Learning to Trust

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This week we are wrapping up our short series, When I Am Afraid. For the last three weeks we have been talking about how to deal with times of fear and anxiety in our lives. Ultimately, the way we are going to get through that particular storm is through our willingness to trust in God. But what if we don’t trust in God? What if someone we know who is struggling under the weight of life doesn’t trust in God? What then? Well, we have to learn how and why trusting Him is the best decision we’ll ever make. In this last part of our journey, unpacking that truth is what we are talking about with the help of something Jesus said that reveals a great deal about His character. Let’s dive right in.

Learning to Trust

I want you to think for a second about someone you just don’t trust. My guess is that you have at least one person in your life who fits that particular bill. I’m not as concerned with the precise reason for the mistrust right now as I am with the presence of the mistrust itself. Do you have that person in mind? Now, imagine that you are struggling with something fairly significant and this person comes and offers you help. Are you going to accept it? Probably not, right? Maybe if you are sufficiently desperate you’ll give it some consideration, but absent that, you’ll keep on struggling on your own rather than take help from this person. Why? Because you don’t trust them. You don’t trust they are really going to be there when you need them. You don’t trust they aren’t offering with insincere or ulterior motives. You don’t trust they aren’t going to let you down in the end. You don’t trust them. And when you don’t trust someone, it’s hard to receive much of anything from them. 

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Woman reading a Bible while sitting in a wooden church pew

Do You Want to Be Happy?

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“Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8 CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a culture that obsessively pursues happiness. Whatever it is that makes you happy is what you should do. That’s the message we receive. You shouldn’t have to feel bad feelings. If you do, there’s a way to make them go away. Get rid of that habit. Change your job. Sell your house. Cut off that relationship. Take this pill. Go on that vacation. In fact, not only should you never have to be unhappy, but you shouldn’t even have to be inconvenienced, uncomfortable, or bored. There’s an app for that. As a pastor who can trend a bit in the direction of cynicism, but who has spent a lot of time over a lot of years in the Scriptures, my first reaction is to roll my eyes at all of this and offer up the standard line about happiness being a fleeting emotion while joy is the deeper and richer virtue. Happiness is circumstantial, but joy is a state of being. But for just a minute this morning, let’s assume on the importance of happiness. If happiness is really what you want to experience, let’s take a look at what the data says about how to achieve that.

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Person standing on a rocky mountain looking at the star-filled night sky with the Milky Way visible

Humility and Knowledge: Discovering Real Truth

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“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever known something that turned out not to be true? You were as sure as the world that you had your facts straight until you learned beyond any shadow of doubt that you didn’t. Did you really know it at all? Can you know something that isn’t true? That’s a far more difficult philosophical question to answer than it perhaps seems. All true knowledge is rooted in a foundation of truth. If something doesn’t correspond with reality, we can’t really know it. This means that all knowledge starts with knowing the source of reality. Let’s talk about it.

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Open book on wooden surface with sunrise over river and mountains

Unlocking Wisdom: A Journey Through Proverbs

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“The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning wisdom and discipline; for understanding insightful sayings; for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice, and integrity; for teaching shrewdness to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man—let a wise person listen and increase learning, and let a discerning person obtain guidance—for understanding a proverb or a parable, the words of the wise, and their riddles.” ( Proverbs 1:1-6 CSB – Read the chapter)

Wisdom is not something our culture thinks much about. Knowledge, yes. Experience, perhaps. But wisdom, not so much. That’s too bad because we could use some wisdom nowadays. The choices we face as a people, as a nation, as a world are stark and filled with potential for great good or great harm. The answers to our biggest questions won’t be easy to come by—they rarely are—but the path to the best end will always be one lighted by wisdom. Today we begin a new journey. This is one I have wanted to take for some time, but have always put it off because it has seemed rather daunting. Yet daunting or not, we are going to begin tackling the best source of wisdom we have in the Scriptures. It won’t be a short journey, but, Lord willing, it will be a fruitful one. Let’s begin a trip through the Proverbs.

Let me add one more thing before we dive in. I’m trying something a little different today. You may have noticed this post doesn’t have what has been one of my standard post titles for nine years. Those two titles told you about how long a particular post was going to be, and they told you what Scripture we were going to be exploring together, but they weren’t particularly engaging. While the reach of this blog is global in a way I never could have imagined it would be (it has been viewed in something like 190 countries over its lifetime), it’s also not very big. I would love to see it grow from where it is, and if a search-engine-optimized title will help accomplish that, I guess I can change some. So, titles will look a bit different going forward, but hopefully they’ll be a bit catchier. In any event, on to the focus of the day.

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People of various ages and backgrounds warmly greeting and hugging each other at a community fellowship event

Digging in Deeper: Philippians 4:21-23

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“Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send you greetings. All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar’s household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Another book down today. If you have been journeying with me on here for very long, we have now covered Mark, Amos, Exodus, Romans, and now, Philippians. Just 61 more to go and we will have worked our way through the whole set. Here at the end of Philippians, we find Paul’s final greetings as is typical of his letters. And, as is often the case, there’s more here than it first appears. Paul was right that all of Scripture—even the parts we don’t expect—is breathed out by God and useful for making us more like Him. Let’s talk about what’s going on here at the end and how God’s people are present even where we least expect them to be.

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