Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: Man, I hope you're one who believes not just that God exists because that doesn't save you. You need to believe God and what's required to be saved. You got to believe that.

Kurt: On Today's Word, Pastor Brett Mether with a reminder to trust in the Lord means in always acknowledge him.

Brett Meador: That God became a man, lived among us, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, rose from the grave. And when we believe, trust that that's the way that we're going to be saved, you're going to be saved. The Bible makes it clear.

Kurt: Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6 tell us there's only one solid thing in which we should place our trust, and that's the Lord. And turning to the Proverbs for Today's Word, Pastor Brett Mether says we can feel secure that as we lean on the Lord in his guidance whole heartedly, we can rest assured that he will lead and direct us down the best path for our lives.

Brett Meador: It always amazes me what I end up putting my trust in. You know, you trust when you get in your car and you barrel down the freeway at 65 saves lives. Um and there you are. You're trusting that your brakes are going to work. You trust the little yellow lines, the dotted line between one lane of traffic and yours, the oncoming traffic. You're trusting that that person's going to abide by that rule and stay on their side of the road. You know, you don't think about that all the time. But see, this is where you have to start saying, what do I put my trust in?

Do I put my trust in the little yellow line that keeps the cars away from me? Or do I trust the Lord? That the Lord knows my life. He knows what it's going to start, when it's going to end. And I just trust that the Lord, he's got me. And he's got this life and and I really can truly just put my trust in him. And that's the question you have to kind of ask yourself. But it's a hard one, especially depending on what you're putting your trust in. I'm kind of shocked at some of the things I've trusted in times past.

I remember feeling like I somehow escaped death that afternoon when I was driving home with my pastor. You see what I did when I was like 17, I thought it'd be fun to take my pastor who I heard was afraid of heights. So I thought for his birthday I would take him out skydiving and get it all on video, which I did. And we we went out. I picked him up early in the morning. He's like, Brett, I've got appointments today. I can't do this. I'm like, yeah, they're all fake. I put those appointments in there.

Uh your day is free. So we drove out to the Beagle Boy Sky Ranch there and you know, we drove up to the gate. Some guy drove up on a tractor. He's wearing coveralls and oil all over He says, are you here to jump out of an airplane? I'm like, yep. Is this the right place as well? We'll see if we can find some gasoline for the plane, you know, that kind of I was like, whoa. Man, so we drove down the driveway, went to the barn, the big hangar. And there were a bunch of kind of crazy skydiving dudes hanging out and they were they did several jumps that day.

But we had to go through a special class because we didn't want to do the thing where you were strapped on to another person, you know, where you had to like hold on. We wanted to do it ourselves. I wanted to jump out of an airplane and do it all by myself. So you had to go through a little extra class time. So we were sitting there in the class and the whole time all those guys outside were skydiving and they'd land out by the barn out there and and we were under this kind of hangar.

But all of a sudden we'd hear these footsteps on the roof. And then we'd see the guy jump. What they were doing is they were jumping from 10,000 ft and they were landing on the roof of the barn, running down the roof and then jumping and then letting the last bit land them on the ground. A little bit crazy. And then they would all stop, gather up their chutes and then look up like this. And we're like, what are they looking at? What are they doing? And the instructor says, just watch. And then all of a sudden they all yell out, pull.

And this one guy comes landing and he pulls and lands and he's blind. They need to tell him when the ground's coming. So these were the people we were skydiving with. Like there's so much to this day I can't And the hangar they had this harness that they got you in and you kind of you know, and they said, you know, that harness uh lady died in that harness. She used to be real pretty, too. That's what he said. I not kidding. And um I was like, what happened? Well, you know, they had this arrow on the landing field you know, where they were supposed to land and they point and you're supposed to steer your chute where they tell you to go and you just watch the arrow and said she didn't follow the arrow and she went right into those power lines.

And um you know, we were like, this we're going to die today. This is horrible. But I was picturing like all the movies, you know, big open door, big airplane running, jumping, all that stuff. No. Tiny, tiny little airplane. And we barely got off the ground, barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway. So we finally get up there. Like I was excited to jump out of this plane if you know what I mean. I was like, this is going to be an improvement. But instead of running and jumping, we actually were supposed to they open the door where you're sitting and there's there's nothing between you and you know, thousands of feet to the ground.

They open the door and you're supposed to turn your feet out and put your feet on the wheel and then you reach out and grab the strut of the wing, you know, and hold on to that. And then you reach out as far as you can with your right hand and grab as far out because they don't want you close to the fuselage of the plane because you can get hit by stuff if you let go there. So you got to reach out, grab the strut and then you let your feet drop and then you're just kind of flapping in the wind as you're flying through the air.

And then when he points to you, you just let go. And that's how that's how they do it. I realized once I was in that position hanging from the strut, you know, I realized wow, I'm committed at this point. Like there's no I want to get back in the plane. There's like none of that. Let go. And you know, it worked out great when my chute deployed. I was like relieved I didn't die. On the ground it was great. My pastor on the other hand, and we got this on video, he put his feet out of the plane, stepped on the wheel, grabbed the strut and then slipped off the wheels.

And he was hanging by one hand with his hand right next to the fuselage of the plane. And he had to like hand over hand climb up the strut to get into the right location. So he's flapping in the wind, climbing like this, trying to get out. Finally he gets out and he lets go and he survived. But the funniest part was when he landed on the ground he he kind of didn't pull those toggles at the right time. And so when he hit the ground it was just like I got it all on video.

He was okay. He got up. All right. I think he was celebrating that he was alive. But that wasn't the scariest part of the day. The scariest part of the day was the jump master. We were out in the field and we were gathering up our chute. He said, now don't disconnect your chute. Just keep it on your harness and just you know, wad it up and hold it. So I 'm holding my chute and we're all done. We jump on the back of this It looked like an old hay truck with a couple bales of hay on it.

And so we are sitting on this flatbed truck with bales of hay sitting there. And then we take off down the highway to get back to the original barn. And we're going like 60 mph down this highway with our chutes like this. And all of a sudden my chute starts going And I grabbed it really quick and then And I looked over at the jump master and he said, don't let go of that thing. It'll yank you right off of this truck. Yeah, you think. We finally made it back to the Beagle Boy Sky Ranch and we survived our But as we were driving home, John and I looked at each other and we like, do you feel like you sort of cheated death somehow?

And it wasn't because of skydiving. It was because of the guys we were skydiving. We put our trust in these old good old boys. We didn't even know which one of them packed our chute, you know. And it's like maybe he had chewing tobacco in their chute or something. Like I didn't know. We trusted these guys with our lives. We were like, that was kind of dumb, I think. We felt like we somehow escaped death. And it makes me realize there's things that we do in this life where we put our trust in things that are really not trustworthy.

But one of the greatest parts of being a Christian, when you're a Bible-believing Christian is you can trust the Lord whole heartedly. You can put 100% of your trust in the Lord. And the verse that we're going to look at here are the couple of verses as we look at this. It's a pretty famous scripture. A lot of you might even have this memorized. And it's good for us to meditate on this. Why do people make this verse famous? I'll tell you there's a couple of reasons. One is so many of you older Christians have lived enough of your Christian life that you know that what I'm about to say and teach from this scripture, you know it's absolutely true.

You know that the Bible is right. And that's why this verse I think is the most famous or one of the most famous out of all the Proverbs, maybe even in the Bible, because it's just been proven true time and time again. If it were not true, it wouldn't be a famous verse. I I'm convinced. If everybody grew up and don't got old and said, yeah, Proverbs chapter 3 doesn't really work, then it would become an extinct verse. But I am so thankful the verse we're going to think through and meditate on, it's one that you can bank on.

Let's read it. It's Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5 and 6. It says trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thine ways acknowledge him. And he shall direct thy paths. Powerful, important words from Solomon, the wisest man that walked the face of the earth, except for maybe Jesus of course. But really the Bible says there was no one like him after him. Solomon was filled with godly wisdom. And then he penned these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And this is a true statement. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart.

Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall make your path straight or direct your paths. Powerful and important. Let's break this down. I'd like to take this in five chunks of of what's being said here. The first chunk is simply this number one if you're jotting down notes, trust in the Lord. And the word trust is a great word. It's a powerful word. And you know, we think of the word trust and that's where you actually choose to believe that that thing is is something you can lean on or put your trust in.

That's what the word trust means. Now there's some interesting things about the word trust. In the New Testament the same word is often translated as the word believe. Now this is important. Believe and trust. Is there a difference? Well, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament is called the Septuagint. Often times when the word trust is used, it's the same word that the New Testament uses where we translate it to believe. I'm not trying to be flashy here. I'm just saying that the Hebrew word, the Greek word of the New Testament, the Hebrew word of the Old Testament, there's a joining of two words that sort of make the truth.

And the problem is the English translation and some of even the other languages the Bible's translated, we don't always have the best word to replace those original language words. What do you mean, Brett? Well, for example, this word trust, it means trust and believe. And the reason that's important is because for example, probably the most famous verse in the Bible is John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth There's the word believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. We're talking about eternity, heaven and hell.

And whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Is that an important word to know about? Believe? I think so. But the word believe is a tricky one because here's the thing. Does Satan believe in God? He sure does. Does Satan believe in Jesus? Yep. See, that's where the English word is a little clumsy because Satan is not going to have everlasting life, but he does believe that Jesus exists, that God exists. So you understand it's not a contradiction in the Bible. It's a translation problem. The word believe also implies in the original text of the Greek New Testament trust.

So you ask this question, does Satan trust Jesus with his life? Does Satan trust God for eternal life? The answer is no. When Satan fell, it was all about himself. I will be lifted up. I will exalt myself above all others. It was all about Satan being lifted up with pride. He wasn't trusting in God. He was trusting in himself. So he believed that God exists but he didn't trust and believe. And that's the word. Both here in the Proverbs but also in the New Testament is to trust and believe joined together. And that's an important thing.

Man, I hope you're one who believes not just that God exists because that doesn't save you. You need to believe God. Everything that he says in his word and what is required to be saved, you got to believe that that God became a man, lived among us, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, rose from the grave. And when we believe trust that that 's the way that we are going to be saved you are going to be saved. The Bible makes it clear. And so you got this verse now here in Proverbs saying trust in the Lord.

That is to believe in the Lord, to believe what he says, to believe his word, heavy duty word, that word trust. And it's important for us to know. So the word it means to lean upon or to trust with all of your weight. I was in New Zealand and uh in Auckland and um you know, they have kind of a bigger version of the space needle in Auckland. It's a big huge tall tower. For years they've had this floor in the upper part of that that's glass. And it's really kind of cool because this big glass floor you can walk right on it and uh stand right over you know, hundreds and hundreds of feet down to the road in the city.

But when I got up there uh we noticed nobody was walking on it. Everybody was standing around this glass floor. And this little kid's, Mommy, can I walk on that? And the mom's like, no way, son. No. And you know, she got this like beat of sweat. You could tell she was freaking out. I thought it was kind of a funny situation. So the little kid looked at me and I looked at him and I I just kind of smiled and I walked right out into the middle. And then I did a few little jumps, you know.

And the mom's like, stop it. Don't do that. The little kid's like, Mom, if he can do it, I can do it. Kid's doing the math, you know, in his head. But see, I knew that there were engineers who did the math that if you put as many people on that piece of glass that you could fit I am sure that it was still well over structured to tolerate whatever weight humans could put on that at any given time. I knew that. And sure enough, it's like 6 in of plexiglass. It didn't look like it but it was super thick and nothing was going to break through that.

And I trusted that with all my weight. And that's what this means for you to trust that the Lord can handle you and your problems. And especially the problem of sin and death. And you're saying, I'm going to step on that limb of God to be saved. I'm going to trust that he can hold me, that he can take me. Trust in the Lord. That's what the scriptures tell us to do. Now the thing about this is kind of interesting is the Bible tells us all kinds of benefits to trusting. And one of the benefits is part of our text here.

We'll talk about that in a second. But I want to share with you another benefit that uh is part of trust. When you really trust the Lord one of the benefits of trusting the Lord is rejoicing. Joy comes to the person who trusts in the Lord. Listen to this. It's Psalm 28 verse 7. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him so it says and I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth. What's that? It says right here, the Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him.

Therefore whenever there's a therefore you ask that what it ask yourself what it's there for. He says therefore because I trusted in the Lord my heart greatly rejoices. The person who learns to put their trust in the Lord will have a rejoicing that comes from that. What a good benefit of trusting God. Rejoicing. Now that's one of the benefits. Another benefit is also the Lord gives success and blesses those who put their trust in the Lord. I love the story of King Hezekiah. Some argue that Hezekiah, King of Israel was one of the best kings, if not the best king of all of history of Israel.

You say, well, better than David? David was great because he would be the father of the Messiah, the grandfather if you would. However Hezekiah well, listen to this. It's uh 2 Kings 18. It says in verse 3, and Hezekiah did that which was right in the side of the Lord. And verse 5, he trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that after him was none like him not of Judah or any that were before him. The Bible says there was nobody like Hezekiah, the King of Israel, because he trusted the Lord. The Lord gave Hezekiah great favor and he truly was a great king because he trusted in the Lord.

He didn't trust in his own devices. But he put his trust in the Lord. So just a couple benefits and then we could go on about all the benefits of trusting God. But rejoicing, blessing, success, these are all promised. And that's what happens when you trust the Lord. So basically trusting in the Lord to be saved and for everything else, trust. Now by the way, if you're an old-timer Christian one of the things that can happen well, one of two things one, you prove this to be true. Your whole life is a representation that man, every time I've trusted the Lord he's worked it out.

But sometimes, and this is just coming from an old-timer Christian myself, sometimes you almost wonder is God really going to Is he working? Maybe maybe I I've trusted him but maybe this time. Maybe this is the time it's not going to work for me. And we start to get worried. And maybe we sit around for a while and think, oh no, it's not I was trusting the Lord and it's still not working out. And see, any number of things could be happening. One maybe it's not God's timing. Maybe you're supposed to be patient and wait for the Lord to rescue, to step in, to deliver you.

And you just have to trust him in his timing. You think, oh no, it's broken. And an old-timer Christian can actually make that mistake of thinking it's not working. But you still need to trust the Lord. It reminds me of a story of a guy who's on a traveling journey and he found something he'd been looking for all his life. He lived on Long Island there in New York. And And he was traveling and he found one of these old marine barometers, the high-end kind that kind of tells you what the weather's going to be and stuff.

And wood and brass and glass. It was a beautiful instrument. And so he purchased it and had them ship it to his house there on Long Island. When he got home, he unboxed the the barometer and he looked at it and he thought, oh this is beautiful. But then he noticed it seemed like the the needle was stuck. And he kind of shook it a little bit. It was stuck and he thought it was stuck because it it said hurricane. And he looked outside and it was sunny. And he said, well, this is broken. Needle's jammed.

And he was so upset that these people, you know, broke it because it was working in the store when he saw it. And somewhere they'd manhandled it. So he wrote a scorching letter to the shipping people in the company about how his barometer came broken. Went off to work, mailed the letter. When he got home from work, something shocked him. His barometer was gone. And so was his house because there was a hurricane that afternoon. Somehow he doubted the barometer even though it was telling the truth. And that's you and me. Sometimes we think, Lord you're not helping.

We don't trust you because nothing's happening. But you can be sure of this. The Lord is the most trustworthy of all beings of all the cosmos. Trust in the Lord number one. Number two with all thine heart. That's the next phrase there. With all thine heart as opposed to with all thine mind. Did you know you can trust the Lord in your mind but not in your heart? And sometimes you're like, I know it's going to work out but I'm still nervous. Your mind is already on board but your heart is not. Jesus said something about this that I think is life-changing.

In Matthew chapter 6 verse 21, you know, when Jesus was talking about setting your treasure in heaven and don't set your treasures on things of earth or you know, where moth and rust and thieves break through and steal um Jesus says, where your treasure is there will your heart be also. It's almost like the Lord gave you a brain to make up your mind to go in a direction. And as you do that, then the Lord will start to slowly change your heart. You change your mind, God will change your heart. If you're anxious and you're not trusting the Lord and you're worried one of the things you could do to maybe help with that a little bit is to say, okay, I'm going to choose to invest my energy, effort, time into the the word and into prayer and into worship and into Christ.

Trust the Lord with all of your heart. Give him your whole heart. That's the answer for this.

Kurt: Pastor Brett Mether reminding us what it means to trust in the Lord not just with all our mind but with all our heart as well on Today's Word. And just a moment Pastor Brett will be back to join me but first our teacher Brett Mether is the senior pastor of Athey Creek Church just outside of Portland, Oregon. Each day Pastor Brett will bring you a verse by verse study of God's word. If you missed any portion of our time today, you can find all of his messages online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. All right, Pastor Brett has joined me now.

Brett, I know you've been the pastor at Athey Creek Church since 1996 and this church has grown from a small group meeting at a middle school to now being one of the largest churches in the Pacific Northwest. What do you attribute that growth to?

Brett Meador: Well, Kurt, I I really think that um it's because the pastor is so handsome. No, no. Actually actually quite the opposite. No, I I really believe that it's attributed to people are hungry for the word of God. People have told me, Kurt, that I have a radio face. You you'll appreciate that. But actually as it turns out, people are hungry for the word of God. And I I think that that's what's drawing people is they're not as interested in my opinions or me trying to talk about even wonderful topical type things. But what is the the Bible really say?

And we've just found people are really spiritually starving for that.

Kurt: Oh, that's really good, Pastor Brett. Thanks. The Bible is so powerful. And I want to mention that if you'd like more information about Pastor Brett Mether or Athey Creek Church, just go to todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Next time we'll learn of the promised benefits of trusting in the Lord.

Brett Meador: As a pastor, probably the single most common question I get how do I know what God's will for my life is? He knows what's best for you. He knows your situation better than you do. Don't leave him out of parts of your life but in all your ways obey his word. You can know that he's the one who can do exceeding abundantly above all that you could ask or even think about.

Kurt: Today's Word with Pastor Brett Mether is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in Westlin, Oregon.