

You recall he says in Lamentations chapter three, verse 23. He says, How great is his faithfulness? Great is the faithfulness of God.

What is the faithfulness of God? It simply means that he's reliable, that he's trustworthy. You can count on him.

He is reliably there. He will always be there when I need him. He says I will never leave you nor forsake you. I can always trust him no matter what.

He is absolutely faithful. No one can promise you that they will always be with you. No one can promise you anything that God can promise because he is the only one that we know who is absolutely unquestionably always in every single possible circumstance of life. If he makes a promise, he is faithful to carry out that promise. We have promise after promise after promise. But one of his wonderful promises is found in the 16th Psalm.

And listen to what he says. Here's the promise of pleasure. He says in verse 11, Thou wilt make known to me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy. In thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. People say, I've become a Christian, but I won't have any more fun. Listen, friend, you don't know what joy and peace and happiness and contentment are like until you place your trust in Jesus Christ. And God doesn't take away our joy. God doesn't take away our fun. What God is up to, listen, is teaching us how to live in relationship with him that makes life complete and absolutely no matter what our troubles and trials and heartaches and burdens may be, God will give us this overwhelming sense of joy and undergirding peace that we stand upon the immovable rock of God. God is faithful to keep every single one of those promises. Thank you for listening to A God We Can Trust. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.