Monday, August 3, 2015

Bullseye: Proverbs That Hit the Target: Trusting God, 8/2/15

Sermon 8-2-15 Proverbs- trust    Proverbs 3:1-8
My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years    and bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you;   bind them around your neck,     write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name    in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart    and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.[a] Do not be wise in your own eyes;    fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body    and nourishment to your bones.

New series – proverbs
Today.. trust in the lord

Story/Joke
A man named Jack was walking along a steep cliff one day, when he accidentally got too close to the edge and fell. On the way down he grabbed a branch, which temporarily stopped his fall. He looked down and to his horror saw that the canyon fell straight down for more than a thousand feet.
He couldn't hang onto the branch forever, and there was no way for him to climb up the steep wall of the cliff. So Jack began yelling for help, hoping that someone passing by would hear him and lower a rope or something.
HELP! HELP! Is anyone up there? "HELP!"
He yelled for a long time, but no one heard him. He was about to give up when he heard a voice. Jack, Jack. Can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes! I can hear you. I'm down here!"
"I can see you, Jack. Are you all right?"
"Yes, but who are you, and where are you?
"I am the Lord, Jack. I'm everywhere."
"The Lord? You mean, GOD?"    "That's Me."
"God, please help me! I promise if, you'll get me down from here, I'll stop sinning. I'll be a really good person. I'll serve You for the rest of my life."
"Easy on the promises, Jack. Let's get you off from there; then we can talk."
"Now, here's what I want you to do. Listen carefully."
"I'll do anything, Lord. Just tell me what to do."
"Okay. Let go of the branch.""What?" "I said, let go of the branch. Just trust Me. Let go."
There was a long silence.
Finally Jack yelled, "HELP! HELP! IS ANYONE ELSE UP THERE?"

Proverbs- what are they
A collection of the wisdom of a culture
Written by many – codified over time
Context of this certain proverb= little to none
Ambiguity of some of them - Conflicting ideas in some of them

Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
    or you yourself will be just like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
    or he will be wise in his own eyes.

The ancients were ok with that….
Wisdom does not always line up in western ways

Trusting god means that u understand that difficulty will accompany u
If you didn’t have difficulty you wouldn’t be looking to trust god….
We would be living the default life of joy.  Skipping along the way…….
The jews had problems…….probelms followed them.

We have problems
I deleted the entire sermon
Trust god

Jenny moving to florida……… lots of adult decisions
Me backing off, allowing her to dance with the pressures along the way.
Trusting does not mean that we will face no difficulty
It implies the presence of difficulty
You can suffer and be in pain, or you can suffer and not be in pain
You can have problems and let them eat your lunch or
          You can have the same problems and still see the good.
          Still see that god is with us
Trusting is a promise that we are never alone.
Trusting is believing that someone bigger than our problems is here

Exodus story- trusting is a choice
Trusting is a choice- you are not a kite blown by the winds of emotions
You have choices
If you will get to the promised land
1.   You must be willing to leave Egypt
2.   You must learn to be comfortable in the wilderness
3.   There r lessons in the wilderness – it is not to be fought, but taken in
4.   Life is not a destination, it is a journey

Acting and reacting
On the stage of life, are we actors or reactors.
Most react and become upset – later embarrassed.
Others see what is going on, take a step back, take a deep breath, and act out of the best of who they are

Trusting isn’t trusting god to give me what I want
Trusting god is in spite of circumstances…
Trusting is Giving up on the outcome……
It is centered in God, not the outcome

There's a story of a disciple who told his guru that he was going to a
far place to meditate and hopefully attain enlightenment. So he sent
the guru a note every six months to report the progress he was
making. The first report said, "Now I understand what it means to
lose the self". The guru tore up the note and threw it in the
wastepaper basket. After six months he got another report, which
said, "Now I have attained sensitivity to all beings". He tore it up.
Then a third report said, "Now I understand the secrets life". It too was torn up.

And so it went on for years, until finally no reports came in. After a
time the guru became curious and one day there was a traveler going
to that far place. The guru said, "Why don't you find what happened
to that fellow". Finally, he got a note from his disciple. It said, "Im not going to figure it out, I just have to trust God" And when the guru read that, he said, "He made it!
He made it! He finally got it! He got it

Giving up on the outcome
St john of the cross

 In 1577, when St. John of the Cross was thirty-five years old, he was abducted by his own monastic brothers [who were opposed to his efforts to reform the Carmelite order] and incarcerated for nine months in a monastery in Toledo, Spain. It was there, as he languished, that the caterpillar of his old self dissolved and the butterfly of his authentic being grew its wings. . . .

"His prison cell, a stone room barely large enough for his body, had formerly been a latrine. His single robe rotted from his body in the fetid heat of summer, and in winter he shivered in the rag that remained. Several times a week, the brothers brought him out to be flogged while they enjoyed their midday meal. Otherwise, he sat in the darkness, tracking the stars through the single small window, high up in the wall of his cell. . . .

"Doubt began to infiltrate his psyche and, though he clung to the life-raft of faith, it began to disintegrate in his hands and he drifted into despair. Like Jonah in the belly of the fierce fish, the imprisoned friar found himself suspended in the void. He was unable to move toward any kind of hopeful future, or backward to the innocent idealism that had led to his being swallowed up in this terrible emptiness.

"It was painful enough for him to wonder if God had given up on him, but the true agony descended when he began to find himself giving up on God. At last, he simply ran out of energy and let himself down into the arms of radical unknowingness—a god that was beyond his control…

Do you worry or do you trust?
So many Christians are Christians on the outside only
They go on a mission trip and attend bible study, but are still filled with worry and fear……..

Good on the outside, bad on the inside…..
The Kansas city royals…………

You can teach a seal to blow a horn but that does not make it a musician.
What is happening inside of you??
A few weeks ago I talked about being saved…. And saved from our fears.

Are you the kind of Christian who on the outside is doing the kingdom work
But inside you are still full of worry and fear
Trust asks us to change on the inside…..

He will direct your paths……….
When I was young I expected to see the light
Handwriting on the wall
Somewhere along the way I realized that I cant expect god to solve every problem.  that sometimes, most times, he expects me to make informed, spiritual choices…..
I am   responsible for my life…… god is not going to fix everything….

The directing comes from inside, not from above.  He expects us to take responsibility for what we already know to do

How do we make good choices?
How do we find the way?
Wesleyan scholars have developed what they call the

Wesleyan quadrilateral
Scripture
Tradition- what my mom and grandma taught….
Reason – is it frought with self?
Experience – relevant and normal in every day life

Conclusion
Who is holding who?
Little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. Father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter,
‘Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don’t fall into the river.’
The little girl said, ‘No, Dad. You hold my hand.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Asked the puzzled father.
‘There’s a big difference,’ replied the little girl.
‘If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens,
you will never let my hand go.’

clifhanger, sylvester stalone………
we have all let someone else down
trusting isnt holding to gods hand
it is trusting that god is holding on to yours.

Consider the migration of birds
Though very small
They take off 2x per year.  Off into the unknown.
Passing over land and sea, often with no landmarks to guide them
Yet without hesitation, every spring and fall they take off
The birds commit themselves to the elements by way of blind trust in their instinct.

Such is the spiritual journey
Such is the journey of faith, of trust
We have no idea of where we are going.
There are all kinds of difficulties we cannot foresee.
The spiritual journey is basically a surrender in blind trust to our conviction that what we hope to find on the journey we either already have or will certainly find.
But there is no guarantee that we will arrive safely on the basis of the evidence or our circumstances.
We must let go and let the wind (the Holy Spirit) take us where we hope to go ... There is no turning back once we have started because the sky is a big place, and we had better stay with the flock.

Our consolation and hope lies in this……..
The sky is big, the way is unsure
But God is bigger and god is certain

My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years    and bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you;   bind them around your neck,     write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name    in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart    and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.[a] Do not be wise in your own eyes;    fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body    and nourishment to your bones.

Pray, bless the elements


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