Good morning church, I hope you had a good Christmas and looking forward to a new year. And I felt like I might have to introduce myself to you because I'm never in this service. I'm Alan Folsom, I'm your Adult Pastor.  I'm usually in the 930 Classic worship. and so I just have a great adult ministry team I work with here and the prayer ministry team and all the ministry, adult ministry, leaders, and if you need assistance or help in growing in your faith, finding a life group, we're doing a life course that we're hopefully going to start in mid-January, or there's a place that you want to serve you feel led to serve or start a ministry. We want to help you with that get you connected and equip you to serve and the minister here in this place. And so it's a joy to be with you on staff here at Burnt Hickory as adult pastor.  I want to thank Pastor Matt, for giving me the opportunity to share from God's word this morning and to share with you.  And I tell you what, 2020 what a year, huh? I mean, it's been ups and downs, but it's gonna be known as the year of COVID, I imagine. 

And so, what we're going to look at this morning through God's word is Proverbs 3:5-6 and try to answer the question, Why Trust God? Why should we trust God? So, Proverbs 3:5-6, "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 path."  So 2020, have you trusted God this year or have you tried to lean on your understanding? Or just trying to figure out what is going on? What is happening? Or another question, what have you struggled with the most in 2020, the year of COVID? What have you struggled with the most? Have you struggled with your faith? Have you struggled with grasping what's going on? Why is this happening? What we're supposed to do? What's going to be next?  You know, is 2021 going to be better or worse?  We hope it's going to be better. But what have you learned? Have you grown? Have you trusted God? Or have you tried to figure out what's going on yourself and become frustrated?  I know, several of you hear you experienced loss of loved ones. From death, several of you now have loved ones in the hospital with COVID.  You've experienced the tragic loss of family members in accidents. I know the suicide levels in America have gone off the charts this year. Loneliness has increased so much mental health issues and become another pandemic within the self. And so, there's so much going on parents with education and schools being virtual or not, when to do that, how to homeschool.  That type thing, you're stressed out wanting to know how to do that, and just all kinds of these extra stressors and just from life experience that's thrown at you, at us have you trusted? Have you trusted God and then the election, the political season, my goodness, we're probably most divided as a nation than we've ever been on this and you've got your opinions, and you've got those that you support, and probably, you know, split in this room? But I mean, it's just crazy on that. But there is good news, Marty shared, if you were here for Christmas Eve service, in the welcome that was a recent survey that was done that at least from church going folks, maybe not Christian, but those that attend church, over a quarter of them said that their faith, their trust is increased this year, as a result of COVID and everything that's going on.   26% said only 2% say they're, you know, their trust had decreased in God. But there was another survey done probably I think it was in September, that said that 56% of Americans and no religious affiliation just Americans. 56% believe that Jesus was just a great teacher, nothing more, that He wasn't the Son of God that He wasn't the Messiah, just that He was just another great teacher. So, the majority of Americans don't have that view of Jesus, that the scripture does that truth tells us.  And so we're in a difficult time. It's been a difficult year and we interpret this what's happening, we interpret this perspective, we have a certain perspective of why this has happened or understanding of why this has happened, and we have different perspectives on things.  Just an example of perspective based on my own family. 

I've got three children, Luke, Kelly and Curtis.   Curtis is my youngest. He's a senior at the University of Georgia this year graduates in May, but way back, several years before he even started school, he was starting kindergarten. My wife Paula took him to the pediatrician for his, you know, exam to be certified to go to public education. And so, Dr. Levitz, the pediatrician, you know, knew him and his older siblings, you know, Luke and Kelly had been there before with him.  And so, Dr. Levitz had been their pediatrician and so Dr. Levitz's goal, he just wanted to see where he was with conversation skills, his vocabulary, how he could talk or interact with people and Curtis was just there, he didn't know why he was. He just wanted to get it over with and so Dr. Levitz perspective, you know, he was just trying to get Curtis to engage in conversation, answer questions, see how he could communicate and grasp that type of thing. So, Dr. Levitz, just to get him to talk, started asking questions about, "I understand you're going into kindergarten?"  and Curtis says, "Uh huh." He said, "Well, Curtis," he said, "Did your brother and sister ride the bus when they went to kindergarten?"  And he said, "Uh huh."  He said, "So you're going to get on the red bus when it comes to pick you up to go to kindergarten." And so, Curtis just sort of looked at him with that, "what you talking about Willis?" type look.  He said, "Uh huh." And so, you know, they were trying to get him to talk and he was not going to tell the doctor what, you know that the doctor was wrong that the bus is yellow, you know, he wasn't gonna tell him that.  So, the doctor was just trying to get him to talk. And he said, "Okay, Curtis well let's hope kindergarten goes good and when you get on that red bus to go to kindergarten." And so, he left, and Paula was getting him, you know, getting his clothes back on or whatever.  And so, she said, "Well why didn't you tell the doctor you knew what color the bus was?" And he looked at his mom and said, "Well, he, thanks, the bus is red?"  He said, "Mom, this doctor is an idiot. He thinks the bus is red."  He knew it was yellow, but he wasn't going to correct the doctor. So, Curtis's perception was the doctor was wrong, but he had respect for the doctor, he wasn't going to correct him. And, Dr. Levitz perception of this kid doesn't want to talk, you know, is is trying to get him to talk, but the way that you look, you might look at some things, you may think, well, the bus is yellow, but you might be talking with somebody and they'll tell you up and down that, hey, the bus is red.  I know the bus is red.  You know, and y'all are gonna disagree. But that's their perception. What's that perception, based on? So how you interpret? How do you interpret what's going on in life, the events of the day, the tragedies of the day, the good things of the day, how you interpret things we're to interpret things through the lens of Scripture, have a biblical worldview, if we don't have a biblical worldview, we're not going to look at things through the lens of Scripture? And so, this verse today, "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 paths."  Looking at life through that lens of that verse, right there of how to trust God. But then you say, Well, you know, in considering 2020 or 2021 coming up, why should I trust God? Why should I trust God? Francis Chan, and his book Crazy Love, he says, "We say things like I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me, or I trust in the Lord with all your heart." But it says, "Then we live and plan like we don't even believe God exists. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine, even if God doesn't come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God's fidelity to His promise.   Putting hope in God's fidelity, his faithfulness, to keeping his promise." So the key thing I want you to remember today from this verse, is trusting in God is trusting in the power of God, to be able to do what God says He will do.  Trusting in God is trusting in the power of God to be able to do what God's says that He will do.  Because He is faithful, He is just, and He is true. And in your outline, if you're taking notes, and there'll be on the screen there's four reasons why we can trust God. The first one is His Word is trustworthy. His Word is trustworthy. His Bible, the Bible that we have the word of God is trustworthy. Jesus is the Word, John 1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God, and the Word was with God."  The Word was Jesus.

And so, the word is trustworthy. Titus 1:9 says, "He must hold firm to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that He can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it."   And in 2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All Scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching for reproof, for correction and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."  So, His word is trustworthy, the printed word, the word of God, our Scriptures, Old Testament, and New Testament is inerrant, is infallible, is trustworthy. It's the truth that we can believe in because it's God's Word. The second one is His nature. His nature is faithful and true. God's nature is faithful, and true. And I challenge you to do a study this year, look at studying all of God's attributes, what his character is the attributes of God, study the names of God that are based on his attributes, and that lets you know who God is who Jesus is, and what their character is, and what His nature and that they are faithful. He's faithful to His Word, He's faithful to His promise, and God's Word is truth. God's Word is truth. You can bank on that you can trust that God's Word is a truth. Society doesn't. There's no absolute truth in our culture. Today, the Word of God doesn't mean much. In our country, even though our motto is, "In God we trust," we don't. And so, but God is faithful, and true. The third one, His plans are perfect, and purposeful. God has a plan for you and me. God has a plan. You might not know what it is, or you may not even want to know what it is. But God has a plan for you. Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."  God knows the plans, He has for us with a future that are not their plans for our welfare for the good and not for evil, and to give you a future and a hope.  So, are you trusting God with your future? Are you trusting God with your present? And then the fourth one, his promises are kept.

God is faithful concerning His Word. He's faithful concerning His promises, all the promises in Scripture, He's faithful to those.  Three passages here I want to read to you: 2 Peter 3:9 is the main one, "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness.  Instead, He is patient with you, "Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed; everything came to pass."  Not one word that God had given and promised the people of Israel, not one of them failed, all of them came to pass. Same with His Word of the Old Testament and New Testament, every promise He made, has been kept. He's been faithful and true to those His promises are kept. And you another reason, the main reason why we can trust God is because of what we've just experienced and celebrated as Christians.  We've celebrated Christmas, we celebrated Emanuel, God with us. We've celebrated Jesus as the birth of a Savior, Light of the World, the Bright and Morning Star, the Hope of Glory, the Prince of Peace, a Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, and the Everlasting Father. And we've experienced Him, we've worshipped Him as Emmanuel, God with us.  Matthew 1:23 says, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us." And so, Jesus was the Promised Messiah, all those prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah have come true. I just want to share with you some probabilities and some statistics with you. Some of you might like that some of you're nerdy like that and some of you say, Well, you know, I don't care about that kind of, but it's sort of profound on the statistics or the probability of one person as Jesus fulfilling all of those biblical prophecies about Jesus being the Messiah. And I won't go through all of this with you that I intended I just gave you the basics, but Dr. Peter Stoner’s work Science Speaks shows how these prophecies unquantifiable, stoner calculates the odds of one man filling just eight of the 48 prophecies specifically about Jesus, the probability of just one man fulfilling those Old Testament prophecies is one in 100 million billion. That's sort of incomprehensible, you can't grasp that number that's ten to the 17th, power, or ten with 17 zeros behind it. That's the probability of one man fulfilling just eight of those prophecies.   He found that that would be an example, if Dr. Louis Lapides, he gave the example if you took that many, one in 100 million billion, you take that many silver dollars, and yeah there are silver dollars, I don't know if you got any?  Now, but you take those silver dollars, they would fill the state of Texas, two feet, that many 100 million billion would fill that two feet, and then the chances of one person, you take one of those silver dollars and mark it and just throw it randomly drop it randomly in the state. And then you get a guy and blindfold him, and he wanders randomly across the state and bending down and picking up that one, that one silver dollar, that's the chances of one and 100 million billion that that would, happen.  Its mind blowing. But he goes on to say in fulfilling 48 prophecies instead of eight, that he found that the one chance in ten to the 157th power.  Or the power if 110 with 157 zeros around it. And so that, you know, pretty much a male boral single all of chance says that 10 to the 50th power, if something moves beyond that, you can say with great confidence that the event will never happen at random. And so, in Scripture, all 48 prophecies that they said, however fulfilled in one man, Jesus. So, in response to that the Institute for Christian Defense says this about the probability and the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. He says, "The fact that Jesus is Messiah is not just a clever guess nor can Jesus have been an imposter who carefully arranged the fulfillment of all the Messianic prophecies to reject Jesus as Messiah requires an unbelief, which runs counter to the laws of probability. So, the unbelief to not believe that runs against odds of probability. And so, do you believe? Are you believer in that? So, the Scriptures are reliable because Jesus fulfilled that promise. And we can trust God because of that fulfillment in Emmanuel, God with us.  So, I'm gonna us an acrostic that points for looking at examining Proverbs 3:5-6 using trust the main word there.  Trust as an acrostic and four, five items there. But another reason before we get into that, another reason we can trust God is we're commanded. We're commanded to trust God, Proverbs 3:5-6 to trust in the Lord is the command. Grammatically it's a command, it’s imperative. The imperative verbs are commands or orders that then make the sentence an imperative. Okay, this instance makes this verse a command, or an order. So we are commanded. The Great Commission is a commandment. The Great Commandment is a commandment. And Jesus says, in the Great Commission we're to teach them to obey everything that I've taught. And so we're to obey commands. So, trust in the Lord is a command in Scripture.  Jerry bridges in his book Trusting God, he says, "It often seems more difficult to trust God, then to obey Him." It's more difficult to trust God, than to obey Him. Can you obey God's Word without trusting in God?

I mean, if you can be legalistic, the Pharisees in the Old Testament and New Testament, they were legalistic.   I mean, they had, you know, they expanded the, ten commandments to 700 and something commandments that they had, and they were, you know, strict on, following them on obeying those laws and those commandments. But they did not trust in Jesus as Messiah. They were more legalistic.  So you can, you know, it's so it's harder to trust in God than to obey Him.  So, we're gonna look at how to trust.  How to trust God, why we can trust God, how to trust God using this verse.  The "T" in trust, the first one is trust in the Lord using the word trust.  Trust in the Lord with all your heart, wholeheartedly, trust God with everything that you have, everything that you are. Trust means here in one sense to enter into a deep personal relationship with God based upon complete surrender and submission. We trust him completely. We give ourselves; we were wide open.  We say, Lord, take us, use us, guide us, protect us. You're made vulnerable in a love relationship with God.  The Hebrew word for trust is batach appears in the Hebrew Bible 158 times across 152 verses. So, trust is used a lot in the Old Testament.   Greek word is a little bit different. And I'll share that toward the end. In the New Testament the word for trust is more believe, which leads to trust, but it appears in Scripture it's a bold, confident, sure security of action based on that security. The word for trust in Hebrew, it means to be sure about something, to be confident about that something, and to hope in that something. So our confidence, we're sure about God, we're confident in God and our hope, is in God. Another example one of my children with trust.  Luke my oldest, who's the father of my grandkids now, and I know fathers, you do this mothers, you probably do it too, when the kids are coming up, you get them to jump to you off the stairs or off a stool or something just to develop that trust and to see how long it takes them to jump to you. And so, I've done that with all of my kids, you know, they get up on the steps and they're hesitant, and then they finally they'll jump and you catch them and they want to do it again. They go up another step they want to do it again. And so, you build that trust, and they want to, it's a game but they know you're gonna trust them. I haven't dropped one of them yet. But you know that they know, they trust you on that. And one example with Luke my oldest, he's got the three grandchildren that we have.  When he was about five my oldest grandson is five now. So, he's about his age, we were at a church function that at somebody's house and I was just standing around, you know, talking with some guys and in the in the backyard of the home that we were at, and the kids were playing, and Luke was playing with all these other kids. And there was probably a six-foot landscape wall, you know, in the back and they were up on top of that playing and running and I was standing beside it and talking to these guys, and just all of a sudden, I had my back turn and all of a sudden, you know, I just get hit by a 50-pound bomb on my right side. And it's Luke, he just decided to like, Hey, dad's there and I'm gonna jump.  I'm on a wall and I'm gonna jump. It was a blind jump. I didn't know, he didn't say Hey, Dad, I'm jumping. He just jumped. And luckily, I caught him you know, he landed on my arm. So, I was able to grasp him up pretty good. And so, he had that blind faith, trust that, hey, my dad’s caught me, he hasen't dropped me yet, so I'm going to jump. And so, I said, "Luke," I said, you didn't let me know you were coming?" He said, "I know I just jumped. You're my dad, you caught me." And so no big deal. And I'm just glad I caught him.  He had that trust. I mean, that's the way we are as children of God.  We should be able; you know to trust in God with all the things in our lives. And our trust, the trust level should build up. Where when something comes up, that's unknown, we don't know what's next. We can take that blind leap of faith, we can jump, we can take it because we trust that God is there. And He's leading us in that next step. 

That's an example of trust, just have trusting God that he's going to keep us safe. He's going to protect us. And that we can be sure about His, love for us and that He's going to be there to protect us. Be confident in God that he's gonna catch us. He's going to love us, and our hope is built on that trust in God. And so, Warren Wiersbe, he defines this trust here in Proverbs 3:5-6, "To lie helpless face down at pictures of servant waiting for the master’s command in readiness to obey or a defeated soldier yielding himself to the conquering general or surrender."  An act of surrender. Higgins, he says that it means, "To stretch out or to lie face down, the picture of a man totally stretched out on his face before God the message of his posture is his total helpless and dependence upon God totally yielded to that will."  And so that same word is used in Matthew 26:39 reminds us of Lord Jesus. He said, "When going a little farther, he fell on his face to the ground and prayed.  My father, if it's possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will."   Jesus fell on his face humbled before the Father in prayer. And so that's the image of trust in the Lord with all your heart you're yielding yourself, you're surrendering, you're yielding yourself for total trust in God.  In Charles Spurgeon has said, at least he's credited for this. He may not be, I think he is.  "We cannot always trace God's hand, but we can trust his heart. So, we may not know what's going on. Or we might not yield to what's going on. But we can trust God, that He's going to catch us. He's going to guide us, that He's going to protect us. The second part of that verse, trust in the Lord with all your heart, not one chamber of it, not a little bit of it, but with all your heart, and you want to write this definition down, this is going to be profound.  You want to remember this.  A seminary student brother wrote, all, listen, all means all and that's all that all means. All means all everything. That's all it means. Everything that we are everything that we want to be our desires. What we want to do with our lives, our goals, our personality, our attitudes, our opinions, our relationship with God, all of your heart. We're to trust God with all of our heart, everything about us and within us. We trust God with all of our hearts. Scripture says a lot about things with all of our hearts in our faith, the Great Commandment in Matthew 22, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind."   With all, everything. Joshua 22:5 says, "Take diligent heed to love the Lord your God and to walk in all His ways and to keep His commandments and to cleave unto Him and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. And then 1 Samuel 12:20 says, “Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord but serve the Lord with all your heart. Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart." So, we're to love the Lord God with all our heart, we're to trust the Lord our God with all of our heart, we're to serve the Lord with all of our hearts, we're to trust the Lord with all your heart. The "R" is rely fully on God and not your own understanding.  We're to rely on God. Were to rely here, you know the old acronym frog, F R O G, for fully rely on God.  With everything we're to depend and we're to lean, not on our understanding. And the word here for lean is camak translated lean is to support oneself upon something to place put one weight upon something? What are you putting your whole faith, your weight of everything that you're depending on? What are you doing? Are you dependent on God? Are you dependent on somebody else? Are you dependent on another person? Are you dependent on an institution? Are you depending on your own desires and your personality? What are you dependent on? Are you dependent on your pride and your self-sufficiency, which is sinful? What are you leaning on?

So, the first step is to avoid depending on our own comprehension, our own discernment and our own insight. Because if we try to trust our heart, you know, Jeremiah says, our heart is deceitful, it's evil, it's dirty, a stain. You know, we can't trust our hearts unless we've given it to the Lord. And so not depend on our own judgment. Often, we think that we know what's best our decisions are clouded by the desires of our heart, instead of trusting in God for what He has, for our heart, the "U" in trust is understanding based on His promises, we have understanding of who God is, how God is, where God is, based on His promises. It says do not lean, do not support on our own understanding, or our own perception of what is going on to translate understanding means comprehension, discernment and insight.  We're to lean on the omnipotence of Almighty God, the omniscience of Almighty God is the Lord God Almighty. And we're to lean on that and not on our own understanding.  In Colossians 1, Paul’s praise for the church at Colossae. They'll have spiritual wisdom and understanding.   Not personal wisdom and understanding but spiritual wisdom and understanding.   Philippians 4:7 says, "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."  This does not mean to imply that there's nothing to be trusted in our common sense.  We can't just totally depend on our own personal, common sense. Rather, we should bank all on God for His wisdom, and His ways cause His ways are above ours, and must be chosen when they seem to contradict our earthly human wisdom. Here's why these are not our ways. And so that's when we need to depend and trust and understand on God, understanding and liking or accepting something are two totally different things. We may not understand what God is doing, but we can trust God with that.  We might not understand why something happens to us in our lives why we get a certain diagnosis, or why somebody dies tragically, or we lose somebody or, somebody just walks away from faith in God, we don't understand it. But according to God's Word, and God's Word, we might not understand God's Word, but we're called and responsible to accept God's Word is truth. In high school, 10th grade taking chemistry, I did not understand chemistry. I don't know how I passed. But one day, I just out of frustration I didn't get it.  I don't remember what Miss Sanders was teaching on. But one day, I just told her, I said Miss Sanders, I said, "I just don't understand it." And she looked at me without any empathy or sympathy. And she said, "You don't have to understand it, just accept it." And that helped me a whole lot. I didn't, I didn't help me learn anything. But she said, just because you know, and looking back on understanding what she was saying, just because I didn't understand certain the laws of chemistry or the laws of physics that were created by God, just because I don't understand why you mix sulfur with another chemical, and there's gonna be an explosion, just because I don't understand that it does not take away the truth of the reaction of that chemical law. And so when we don't understand things, that's when we have to trust. We have to accept and trust that God, knows what He's doing. God is God. He's in control. And we need to trust that even when we don't understand what is going on. Charles Swindoll says, "The secret the responsible trust is acceptance. Acceptance is taken from God's hand absolutely anything He gives, looking into His face with trust and thanksgiving, knowing that the confinement of the hedge we're in is good for His glory." And so, do not lean on our own understanding. And so, the "S" in trust, is surrender, surrender totally, to God's will.  "Trust God totally and surrender. Remember that posture is surrender and submission to God, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not knowing your own understanding, in all your ways. acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path." So, we're to seek God wholeheartedly and the Hebrew word for acknowledge got a lot of Hebrew in it. And you know, I didn't I didn't take biblical languages in seminary. My dad said it wasn't required. I said, "Daddy, do I need to take Greek and Hebrew/?"  And he said, "Well son," he was a pastor, he said, "it depends on whether you want to be a digger or toter."  And I said, "Well, I'll be a toter I'll just read from the scholars and see what this means."  But acknowledge the Hebrew word for acknowledge is yada. I don't know if that's where the phrase yada yada yada comes from but the Hebrew word for acknowledge is yada. It's a word used to describe a deep, intimate, committed relationship between a husband and a wife or between man, and God is closest with God is our traveling partner through life, one in whom we want to walk the journey with instead of without we are called to acknowledge his Lordship, in our lives. He is our Savior; He is our Lord. He's our Lord and Master are we worshipping Him as Savior, and Lord?  So daily in all our ways, Luke 9:23 says, "If any man decides to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me."  So, surrender our will, our issues, our goals and desires. The "T" finally in trust is total trust in his direction. Total trust in his direction, so why to trust him?  You know, Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." And so a lamp and a light is not very bright. It's going to, as you're going, you know, you see what's in front of you. Like a very low beam on the headlight, you see what's coming next or you can react to it, it's not the high beams, you can't see why down the road or years down the road, that word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light into my path. So, God is our true north, he's a true compass, who will direct our paths in that.  You know, it's like, you know, how many of you trust in your GPS or your map on your phone? Do you, when it tells you to turn to you always turn? So, I don't know why it's telling me to go this way. I'm gonna go this way. I don't know. You know, nowadays I mean, the GPS, especially what they can tell you when traffic's is backed up or accidents have happened and that gets you on this path that you don't know where you are. And you know, and we talk a lot of times that it doesn't know what it's talking about. I'm gonna go this way anyway. And you get in traffic and that type thing. So directions, God's direction, he says, I'll make your path straight. I'll let you see what the next step is. You're gonna be obedient and follow that next step. It's not a long journey. It's a journey by baby steps. You follow God with everything that you are.   Alexander the Great back several 100 years before Christ. He had conquered the known world, and he got to the Himalayan mountains, and some of his leaders came to him and said, we've marched off the map. We don't know where we are. We've marched off the map.  They said, we should go back to where we know.  We should be going back to what we've already conquered, what we've already done. We know where we are. And it says that Alexander the Great total them mediocre armies always stay within the known areas. The great armies always march off the map. And I think 2020 we've been off the map, and we don't know where we are, we don't know what's happening or why it's happening. We have marched off the map and when we march off the map, what are we to do? Trust God, with all of our hearts, with mind, soul and strength. So in conclusion, there's three things it'll be up on the screen there in your outline, if you're taking notes, just three statements for the conclusion. God is revealing me the wisdom of trusting completely in Him, and the foolishness of trusting in myself or leaning. Also, God is providing me with a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual solution for dealing with life's toughest situations. And third, God is inviting me into a deeper, closer, more personal relationship with Him. Have you trusted God? Have you trusted Christ in that personal relationship? Have you trusted God as Lord and Savior? 

Real quick, I want to show you a picture.  This picture was taken by my sister-in-law Glinda along back last January 20th. And there you see it's an air writing, it says, "Trust Jesus" on that.  And she posted that on Facebook. She said, Wow, what a great reminder in the sky as I'm traveling I4 just now, January, Glenda was about a year post, breast cancer, treatments, chemo and that type thing, and that January, she had gotten a clean blood work, clean bill of health, that type thing. And so, she was doing good. She was reminded to say, Hey, I've had cancer. I'm trusting Jesus. That was a good reminder for her.  Fast forward eight months up to August. She's having pain. She's having difficulties. They've moved to Lakeland from Orlando. And they go back to the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa with a new oncologist was and they ran some tests, and they looked and said, and they told her they said, Glenda, he said, your cancer has metastasized and it's in your liver and in your lungs. It's in your bone, and it's in your lymph nodes. They said they we're gonna try an aggressive treatment before we do chemo. And they did that for just a little while and then the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This year, they spent all day at the hospital doing things.  She had a lot of difficulty with stuff, but they finally told them after that day, they said Glenda my brother Scott, they told them, they said, hey there's nothing else we can do. There’re multiple tumors in your liver. The chemo is not working, it's very aggressive. There's nothing else we can do. But Glenda and Scott in that moment, they've been trusting God the whole process, but in that devastating news, there's nothing else we can do. There trust and faith in God was stronger than I think that it had ever been. And Scott, my brother called me on Thanksgiving morning to tell me this news that, hey, they told us last night there's nothing we can do they're bringing hospice in today for that, but Scott's faith and trust during this process.   Glenda's faith and hope it never dwindled, it never dwindled because she had that personal relationship with God that was strong. She trusted Him every step of the way, even with cancer diagnosis, the first battle with cancer, and even through this devastating last battle of cancer, she never lost hope, her faith and trust in God never dwindled. How about you? Are you like that? Is your trust in Jesus so strong, you trust Him as Lord and Savior as provider? As sustainer? As healer? Have you put your trust and faith in God? JOHN 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish." So that's why I was saying a while ago, the Greek word believes in this book here, and see if it sounds familiar, it means trust, rely upon and to have faith in whoever trust in Him should not perish. Whoever relies upon Him, should not perish. Whoever has faith in Him shall not perish. God's gift of eternal life is trusting in Jesus accepting His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness, and trusting Him as Lord and Savior. Are you at that point in your life? Have you ever done that? Have you ever trusted Christ as your Savior? Are you trying to lean on your own understanding, trying to figure out intellectually, if this makes sense or that doesn't make sense or lobbyists or why they aren't and you, have knowledge about Jesus, you have knowledge about the Bible, but you haven't put your full trust in Christ as Lord and Savior? 

So, I encourage you to do that you can look on the next steps form or talk to one of us after but on the accepting Christ, trust in Christ as Lord and Savior and one of the pastors will contact you this week or if you want to stick around, I'll stick around the front. Other pastors will too if you want to talk to one of them and say I want to put my faith and trust in Jesus, I want to be saved man, I want to follow in obedience and trust Him as my Lord and Savior.  Do you truly trust Him today?  

Father, we're grateful for your great love to us.  Father we're thankful that you are trustworthy, that we can put our whole trust our whole faith in you. Father, thank You that You keep Your Word and that your promises are true. But father help us realize here today where our trust is, have we fully depended on you have we fully trusted in you as our Lord and Savior? Is our faith in you? Is it strong? Or is our faith being weakened and crumbled? Because of what's going on around in this world?  Father, help us to acknowledge You and let this day be the day of salvation, for those to trust in you for the very first time for it’s in Christ's name we pray, amen.