Text: Proverbs 3.5-6 “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”.
Icebreaker: Every day we make many decisions. What kind of decision-maker are you? Do you decide quickly? Do you find it difficult to make decisions? Do you sometimes find it hard to know what the right decision is?
Introduction:
Often when we make decisions, we are relying on our own understanding. The difficulty with this is that human understanding is always subject to error. What appears to be the right choice may be the wrong choice. What appears to be solid and a source of hope may be revealed instead, to be a source of deceit. The Lord sees the bigger picture and He always knows what’s best for us. The point here is that we need to recognize our own limitations. Many times we desperately seek for hope, but in the wrong places. Today, the big question is, ‘Where are you seeking for hope?’
What does it really mean to trust and have hope in God’s way?
Trusting in God means that we are leaning away from our own understanding and towards God’s by acknowledging and following His path. It means actively pursuing God’s will for your life and doing things God’s way instead of your way (if your way is different). It is being teachable and being willing to say to God “OK, I don’t understand, but I know You do so I’m going to go Your way.” It is living with active confidence in the truth that God always does what is best even when it doesn’t seem so to you.
Hope (Hope in the original Greek is the word Elpis = ἐλπίς) can be defined in two ways:
Joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation (Strong’s Concordance)
An expectation that God will intervene. (Bible dictionary Vida Nova).
So we have trust and hope, in the way God commands, when our joy, expectation, vision, obedience and life reflect Him and His will for us.
What if people had the same hope and expectation in God, that they have in the COVID vaccine?
I see a world mobilizing, planning and blindly relying on the function of a vaccine that is the hope of millions of people. But what if we had the same hope that God is real and has real impact in our lives? How different would the world and our lives be? Of course we pray that the vaccine will help the situation, but it is not where we should be placing our hope, only God can give us hope of a better future.
To have Godly HOPE is to never forget the truth about who we are.
We cannot forget who we are, the truth and purpose of our lives. If we do, we might end up living like we will never die and dying like we never lived.
You were made for so much more than this. So much more than earthly life. Everything begins on this side of eternity, but we shouldn’t be so focused on this life, and today, that we forget that there is a life to come, beyond this one.
Conclusion:
The following poem was written by an American soldier that gave his life to Jesus one day before he died in the war. Listen and reflect on it.
"Lord God I have never spoken to you
But now I want to say, "How do you do?"
You see, God, they told me You didn't exist
And like a fool I believed all this.
Last night from a shell hole I saw your sky
I figured right then they had told me a lie
Had I taken time to see the things you made
I'd have known they weren't calling a spade a spade.
I wonder, God, if you'll take my hand
Somehow I feel that you'll understand
Funny I had to come to this hellish place
Before I had time to see Your face
Well, I guess there isn't much more to say
But I'm sure glad, God, I met you today
I guess zero hour will soon be here
But I'm not afraid since I know
you're near
The signal!
Well, God, I'll have to go
I like You lots, I want you to know
Look now this will be a horrible fight
Who knows, I may come to Your house tonight
Though I wasn't friendly to You before
I wonder, God, if You'd wait at Your door
Look, I'm crying, I'm shedding tears
I'll have to go now God goodbye
Strange now, since I met You, I'm not afraid to die"
No comments:
Post a Comment