12-27-09 Fundamentals – Trust

            I  can remember when my oldest son first discovered that turning on a switch in the wall made lights turn on in the ceiling.  He was fascinated by this concept.  Confused and amazed all at once.  After all, there was no visible connection between the two apparatus.  How could a small switch on the wall have such a large affect of the overall look of the whole room?  It was amazing, perplexing, fascinating and wonderful all at the same time.  Anita and I spent a lot of time getting after him for wanting to turn lights on and off, on and off, on and off.  

            We all know that it is electricity that runs through wires that makes all this work, but even that is a mysterious process.  We have seen it so many times that we take it for granted that it works.  We can’t really see what is going on, but we fully trust that when we turn on the switch the lights will come on.

            Yet how many of you have had trouble trusting in God for reasons that are very similar to the reasons that we would have for not trusting electricity.  We cannot see the electrons flowing through the wires (often we cannot even see the wires) just like we cannot see God.  Most of us do not completely understand how everything works in an electrical circuit and God tends to be very mysterious to us.  We cannot understand how he does things a lot of times, and the things he asks us to do seem to make no sense.  Yet somehow it is harder for me to trust God than it is for me to trust electrical lighting.

            I could name off a number of things that we have no trouble trusting in even though we cannot see them or necessarily understand them.  Gravity is one.  The sun rising and setting is another.  One that is very important to me is the shot coming out of the end of my gun making a pass at the ducks or gees that I am pursuing.  In fact, if I can see that shot, I begin to get worried as I know that it will not have enough energy to do the job that it is intended to do at the other end of its flight.  We have no problems trusting in these things to continue to operate, yet I know that I sometimes have trouble trusting in God to do what he says that he will do.  If you all are honest, I would guess that all of us have experienced that at some point or another.

            We are not alone in this lack of trust.  All throughout scripture you can see God calling people to do certain things and promising to be with them, and these people question God to make sure that this is really what he wants.  Noah is told to build an ark to prepare for something that no one on earth has ever seen to this day.  Rain.  Abraham is told to leave his homeland and travel somewhere.  God will let him know where when he gets there.  Yeah traveling without a destination is a lot of fun.  Moses is told to go up against the most powerful ruler of his time and lead this leaders free labor away.  Joshua is told to take down a very well fortified city with a large army by marching around it and blowing horns for a week.  Gideon is told that he has to many men and he needs to get rid of most of them before he goes into battle.  In fact he is only allowed to keep three hundred men and there weapons are a horn a lamp and a jar.  None of these agreed that the plan laid out by God made sense, but ultimately the decided to trust.

            I would like to look at one more in a little more depth.  This is a story about Peter.  To set the stage Jesus has just performed one of the most well known miracles in the Bible.  He has just fed five thousand men plus women and children with just five loaves of bread and two fish.  Then Jesus puts his disciples in a boat and sends them off.  He goes up on a mountain to pray, and then later on that night decides that he is going to join his disciples in the boat.  Lets read what happens.  Matthew 14:22-30.  Let’s stop there.  I would like to just imagine what that must have been like.  If I am John in this story the first thing I am thinking when I hear Peter open his mouth is “Shut up, what if he makes all of us get out of this boat and try your stupid stunt.  If you want to sink to your death that is one thing, but I am perfectly fine staying in this boat and taking my chances.”  Now I don’t really know if that is what any of the disciples are actually thinking, but it is interesting that only Peter speaks up.  And because he speaks up, he gets the chance of a lifetime.  He gets to be better on the water than Chris Schaap or Jim Rockwell.  But as he begins to walk toward Jesus on top of the water (by the way I wonder if his feet got wet at all?)  he realizes that the lake is not at ideal wakeboarding conditions and is in even worse shape for trying his current stunt.  Once he begins to focus on how bad the conditions are he loses the source of his power and begins to sink (I am pretty sure he got wet at this point).    Not only did he get wet, he got scared and cried out for help.  Video clip #1.

            We read in Romans that people often decide to worship and serve (read put their trust in) created things more than the Creator (God).  Romans 1:25.  When Peter started believing more in the power of the creation on which he was walking than the power of the one who challenged him to defy natures laws, he began to sink.  Let me share a personal story with you of an experience that I have had with not trusting that God could pull off what he was calling the group of which I was a part to accomplish.  The pastor had heard a number of people in the church wanting to do something to reach the community and begin to have a presence there without being “preachy”.  A coffe house or restraunt were ideas that kept coming up.  There was a building in town that was for sale or lease and used to be a pizza place so he met with the owners and then called a meeting of those interested as well as the leadership of the church.  He told us that he felt that God was leading us to open up a Coffee shop at this location and that we should open before Thanksgiving.  The only problem with this timeline was that the date of this exploiritory meeting was the end of October.  That didn’t give a lot of time for things to get done.  Having had worked with a couple of resteraunts that were just opening in the past I knew that it could be a daunting process even for those experienced in the restraunt business with contacts already set up.  We had no one in the group who knew about resteraunts or how to run them.  We had no suppliers, we had no people trained on how to make fancy coffees, we had no Coffee making equipment.  We had no coolers for the deli side of the business.  We had no health department inspections.  And we had a very limited budget.  How could all of this come together in less than a month.  The liscencing process alone could take three times that.  And yet somehow ( I still do not know how)  all of these things fell into place as well as the building being updated some, Volunteers being enlisted and trained to help with making and serving coffee.  All I know is that all of us just started moving toward that goal and everything fell into place.  There is no other way to explain it other than God gave a vision and he cleared the way for that vision to be fulfilled.  Not that there wasn’t a lot of work involved.  I remember being at the building at midnight on a Wednesday night changing out a compressor in a used refrigeration display case that we had gotten for a dollar because it had a bad compressor.  I remember other people sacrificing time, energy, talents and money to see this thing come together, but when Capstone opened all any of us could say was that God had showed up and cleared the way.   God does not leave us hanging.   Clip # 2.   Rest of the story of Peter.  Matthew 14:31-32.

            So where is God challenging you to step out of your comfort zone.  For some of you it may be that he is challenging you to take those first steps of trust in him.  You have felt him working on your heart, but you just have had your reservations up to now.  For some of you it might be learning to trust God with your money.  You trust him in a lot of areas of your life, but your money is so limited it seems impossible to give up control of some of it.  Maybe it is that God is calling you to Love other people more or get to know him better.  Or is it something more exotic than that.  Is he calling you to build an ark, open a coffee house to reach out to the community or serve him full time in some capacity.  Whatever it is that he is calling you to do (and he is always calling us forward) I know one thing for certain.  You are going to have to get out of the boat and risk sinking in order to accomplish it.  Trust God to take care of it.  He will.