In their way. Upfront, if you could, find Proverbs chapter three Proverbs chapter three in your Bible. So that's where we will be setting our anchor down this morning. Proverbs chapter three. Amen.

I'm going to begin reading in verse one. We'll read down through verse eight. This morning, Proverbs chapter three beginning in verse one down through verse eight. My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments. For the length of days and long life and peace shall they add to thee.

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee. Bind them upon thy neck. Write them upon the table of thine heart so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Lean not unto thine own understanding and all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones. Let's go to the Lord in prayer once more. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for your word today.

May it find a place in our heart to take up root, and Lord, may it change us and make us more into the image of your son. We pray, Lord, if there's one here today that is yet to choose you by faith as the Lord and savior of their life, I pray they would come to you today in faith and receive that most wonderful and important gift. In Jesus' name we do pray. Amen. The last few weeks, we've been searching for areas in the Christian life, your life that need to change if we are to be all that we can be for Christ.

Do you wanna be all that you can be for Christ? It's an important question. I'm afraid sometimes our actions seem to speak different than our words. But if indeed you want to be all that you can be for Christ, and as a child of God of God, you should, then we ask the question, what is holding you back? What is holding you back?

We discussed couple obstacles or weights that may be weighing us down as we run this race for Christ. We looked at selfishness and pride back about three weeks ago. Me first, my way or the highway, selfishness. That's a problem. We live in a very selfish world.

It's easy for us to pick up on some of that. Need for us to gather some of those weights. We need to cast them aside and confess our selfishness that may hold us back from being all that we can be for Christ. Fear, we looked the last couple weeks at fear. Particularly the fear of man but also the fear of failure or the unknown or other things.

Fear that holds us back in our service for Christ is a negative fear. There are some things you should fear, and there is a proper fear most of all of who? Of God that draws you to him, that draws you to repentance before him, that draws you in service to Him. But there are many negative fears, particularly the fear of man. Paul was concerned about that when he wrote his letter to Timothy in the ministry that he not allow the fear of man to trap and ensnare him and keep him from being all that he should be for Christ as the pastor of the church in Ephesus.

Fear of man can indeed be a trap that keeps us from doing the things that God wants us to do, that keeps us from opening our mouth when we should or handing out a track or standing for what is right and true. If we're going to be all that we can be for Christ, we have to overcome the fear of man with the fear of the Lord and a love for the Lord and a love for others. Because if we really love God and we really love others and we're focused on that, the fear will melt away. And then there's doubt, a lack of trust, a lack of trust. And that's what I wanna talk to you about this morning.

If we would only learn to trust God as we should. We could move mountains. Not literal mountains. I mean, maybe you could, but why would you want to? No.

But spiritual mountains, the lives of others, the cause of Christ. If we just began to understand what it means to trust in the Lord and to apply that to our lives, we would be so much more for Christ than many Christians are because they just haven't let go, because they just haven't learned to trust him in their daily life. And that doubt and fear therefore holds them back. God gives some very meaningful advice in Proverbs three, which we would be wise to listen to. He says, do not forget God's law, His commandments.

A longer and more peaceful life will likely follow those who remember the laws, the commandments of the Lord. He says, hold to mercy and truth in your life. Embrace and practice them. Favor and understanding with God and man will it gain you. If you will embrace truth in a world that doesn't like truth, I'm afraid to say.

And if you will embrace mercy as a practice in your life in regard to others because we're, well, we all need mercy. Far more often than we would like to admit, praise the Lord, we have a merciful God or we would be in sad shape. But hold on to mercy and truth. They will give you favor and understanding with God and man, the writer of Proverbs tells us. And then trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Listen to God over that little voice in your mind, especially the voice that is contrary to His voice. God will direct you in the way you should go in life. And if you follow the Lord, you indeed will never regret when you do things God's way. Now, he doesn't promise it's going to be an easy path. No, it it may get rocky.

It may get stormy. But if you know Christ is in the vessel, as a little song we sing with the kids, you can smile at the storm. Because your ship's not going down with Christ in the vessel. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. I used to live in Macon, Georgia outside of Macon, a little town called Centerville, kind of been engulfed by Warner Robins.

And we would travel north to see my parents in Virginia and my wife's parents in Ohio. We still do that. Praise the Lord. They're still living. We thank God for that.

And now, we even have further to travel now that we're in Florida rather than Georgia but usually, we go up to my parents' house and then it's a seven hours from my parents' house in Virginia to to Akron, Ohio, the vicinity there where my in laws live. But we decided that we were going to go straight from Macon up to Akron, and we were gonna try to take the straightest shot we could. And so I said, well, you know, I'm always traveling on the interstate. So I, you know, I'm gonna cut my own path here, so to speak. And I'm gonna take the straightest route there is from Macon to Akron.

Actually, from Macon to Charleston, West Virginia. Okay? And so I mapped out all these little roads through the corners of Tennessee and North Carolina and Tennessee and Virginia. I should have listened to my wife. And I should have listened to the map that had those big red roads or those blue roads and not those little itty bitty.

But no, I I had to do it. I wanted to get off the beaten path and, it was a memorable trip, but I would not say an enjoyable one and my wife would say amen to that if she was in here. We we ended up behind logging trucks. We ended up behind coal trucks in West Virginia. We ended up on roads that there was nothing for miles but curve and curve and curve and curve.

We went through two blasting zones. You you get up to this place and there's construction. It says blasting zone. And I'm looking for the road. I think I think I'm on the road.

I'm not sure. I don't like the blasting zone sign over here but praise the Lord about two in the morning. We finally made it to Charleston, West Virginia and my eyes were crossed and I I it was it was not a pleasant experience. But I wanted to follow my heart, and sometimes that is not the best thing to do, and I had to find that out the hard way. The advice God gives us here is not just to trust, but to trust in him and not in ourselves, our heart, or our reasoning ability alone.

When at last you must choose betwixt the two, choose who? Choose God. Because, well, this heart is not it's not reliable. But God, he's always reliable. Choose the path less traveled, Robert Frost put it.

The one God is clearing for you, And indeed, it is the less traveled path, sadly, today. Even as Christians, we try to keep getting on these tangents. God says, no. No. Come back.

Come back. I've I've got it. I've got it. Just just stay the course here. We live in a world today full of lost people, directionless in life, but particularly spiritually lost and separated from God and his direction.

The Bible describes them as dead in trespasses and in sins, in Ephesians chapter two. They are confused, dismayed, knowing not where to turn next, often trusting in the wrong people. Plenty of those out there, aren't there? Plenty of the wrong voices to listen to, including the one in your head sometimes. Some are at the end of their rope in despair.

We see that more often today too, don't we? More people on anxiety medications than ever before in The United States Of America. Why? Because, well, people are going it alone and they don't know why they're here. They've been told by scientists and teachers that, hey, you're just a more evolved animal.

I don't know why you're here. But you can have direction in life. You can know where you are going eternally, but also tomorrow. You can have confidence in your decisions. You can have peace and joy and fulfillment in the way you are going.

You can get on the right path even if you've been wandering astray for a long while. There is a solution to this confusion. There is a map and a director you can trust. His name is Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

He is the way, the truth, and yes, the way to heaven, the truth, and life eternal. But I think he means more than just that. I think he means he is the way to joy and happiness and peace and fulfillment today as well as tomorrow and all eternity. The question is will you? Will you trust him?

Will you learn to trust the God who made you and the God who sees tomorrow and the God who's proven himself reliable? Now the world may scoff at such a suggestion. They would tell you to chart your own course, to cut your own path, to follow your own heart, to do it your way. But God is telling you differently. He warns us not to follow our heart, but to listen to our creator.

At least to make the one which is easily led astray subject to the one who will never lead us astray. God did make us unique individuals. He he did make us with a unique purpose in this world. Praise the Lord. He did give you a mind and a heart that is yours.

But that needs to be subject to his mind and will and direction. And if it is, it's gonna be a great ride. But if not, maybe not so. The verse tells us trust in the Lord with all thine heart. It begins out with a command, an imperative, trust.

The word trust in Hebrew literally means to hide for refuge. To hide for refuge. That's a little bit different than our English meaning or even the Greek meaning of the word translated trust, to hide for refuge. In the turmoil, in the questions, in the successes, and the failures, and doubts, and fears of life, there is a place to turn to for refuge, for direction, for peace. That is Jesus.

That is the Lord. The one we read about in his word. He is our haven of rest. I've anchored my soul in the haven of rest. I'll sail the wide seas no more.

The tempest may sweep or the wild stormy deep. In Jesus, I'm safe evermore. In the New Testament, we are told to have faith. And what is faith? Faith is trusting in someone you can't what?

You can't see. You can't sense with your smell and touch and anyway, whatever those five senses are. That's faith. Putting your trust and confidence in someone you cannot see. Where Hebrews eleven:one puts it in words for us there.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. That's things that have yet to come to pass that I can be certain will because, well, God says so. So I can be certain of that. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things what?

The evidence of things not seen. I can see God through eyes of what? Through eyes of faith. I can't see him with these eyes yet. One day, I will get new eyes.

And with those eyes, I will be able to what? I will be able to see him. I will be able to look upon him. Faith will become sight in that day. But today, I walk by faith and not by sight.

We must learn to trust God and to take him at his word. In Romans one seventeen, it says, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall what? Live by faith. Living is a continuing action, a progressive state.

We are saved by grace through faith, but we are also children of faith who should be living by it every day, learning to trust God more, walking by faith and not by sight. Trust in the Lord. The object is important. The object is critical. Who or what you put your faith in.

If you trust in the wrong person, you are going to regret it because they're going to lead you in the wrong direction. God is not the wrong person. He's the right one. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob who always keeps his promises, always keeps his promises. The God of Moses who delivers his children from the hands of the slave masters of sin with a mighty hand.

The God of Joshua and the God of David who gives those who put their trust in him the victory. Victory over the mightiest of strongholds and the most formidable giants. The God of Ruth who is our provider and kinsman redeemer to those who are in need. The God of Nehemiah who answers our prayers and enables us to complete the tasks that he sets before us. The God of Peter who sets us upon a rock, Christ Jesus, who forgives all our sins and who is the key and gives us the key to eternal life, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The God of Paul who transforms us in the light of Christ into his glorious image and makes the vilest sinner clean. Trust in him. Put yourself, your path in life, your eternal soul, your faith and hope, your prayers and dreams, your daily decisions in his hands. He will not fail you. Jesus never fails.

John five twenty four, it says, verily, verily, I say unto you, Jesus says, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but is fast past from death unto life. John six thirty five, Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Come to him in faith. And then learn to trust him more each day.

When you put your faith, your soul in God's hands, in the hands of Jesus for salvation, that isn't the end. That's just the what. That's just the beginning. And the faith that you have on that day you were born again into God's family through Jesus Christ your Lord is not meant to stay stagnant. It's meant to only what?

Grow and should. As you take one step and then another and then another and you see that God is good. When you sense that God is with you. When you see the other side of the storm. You may be in a storm right now, but you have been through storms before and God hasn't failed you yet.

It isn't enough to trust and believe and have faith. It must be in Jesus. The object is important. The world likes to throw around faith today. Have faith in yourself.

Have faith. It's all going to turn out fine. No, have faith in God. Have faith in God. The extent.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Sounds a little bit like Deuteronomy chapter six. Love the Lord your God with what? All your heart, which I with all abandon. Be loyal.

Give him first place. Don't hold anything what? Don't hold anything back. Don't don't hold that part of your life back. I'll trust God with this, but I can't trust him with that.

What seems awful strange to me, but I'm part of it is we we are willing to trust God with our eternity. We're not willing to trust God with this decision I've got to make tomorrow and whether I'm going to move here or take this job or buy that thing or how I'm going to talk to this person. No, I can't trust him without. I can trust him with eternity. That seems a bit strange, doesn't it?

But the fact is, we seem to struggle hardest many times with the smallest things. God says, love me with all your heart and trust me with all your heart. We're told in Matthew six twenty four, no man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon choose. Who are you going to serve in life?

If you're listening to your heart and not listening to your God, I mean, you really can't be you really in the end, you got to choose because the two are often what? Contrary. Joshua said, choose you this day whom you will serve. My implication, who you will trust because you will serve who you want. Trust.

If you're not serving God, what's the problem? You're not trusting him. You're not trusting him. Now, you know and I know he's trustworthy. Trust him.

But but but I got this. Don't trust him. But what if trust him. Stop coming up with excuses why you can't trust him. If God says this is the right way, take it.

You say, well, how do I know what's the right way? Well, most of it's spelled out in here. Most of it's right here. You wanna know what God wants you to do in this situation with this relationship, with this decision? You can probably find it in here.

But maybe a few of the specific things you're gonna have to go to prayer and talk to him and ask him about. And you know something? If you mean it, he'll help you. He'll show you. When I felt the Lord leading me out of the youth ministry in Georgia, I've been there for twelve years.

I love the pastor I served with. I love the people, but I just felt the Lord wanted me to do something else. And I asked him, Lord, I will go where you want me to go. Now, you know where my heart wanted to go? Well, think for a minute.

I was in Georgia. My parents and my brother are in Virginia. My in laws and my wife's brother are in Ohio. Now, I was in Georgia. So where do you think I wanted to go?

North. Where did I end up? South. You know something? I have never regretted that decision because the Lord made it clear to me when I said, Lord, I will go where you want me to go, where he wanted me to go.

And I'm glad I came here, and I've been here eighteen years. And the Lord has blessed my family here, my ministry here. Jesus never fails. Now I couldn't find a passage in scripture that says go to Florida. But if you'll ask, he'll he'll use the scriptures, the spirit, other Christians.

He'll he got me in contact with a couple of interesting folks here named Alan Roger and that I just knew this is where God wanted me to be. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. So first phrase, trust the Lord with all your heart. And in order to do that, you have to learn not to lean so much on your own understanding. If we are to have any hope of living on the straight path, the good, right, beneficial path, then we must learn to place ourselves, way, our ambitions, our intellect, our reasoning, our desires under the umbrella of God's will and wishes and his desires for us.

It's not that those things don't matter. It's not that you shouldn't take them into consideration. They just need to come second to whose? The gods. They just need to be under that umbrella and direction.

And if that's the case, then it'll all be funneled in the the right direction. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. But seek ye what? What's the word there? First.

First. Just, you know, run those things past God if you would, but be willing to hear what he has to say. Delight thyself also in the Lord and he will give thee the desires of thine heart. Psalm thirty seven four. Delight in the Lord.

All those things you you that things you you think you need, you want. They're you think you need and want them because you think they'll make you happy and and joyful and give you peace. You can have all that if you'll just take these things and place them under the direction of who? The Lord. Follow me, Jesus repeated in his gospels and his disciples did.

He asked his disciples to trust him and not in their own understanding, stopped by the seashore, yelled out to Peter and John, follow me and I will make you what? Fishers of men. Peter, even at that point, I think, had a wife because she's mentioned just a little bit later in the gospels. I mean, he had a family to take care of. They they had responsibilities.

I mean, it this was a you know, we think about them. Oh, they just dropped their nets and followed that. That wasn't a small thing. That was a a big thing. This was their family business for both Peter and Andrew and James and John.

But they dropped their nets and they followed him. Fortunately, Joshua listened and followed the Lord even when his mind told him differently. I'm sure he scratched his head at first when God said, here's the way you defeat Jericho. You go walk around the city 13 times, the walls will come down, it'll be yours. Not the normal way you fight about.

That's what God said. So can't go wrong if you're following who? If you're following the Lord. And the walls of Jericho came down. Got some walls of Jericho which need to come down in your life, Sin problems, relationship problems, work problems, emotional problems?

Give them to who? Give them to Jesus. Give them to the Lord. Trust the Lord. The path may not be the path that you would choose.

The solution may not be the solution you'd choose, but if it's God's solution, it's God's path, then it's it's gonna turn out. But you gotta trust him. He is worthy of your trust. Life is like a maze. With God looking down guiding us through, it would be foolish to ignore him and yet so often we do.

Have you ever been into a corn maze? Anybody ever done a corn maze? They're kind of fun, you know? But I've been lost in a corn maze and it's not fun. When you get lost, it's like, don't think I'm ever going to find my way out of here.

Wouldn't it be nice to have somebody up above saying, okay, now you turn to the left and you turn to the right, now let's go throughout this way and okay. That would be really cool. You know, something in life, we have that. If you're a child of God, you have that. You have somebody looking down from above, he says, if you lack wisdom, let him ask of God and it will be given.

He's up there, can help you to get out of the maze if you trust him. Like the GPS, which I often ignore to my detriment. My children say, Okay. I say, well, how do get there? They say, oh, we'll just punch it in the GPS, follow GPS.

I guess maybe that's one thing this younger generation is right about. Most of the time, GPS is dependable. Praise God, he is always dependable. Unlike Joshua, we often act more like Lot. We wonder why are we off the path of blessing?

Not luxury, pleasure, and ease, but blessing, joy, and peace. Luxury, pleasure, and ease don't always come with what? Blessing, joy, and peace. They might seem to for a while. I know Job, the lot had it pretty good for a while but then, well, the angels came and told him, well, your city's going to be destroyed.

You're going to lose everything and your life if you don't get out of here and then Lot had to try to get his family to leave, which didn't wanna leave because they were so enamored with the city and the luxury and the ease that it brings. I'm afraid that's somewhat a problem we Christians have here. We do have it pretty easy overall, and sometimes God asks us to step outside of that, and we don't want to. Praise the Lord. He did get Lot out of there, but but Lot chose the luxury and pleasure and ease for so long.

God practically had to drag him and his family out of the city. Praise God. He's like that. But wouldn't it be better if we chose the path of Abraham and just chose to trust him? And walk by faith and not by sight.

Lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways. So here's where the rubber meets the road. When you have a decision to make, when you have an action to take, you remember the Lord? Remember his word?

What he teaches therein? In all your ways, not just the ones that suit you, in the little things and in the big ones. Do you look into his word for direction, for principles to guide you? Or, you know, do you just read the Bible every now and then and show up for a service every now and then and, well, I did my duty. No, it's not about duty.

I mean, this is this is God's love letter here. This is God's instructions. This is God saying, I'm going to help you. Would you please read this and apply it to your life? I'm I'm real.

I'm I care about you. This, I'm going to use this to help you but you gotta read it and you gotta apply it. Do you go to him in prayer for help to choose the right or stop you from choosing the wrong? Do you listen to the voice of the spirit warning you against or proving your choice? Or do you push ahead without giving God a thought or going for to him for counsel or do do you go on anyway knowing that it's not God's will?

I've done that. It's not a good place to be. It's not a comfortable place to be and it doesn't end up where you want to be. Bible says there's a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death or ruin and destruction. And when I've chosen that path, I have regretted it.

Or do you justify yourself and twist the scripture to fit your desires? I've said this before, it's been a while. We need to conform our thoughts and our thinking to scripture rather than trying to conform scripture to our thoughts and our way. I'm afraid sometimes we get that backwards. Lord, I wanna do this.

Now, I'm gonna find a verse somewhere that says I can do this. Now, where's that verse that says I can do this? I really wanna do this, Lord. I'm gonna find something. I'm gonna take it out of context.

When we should be looking to God's word and say, okay, Lord, what do you want me to do? Show me. And and I think if you ask him and you're diligent, he'll show you. But you gotta go out at the right way, and I think so many times we go at it the wrong way. When it comes time to act to choose who makes the call, Who makes the call?

Who do you trust? Verse seven, Proverbs three, be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil, for it shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones. Now that's poetic speech. What does that mean?

That means it will be good for you. You will be thankful. Be not wise in your own eyes. Don't put your way above whose gods. Fear the Lord.

Let him be your refuge. Let him be your guide. And so, depart from evil. Not just wickedness, but the foul consequences of wickedness. Avoid evil.

Follow the Lord. You will have rest for your soul, peace in your heart, refreshment and healing into your spirit. You will succeed as you follow God's advice to Joshua. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success.

Be all that you can be for Christ. Learn to trust him more. He is worthy of it. When his word says, do it this way, do it that way. When it says, stop, don't do it that way.

When the spirit says, that's wrong. Listen to him. When you get God, good godly advice somebody and says, I'd be careful. Be careful. Don't run ahead.

Hide his word in your heart. Do it. Follow it. Apply it. You will succeed.

Accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and his promise to save you from sin, and you'll have eternal life in heaven. That's where it starts. Have you entered in at the straight gate today? Have you chose to trust Jesus Christ to save your soul from sin and hell and give eternal life? That's where it starts.

He's pleading with you. He died for you. As we give this hymn of invitation, would you come? I'll show you from God's word how you can be saved today and know it. And the Lord has spoke to your heart.

Maybe there's something holding you back and you know it. Maybe you need to get down on your knees or at least bow your head and talk with your God about it. You don't have to sing the invitation. So, That's not important. It's an invitation song.

Important part, you respond to the what? To the invitation to deal with your savior today. Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, thank you, Lord, for all that you have done for us in Jesus Christ, for the word that you've given us, the spirit that you've given us, for the promises that you've given us. You never leave us nor forsake us.

But Lord, I'm afraid we try to forsake you all the time and go our own way. Lord, forgive us. And Lord, help us to trust you more. And I pray if there's one here today that's struggling, that's not sure of if they've trusted you even for their eternal life and forgiveness for sin, I pray they'll come as we sing this hymn of invitation this morning. In Jesus' name, do pray.

Amen.