Season 1, Episode 2: The Power of Trust
The Power of Trust
About a year ago, my wife and I were having a get together at our house. It was a graduation party for me as I had just finished my bachelor's degree. We had checked the weather. We had gotten everything together. We had got some games for the yard. And, we had gone to Academy and got some $5 foldable chairs to be ready for this event. We were excited!
We got some friends and family together for this. We get all the games, all the chairs, everything. We take it all outside. We set it all up. Everybody gets there. We're having a good time. And against all odds, against all the odds from the weather channel, from our local news, it began to rain us and our guests.
We scrambled and grabbed all the chairs and some of the games and put 'em back up on the balcony of our house, and we pulled all the chairs inside. And so now all of a sudden, We were all crammed like sardines in our house. If that wasn't bad enough, as I was going around talking to some friends and some people that were there, I ended up sitting back into one of these $5 foldable chairs, and in a split second, I turned a $5 foldable chair into a worthless, foldable chair. The metal side of the chair had gone right through the fabric as I was going down into it. That chair was no longer good for anything. I folded it up, put it to the side, and grabbed another one. I say all that to say it matters what you put your trust in. Unfortunately, whenever you spend $5 on a chair, you get what you pay for.
I placed too much trust in a cheap chair and got the worst end of it. My wife and I, we put too much faith in the Weather Channel app and ended up facing the worst for it. Throughout this episode, I want to share with you how we can find what our trust is in, how that is impacting us, and if we need to make a change.
Your Anxiety is Tied to Your Trust
I mentioned last week about trying to deal with some of my own anxiety, and as I've spent some time thinking and praying about my worries and what was making me worried and even how to deal with it. It dawned on me that my worry was completely attached to what I put my trust in.
I want to give you a quick example. If you look at my life, I've done mechanic work for the last four to five years. It's become a very big part of my life. And with that, I can find it very easy to put my trust in my own two hands. I pride myself on being a hard worker on somebody that can learn and can develop a skill and make money from that skill. But putting my trust in my hands and in the work I do isn't always the most effective thing to do. It sounds good because I've learned a skill, I've learned how to do something, and I apply that in my work every single day. And truthfully, I wanna believe that my work ethic and what I can do can earn me enough money to provide for my family. I wanna believe it can earn enough money to provide through maybe an economic downfall or bad financial situations, or just some kind of emergency that could happen. But in reality, I am placing my trust in my own two hands and my ability to make money and no wonder I find myself anxious. No wonder I find myself worried about my life.
It's literally the equivalent of me placing all of my trust in a $5 foldable chair. At best, it might hold me up for a time, but it is flimsy and ultimately unreliable because whenever storms come or whenever something happens to me, that thing that I place my security in can no longer hold me up.
And I truly believe that I'm not the only person that has found themselves in this type of situation. I want you to think in your own life about what you place your trust in. You could place your trust in the government that they're gonna work things out for you. You could place it in your family that they're gonna be there with you and help you through no matter what situation. That's not to say that family is not important. Of course it is. You could be like me and put your faith in your job, in your spouse, maybe. But I want to tell you, anything you put your trust in that is not God will ultimately let you down. And that's not some cliche Christianese language. It's just the truth.
What happens is whenever you worry that something will let you down, you will get anxious. It's as simple as that. We worry and we get anxious because we are afraid. We're afraid because we know that these things that we put our faith and our trust in are unreliable at best. You look at the government, at the world, at your job relationships. No matter what you put your trust in, you're always a little bit worried in the back of your mind that it's gonna fall apart, that it's not gonna work out all good for you.
And, so, just take a second, what is it for you? What do you truly put your trust in? What keeps you up at night or stresses you out? Is it possible that the thing that you are worried about is the thing that you are putting too much trust in?
What NOT to Put Your Trust In
The scripture shows a lot of things that we are to not put our trust in. Now, I wanna share a few of those scriptures with you just real quick. In Psalm 20:7 it says, "Some trust and chariots and summon horses. But we trust in the name of the Lord our God. "That verse shows that we don't trust in armies. We don't trust in military to protect us. We trust in God.
Psalm 146:3 says, "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no salvation." Don't trust rulers. Don't trust people that are in power because they can let you down.
Proverbs 11:28, "Whoever trust in riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf." Don't put your trust in money.
"Whoever trust in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered." Don't trust in your own mind and your own thoughts.
Finally, in Proverbs 29:25, "The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe." if you fear men, if you fear people, it's a snare, but whoever puts their full trust in God is safe.
So we have all these examples in the Bible where it shows specifically what to not put your trust in and where to put it, money, rulers, military, all these different things. If you put all your trust in those, they will let you down, but put your trust in the Lord. I wanna tell you what God can do when you put your trust in him.
What God Can Do When You Trust in Him
Like I said, whenever I explain this and whenever I talk about this, it's not to be cliche because if you come into this and you're listening to this and you're a Christian, you know that you're supposed to trust God. And I know it. It can be repetitive to hear just another voice say it, but I want you to hear it from somebody that deals with this same struggle of trying to let go of trusting in things of this world and trying to trust more in God because it's not a cliche. We so easily fall into the temptation to trust in the things we can see.
And I think a good litmus test of how to know if you're trusting fully in God is if you ask yourself, and I want you to answer this in your own mind, truly, have I lost peace? Have I lost hope, and have I lost some faith? If you've lost any of those three things, you really need to carefully consider in your own mind and your own heart what you're putting your trust in, because whenever your trust is in God, there is peace and faith and hope.
That's not to say you're a bad person, I don't believe that you are. It's very easy for us to drift and kind of fall away from trusting God. But I wanna tell you what can happen if you recenter your focus on God.
There's a really encouraging story by Carrie Coleman and she said, "When we first became Christians, my husband and I kept hearing about tithing. At the time we were living paycheck to paycheck, just barely getting by. We were donating about $20 a week, which felt like a huge sacrifice at the time, but we kept reading the message in the Bible, Malachi 3:10, and decided to just trust God and that if we were obedient, he would take care of us. It was a hugely leap of faith, but we started giving at least 10% of our income in tithe. Surely enough. Not only could we get by, But our financial situations, our financial circumstances kept getting better and better, and ever since then, we've been tithing and never looked back."
There are thousands of stories just like this of people that had gone on without tithing. They had gone on without tithing and said, we can't afford it. We can't give that much. We just don't have the money right now. And then, one day, they decided we have to start tithing and they begin to give that 10% over to God. And, all of a sudden, God began to change their financial situation.
And you know what that is? Obviously, tithing is giving that 10% because it belongs to God already and he's asked us to give it to him. But what that is us letting go of our trust in money. It says, "God, I trust you more than this money. More than what this money can do for me. I believe that you can help me."
There are more than 700 promises in the Bible that God makes, and whenever we find ourselves worried about the future, we can begin to lean on those promises. We can begin to lean on those promises and trust that God is going to deliver. As we go through these podcast episodes, we're gonna get more and more into these promises and specifically how they can apply to your life.
But for now, I just want you to know that they're there, and whenever you find yourself worried and anxious, look to these promises and place your trust back in God and believe that God is going to bring about His perfect situation in your life. But for now, I wanna leave you with this verse. In Isaiah 26:3-4, it says, "You keep in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord. God is an everlasting rock."
Whatever you put your trust in has power over your life. The flimsy things we often put our trust in. Like how I put my trust in that $5 chair. Those flimsy things that can lead to anxiety and worry, but trusting in God and in his promises brings peace and hope.
