GIG235 Is Your Trust in the Lord?
Growing In God Podcast Web Description: Is God a gentleman? Yes. When we invite Him out of the room, just like a gentleman He leaves. As we watch all the systems we trust in fall apart, we can despair and feel like there are no answers. Well, God has all the answers but we have excluded Him. We need to invite Him back in. We need to end our dependence on what we have created and put all our trust in our Creator. Show Notes: Elijah learned an important lesson when he fled for his life to Mount Horeb. There he saw a strong wind, but God was not in the wind. Then he saw a powerful earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. Then he saw a great fire, but God was not in the fire. In the world today we are seeing great destruction from hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires. And of course we often interpret those events as God’s judgments. But what if God is not in any of those things? Maybe we should stop blaming God for them and acknowledge that they are the result of how we as humans have lived. In this country, as in many countries, we have taken the Lord out of our lives. We have removed Him from every aspect of our society. We have spent years putting our faith and trust in everything but the Lord. We build systems and pour money into programs to meet our needs, and before we know it, we are dependent on those things instead of on God. When those systems fail we are utterly devastated, as we saw in recent fires in California. And that was only one of many catastrophes in the world. Our concept of the end-time is that God is directly engaged in judging people. A better understanding might be that we suffer the consequences of a lifestyle that excludes God. All the man-made systems we have put our trust in will continue to come tumbling down until we return to trusting, honoring, and glorifying God. Let us return to Him with all our hearts. Let us believe the promise that if we humble ourselves and ask the Lord’s forgiveness, He will hear from heaven and heal our land. Key Verses: • Proverbs 3:5–6. “Trust in the LORD … do not lean on your own understanding.” • 2 Chronicles 7:13–14. “If … My people … humble themselves … I will hear from heaven.” • James 4:13–15. “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” • 1 Corinthians 4:7. “What do you have that you did not receive?” • John 6:53. “You have no life in yourselves.” • 1 Kings 19:9–10. “I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” • 1 Kings 19:11–18. “The LORD was not in the wind … not in the earthquake … not in the fire.” • Isaiah 31:1. “Woe to those who … trust in chariots … but they do not … seek the LORD.” Quotes: • “Idolatry is just trusting in anything except God. And I think we do that all the time every day.” • “We all need to humble ourselves and come before Him and say, ‘We repent of our wicked ways.’ You say, ‘Well, what's my wicked way?’ That we don't trust in Him, that we're not giving our lives to Him, that we're not honoring Him for all that He is.” • “Whatever we've built, it's only because He's given us the ability to build. Whatever we've done, it's only because of His enabling, His wisdom, His blessing of intelligence.” Takeaways: 1. We have grown increasingly dependent on systems that we have built ourselves. Consequently our security comes from things other than the Lord. We have worked the Lord out of our lives, out of our national institutions, out of our marketplace, out of our schools, and out of every aspect of our society. 2. When it comes to the devastating events such hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires around the world, people declare, “God is doing this. God is doing that.” The truth is that God might not be in any of those things and we are simply experiencing the results of our own lifestyle without God. 3. Like the tower of Babel, many systems among the nations will come tumbling down until humanity itself turns back to the Lord and says, “You Lord are our only God. You are the Creator of the universe and we glorify You. We honor You. We start trusting in You only, and we humbly repent where we have gone astray.