Good afternoon. I hope all of you guys had a restful afternoon. I just want to reflect a little bit. For those of you who are here this morning, you know that Johnny talked about Abraham. So for those of you who weren't, I just want to kind of follow up a little bit about what we talked this morning. And so he talked about Abraham and how he learned to trust God and walk by faith. We're told in Romans 4 that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness, and he was saved by faith. And in Hebrew 11s, we see how he lived a life of faith. We see, like Johnny talked about this morning, we see how Abraham was in error. He was comfortable. He was living a comfortable life. And then God comes to him and says, hey, I've got this unknown destination for you to travel to. So I want you to uproot your family and I want you to go. And so Abraham, in faith, obeyed God. And he went. And then you see later on down through life, you know, God's got this promise to Abraham. He says, you know what, you're going to have a son, and from your son, you're going to have many descendants. And so Abraham's living this life, and he's quite old at this point, and he's wondering, where is this descendant? You know, God made this promise to me. Can I really trust him? Do I really know that he's going to do this? And then, sure enough, God kept his promises and he gave Abraham a son, Isaac. And then he gets this son, Isaac, and it's this promised son. And Abraham's faith is once again tested. And he says, Abraham, I want you to take your son, Isaac, and I want you to sacrifice him. So his one and only son, he is once again being tested and he has to choose whether he's going to obey God and if he can trust God. My question for us is how do we live a life of faith like Abraham did? Every day we wake up facing the unknowns of life. Every day we don't know what's going to happen. Perhaps in the day there's going to be something great and marvelous. Maybe you're a parent and your wife is pregnant and maybe during that day your child is going to be born. Or perhaps in that day your wife is pregnant and the Lord chooses to end that life. You know, perhaps in your workplace things are going great and in that day you're going to get a job promotion and everything is going to be great. Or maybe you're going to get to work that day and the company is going to have to lay Every day has these unknowns. Every day has things that we don't know what's going to happen and we feel like it's out of our control. And sometimes when we think about these pressures that life has, it causes us to worry and to fear and we wonder what's going to happen. For some, for all of us, we want to be comfortable. We want to be happy. And so for some of us, we turn to our friends when problems come up. When something arises, we run to our friends and say, I need your help. You've got to help me. This is going on. So we run to our friends. For some of us, it's family. We're really tight with our family. And something comes up, the first thing we do is we call them up and we're like, hey, I lost my job today. I need help. I need some comfort. For others, Perhaps we just think that if we work hard enough, if we try hard enough, if we study enough, we can make things happen, we can make it work. We're faced with all kinds of problems in life. But as children of God, we're given a promise, we're given several commands, actually, and a promise in Proverbs chapter three of how we can face the difficulties and unknown circumstances of life as we walk by faith. So we'll look at three commands and one promise in Proverbs chapter three, verses five through six. So if you want to open up your Bibles there and we'll read together. So verse five, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. Let's go to the Lord in prayer and we'll look at these three commands a little further. Lord, I thank you for today. I thank you for this opportunity I have to to open your word. I thank you for the opportunity I've had to study it. God, I pray that through this message you would teach me that you would help me to grow. And I pray for the listeners that they would learn something today. Perhaps they're going through a trial in life and they're looking for help and they're looking for comfort. God, I pray that today you would help all of us to realize that we can trust in you. I pray that you would speak through me in common there's in your name. Amen. So, our first command is found in verse 5. It says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. One of the first things I like to do is look at the definition of trust and I'm only a senior in college and I have not taken Hebrew yet and this is Old Testament and as many of you know it's written in Hebrew. So I don't know Hebrew, but with technology today, it's kind of amazing. We can use all kinds of software to look up these different words. And so I went ahead and decided to look up the word for trust in Hebrew, and I'm not going to attempt to pronounce it because I have no idea how to do that. But I did look up the definition, and the definition is to trust in, okay, or to have confidence. To go a little farther, I decided to look up in our modern English Merriam-Webster dictionary to see what it is to trust. And in this passage, trust in the Lord, trust is a verb, as many of you probably know. And so it's this verb, and the verb in the English dictionary means to place confidence or to depend. So to trust in God means we are to place our confidence in Him. To trust in God means we are to fully depend upon Him. It sounds simple, doesn't it? But sometimes it can be so hard. And I would like to go ahead and just take this time to really just kind of maybe give us a little bit of a picture and try to look at something. And as I was thinking about trusting in God and what it looked like to depend on something or depend on somebody. There were two examples that came to my mind, and one of them is from my childhood. It's kind of funny. When I was four years old, we were out visiting my grandparents in Ohio. And I remember we were all standing around, and we're feeding these ducks. And I know you're probably wondering, how in the world does this have to do with trust? But just bear with me. We'll get there. So we're feeding these ducks. And again, remember, I'm four years old, so I'm like this big. These ducks are like almost as big as I am. And so we're feeding these ducks. And the next thing I know, everybody had left because they all went over to the playground. They got distracted. I don't know where they went. Next thing I know, though, is I'm standing there, this little four year old with this loaf of bread and a whole lot of ducks, like a ton of ducks. And they're all surrounding me and they're just biting at me. They're like attacking me. And so I became afraid. And only as a four year old can do, I began to cry and I cried out for my mom. And my mom came over to me and she came over and she picked me up and suddenly I felt safe. Why did I feel safe? I felt safe because I knew that my mom loved me. I knew that my mom was definitely bigger than these ducks. I mean, she's like this tall, you know, and actually she's more like this tall, but, but still these ducks are like this big, you know? And so I knew that I could, could trust in my mom because of who she was. I knew that she loved me and I knew that she was strong enough to protect me. And so suddenly when my mom came and picked me up, I wasn't afraid anymore. I was confident because I knew that those ducks couldn't hurt me. So I was with my mom. One other picture, illustration of trust, and maybe this will help you a little more. When I was a senior in high school, I remember going out to the wilds for my senior trip, and one of the things they did is they did this, they call it a trust fall. You stand up on a ledge, you know, maybe like this high, and you're standing there, and there's all your buddies, and they're standing back there, and they do this thing with their arms, and the idea is you stand up on this ledge, and you're supposed to stand there backwards, cross your arms, and fall, and trust that these guys are going to catch you. And senior in high school, not the smartest kid, I thought that would be cool to give it a try. And so I went ahead and did it. And you know what? Sure enough, it turned out OK. The guys, they caught me. Why I trusted my friends to catch me, I really don't know. But I did it. And so I showed my trust. I placed my dependence on the fact that they, first off, were really my friends and they weren't going to drop me. And then second off, I placed my confidence in the fact that they were strong enough to catch me. So I did this trust fall, I fall back, and they caught me. Well, two summers later, I ended up pouncing at the wows, and I thought about doing this trust fall, but none of my campers wanted to do it, but they wanted me to do it. And trust me, I did not do that. I was not about to place my dependence upon my campers because I didn't trust them, okay? They would gladly let me fall and hit the ground, I'm sure, and so I did not trust them, let alone, I didn't think they were capable to catch me. I didn't think they were strong enough. So these are two pictures of trust and perhaps maybe a little bit of what it looks like. But let's go ahead and look a little further at what it means to trust God. And so as we continue in God's word, he tells us, first off, I referenced earlier with my mom that she loved me and that was why I knew that I could trust her. God loves us. And we know that from from many passages. We know that God loves us and he loved us so much. He sent us his son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to save us from our sins. That love is greater than any other love we can ever know, and it's the best expression of love. And that's our heavenly father, and he loves us. But even more than that, we know from God's word that God is all powerful. And we know that God is omniscient and omnipresent. And I'd like to take a look really quick at Psalm 139, verses 1 through 12, just to see a little bit more of who our Father is. Psalm 139, verse 1, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there's a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all. You've enclosed me before, behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of Don, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there, your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are like to you. God, who knows all things and sees all things, can be trusted to take care of all of our needs. In a little bit, we're going to look at another command, and so I'm sort of jumping ahead of myself here. But this God who knows all things and He sees everything, He is everywhere, He knows the future. We don't. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. But we can trust in God because He is omnipresent, He is omniscient, He knows all things, and that is a God that we can be trusted in. And his base, our trust is found founded in the character of who God is. It was like with my mom. Like I said, I loved I knew my mom loved me and I knew that she was capable to protect me from these ducks. It's the same with God. We God is the creator of the universe. He's the creator of you and me, he is. Making things happen, he's continuing to to sustain this world, he is that powerful. And that is our God. And because of who he is, we can trust in him. There's another idea that I'd like to look at when it comes to trusting God. Because as you look at the passage, he doesn't just expect us to trust him in a few areas, he wants us to trust in the Lord with all of our hearts. If we're to trust in him with our whole heart, this requires humility. We believe that God is capable of saving us from our sins. We trust his promises that he will forgive us of our sins. We believe that God is able to do that, and yet sometimes we think that we have to be strong enough, we have to be smart enough to handle whatever situation comes in life. The reality is that the trust in God. We have to humble ourselves, we have to come to a point where we realize, God, I don't know everything. God, I'm not strong enough. I'm not smart enough. I can't do this on my own. And so I'm coming to you because I'm completely dependent upon you. I need your help. And it requires humility. In First Peter five, Peter exhorts the believers there. And before we get there, I want to give a little bit of background. First Peter, he's writing to some believers and they're being persecuted. They're facing trials that that probably most of us have never experienced. They're facing trials that we have a hard time comprehending. And so he's trying to comfort them through this book, and in first Peter five, verse five, he said that all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. God gives grace. To those who are humble. If we come to God. Fully dependent upon him. He will, and again, I know I'm jumping ahead of myself, but all of this is so tied together as we come to him as we humble ourselves. It's like the end of the verse says, and it's the promise. I know I'm giving it away, but he will make straight our paths. He will guide us. We have to humble ourselves if we're to trust in God. Not only does trusting in God requires humility, it also sometimes, oftentimes requires patience. You don't have to turn there, but Psalm 37, verse 1 says, Do not fret because of evildoers. Be not envious toward wrongdoers, for they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him and he will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light in your judgment as the new day. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Sometimes we think that if we come to God and we pray one time and we say, God, you know, this situation is really difficult. And so I'm going to trust in you here. Sometimes we think that all of a sudden all of our problems will disappear. Right. Wrong. Sometimes God sees fit. To not even take away that problem in this life. His ways are higher than our ways. There's things we can't understand, but one thing we must do is we must be patient as we trust in him. And the whole time that we are trusting God, we can be at peace because we know that God is in control and He desires the very best for His children. So our first command is to trust in God. As we live this life of faith, as we walk by faith, we must express that through a trust, a complete dependence, a complete confidence in God. And now we come to our second command, And I went ahead and summarized it to cease from trusting ourselves. The second part of verse five says, do not lean on your own understanding. This idea of not leaning on our own understanding goes hand in hand with trust in the Lord. This dependence upon God, therefore, requires that we're not dependent upon ourselves. We're not confident in ourselves. Often. We think pretty highly of our knowledge. We think that we know a lot. And if there's something we don't know, we just say, well, I'll just Google it. Right. I'll just figure it out. I can make this happen. Or we think, you know, I'm strong enough. I can do this. I can make it happen. I can get it to work. And we start to depend upon ourselves, we start to lean upon our own knowledge, our own wisdom and our own understanding. And my own personal life. When I'm faced with a major decision or certain trials that come up with me, oftentimes, one of the first things I do is I try to, and this is, again, this isn't right, but I try to figure it out on my own. I try to see if I can make it work. I become dependent upon my own knowledge. And I know I had joked earlier, but if there's something I don't know, I Google it, you know. I think that I can figure out everything. I become dependent, I lean upon my own understanding. This word lean, and again, not a Hebrew expert, but with technology we can learn some about these words. The word lean here conveys the idea of supporting oneself. So as as I'm saying, you know, we're not to lean on our own understanding, perhaps you're thinking, well, John, surely I'm supposed to think some, right? Yes, we do need to be thinking God has given us. A brain and we need to be using it, but we can't be depending upon it. We can't be supporting ourselves based on our own understanding. The reality is, is our knowledge is finite. And when we make decisions in life, we can only make them based on the information we know at that point in time. God, however, has an infinite knowledge and can see ahead to know what is best for us. Psalm 147, verse three through five, says he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of stars. He gives names to all of them. Great is our Lord and abundant in strength. His understanding is infinite. Our God knows how many stars exist. No man knows that piece of information, let alone do we even know all the names of these stars. And yet our God does. But, you know, it's even more amazing than that. Our God knows each and every single one of us. Our God knows everything, his knowledge is infinite. And because of this infinite knowledge. Again, it goes back to we can trust in God. So. To live a life of faith, to walk a life of faith. We won't have to be trusting in God. Our second command is we have to stop leaning on our own understanding. We have to stop depending upon our own wisdom. And our third command to live this life of faith. Is we must. Acknowledge God in all of our ways and we see that in the beginning of verse 6 Acknowledging God in all of our ways is more than just a casual scent to his being It's more than just saying I got I know that you exist. I know that you're there Acknowledging God means to know God We must have a relationship with God if we're in order if we're going to acknowledge him We must be in constant communication. To acknowledge God means we're completely dependent upon his wisdom and power. And when a problem in life arises. We come to him for help. Paul exhorts us in Philippians chapter four in verse four. He says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reason with reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Acknowledging God. Means we're in a relationship with him. It means that that we must be in his word learning about him, but even more than that, we're to be communicating with him and we do that through prayer. And so here in in Philippians four. We see one that that we can rejoice in the Lord. It's not about just coming to God. It's kind of funny, I know it sounds cliche, but it makes sense to me. So I'm going to go ahead and use it. Sometimes we think of God like a vending machine, that we just come and we press in what we expect, what we want, and we just always come to God asking for things. We just always come to Him saying, God, I want this. God, I want that. God, help me with this. But as we come to Him, remember, rejoice in the Lord. Praise the Lord. Let your request be made known to him with thanksgiving. Thank the Lord for what he has done. Thank the Lord for what he is doing in your life, but also bring your requests before him. And as we do so, we see in verse seven in the peace of God for surpasses all understanding. Will guard your hearts and your minds and Christ Jesus. To acknowledge God in all our ways means that every moment we're faced with a choice or struggle, we come to God and we make our requests known to Him. Once again, this idea of humbling ourselves. We humble ourselves and recognize that God is strong enough to take care of whatever trial we may face in life. My dad is a IT administrator and he works on computers every day. If I have a computer problem, or any kind of technology issue that I can't figure out, I come to my dad and I say, Dad, I need your help. Because I recognize, I realize the fact that my dad knows a whole lot more about computers than I do. So rather than sitting there and getting frustrated and just wasting time, I come to my dad and say, Dad, I need your help. And sure enough, my dad helps me every time, no matter how stupid the question might be. I know this sounds kind of odd, and it's a small picture of what we do when we acknowledge God. Because you see, God is the maker of the universe, and he knows it from the inside out, and he is in complete control. But not only is he the creator, he is our heavenly father, and he wants to help us. All we have to do is, again, we have to humble ourselves and acknowledge him. First Chronicles 28 9 says, As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and a willing mind. For the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek him, he will let you find him. But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. God isn't trying to hide his will from you. But we must be seeking him in order to find him and receive his help. And if you look at the very beginning of that verse, I read it again. As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father. So David's exhorting for Solomon, he's telling him, Solomon, know. Who your God is, be in a personal relationship with him. A very important principle to acknowledging God is found there in First Chronicles 28. And like I said, we're instructed to know God. And if we're to acknowledge him, we must be in a personal relationship with him. If we're not spending daily time with God, how can we really know who he is? If you want to live this life of faith, a lot of us say we trust in God, and yet we don't walk with him daily. We're not spending time in his word every day, and I speak out of own personal conviction, because there's times where I wake up, and yeah, I may open up my Bible. I may read it, but I don't really want to, and my mind's not engaged, and I'm really not listening to His Word, and sometimes there's even days where I go through a day, and to my own shame, I go to bed, and I haven't even opened God's Word that day, and I lay there in bed, and I think, wow, how did I just completely miss that? So I say that I'm trusting in God, and yet I'm not acknowledging Him in everything. I'm not trying to know Him more. I'm not spending time in God's word. How can I truly trust in a God that I don't know because I'm not acknowledging him? We must be listening to God's word and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, and we must be in communication with him through prayer. So. If we trust in God. If we stop leaning on our own understanding and we acknowledge him, what is the promise that we receive in the end of verse six? God promises us that he will make our path straight. This doesn't mean in life that everything is going to be perfect. It doesn't mean that there's never going to be pain or sorrow. I wish I could promise you that. But this life is full of difficulties. But we do know that as we trust God, as we acknowledge him in all of our ways, as we humbly seek him, as we come to him on our faces in prayer, he'll make our path straight. He will guide us. He will lead us. He'll walk us down that path. When I was the summer before my freshman year of college, I went through a rebellious stage. I thought that God had abandoned me. I was reading God's word. I was praying. I was like, God, where are you? I'm reading. I'm trying to talk to you, but it's like you're not there. And I came across a psalm that says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And I felt like that was me. I felt like God had turned his back on me and I became bitter with God. Because I said, God, I thought I was doing everything right. I'm trying to have a relationship with you, but it's like you don't love me. It's like you don't want to talk to me. And so, you know what? I made a decision at that point. I said, you know what, God? Because you don't love me, I'm not going to spend time with you anymore. I'm not going to talk to you anymore. And I completely quit reading God's Word. And it wasn't that I forgot. It was that I didn't want to. It was a willful choice to set God's word aside. And through that summer, I was miserable. Things didn't go right. And I became more and more bitter with God. I thought he had abandoned me. The truth was, I had a lot of sin in my own heart that I was unwilling to let go. And over time, God broke my heart And He brought me to the bottom of myself, to where I had nowhere else to turn other than God. And I came back to God, and I remember sitting there one night, and I remember... I remember talking to God, and I had to get things right with God. And I remember specifically committing to the Lord that I was going to be in His Word. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I knew that there were days where I wasn't going to want to read the Bible. But I knew that if I wanted to have a relationship with God, I had to be in His Word. If I wanted God's help, if I wanted God to guide me and direct me, I needed to be founded in His Word. And the funny thing was that night, our house had flooded that summer, and we were living at my grandparents' house. And when I got home that night, We had been there already for probably a month now. And I remember I went and I saw this picture that I had completely missed this whole time. And it was a poem that, you know, sometimes, you know, I know I sort of think poems are corny sometimes, but it. I realized the truth there, I thought God had abandoned me in this, even through this poem, it was like God was speaking to me. And this man and many of you may know the poem. I don't even remember what the poem was called, to be honest. But this man is basically, in a sense, having a vision. And he's walking down this beach, and he says, God, you know what? Through those times of life, I see my footprints. I see your footprints. But then there's times where I'm walking by myself, and you left me. Where did you go? And again, I know it's a poem, and it sounds kind of corny. But I remember in this poem, basically, God's response was, I never left you. I carried you through those times. You see, the reality is God will not abandon us. God does not leave us. He loves us and he's not going to turn his back on us. The truth was I turned my back on God. I began to trust in my own knowledge, in my own understanding, I began to try to figure out how I could make things work. And when God didn't seem to be doing what I thought he should be doing, I just didn't want to have any part with him anymore. I stopped trusting God and I stopped acknowledging him. And God had to bring me to the bottom of myself until I humbled myself and came back to God. I said, God, I need you. I want to go ahead and have you turn in your Bibles to 1 Kings 17. And I want to take a look at another Old Testament character. This morning, we saw the life of Abraham. I want to take a look at Elijah's life. In First Kings, chapter 17, verses 1 through 7, Elijah prophesies that there will be no rain in the land until he says so. And once he makes this prophecy, God commands him to go to the brook Cherith, where God tells him that he'll be fed by ravens and water from the stream there. So out of obedience to the Lord, Elijah goes to this brook. And while he's there, God sees fit to dry this brook up. Put yourself in Elijah's shoes. He's trusting God. He's following God. He's obeying God. He's doing everything right. He listens to the Lord's commands. He goes to this brook and this brook dries up. What would you be asking yourself? Why would God allow this to happen? And in the midst of this trial, we come to verse eight. Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you. So now Elijah's faced with another decision. He trusted God, right? And so he goes to this brook Cherith, and he's got water, he's being fed by these ravens, and then all of a sudden it's like God changed his mind on him or something. And so perhaps, I don't know what was going through Elijah's mind, I know for me, I'd be really wondering if God is capable to take care of me. Does he really love me? Does he really care about me? Can I really trust in him? And then now God comes to me and says, Hey, you know what? I want you to go to this city. And as I, as I studied, I decided I was just kind of curious about the geography of the land and the brook chairs to the city of Zarephath was roughly, let me make sure I've got this right here. It was roughly 80 miles. And again, technology today is great, right? So I was curious, how long would it take to walk 80 miles? And so I went ahead and plugged it into Google Maps and looked it up. That's 28 hours of straight walking. So you're looking at Elijah, who's got this two-day trek ahead of him, and his water is drying up. I don't know, at this point, maybe there was a little bit of water left. Perhaps it was completely dry. But God comes in and says, hey, you know what? I want you to trust me, and I want you to go to the city 80 miles away. And there, there's going to be this widow woman. Not some rich woman, not some prominent family in the city, a widow. And she's going to take care of you. So Elijah's faced with this question, am I going to obey God and trust in him to provide? Or would I do the smart thing? Would I do the thing that makes sense to me and just start looking around for a creek nearby? Start looking around for some sort of water source that I can survive off of? And we see Elijah's response in verse 10. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, Please get me a little water in a jar that I may drink. In verse 11, as she was going to get it, he called to her and said, Please bring me a piece of bread in your hand. But she said, As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar. Behold I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son that we may eat it and die So at this point Elijah is he's followed God Again, he's obeyed his commands. He's trusted in him to provide He trusted the Word of God that through this widow woman. She would provide for him. He gets there and Comes to find out that this widow woman has enough food to make one last meal and then she just intends to give up and die What is God doing You'd be asking yourself, God, are you really in control? Just try to put yourself in his shoes for one minute. Just try to imagine that you're starving, that you're thirsty, you're walking through a desert, and God has made you this promise, and you're trying to obey him, and it seems like he's not in control. It's hard to trust. And yet Elijah continued to trust in God. And at this point, we come to verse 13. Then Elijah said to her, do not fear. Go do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me. And afterwards, you may make one for yourself and for your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth. So up to this point, God has been asking his man, his chosen man, Elijah, to act out of faith. And now Elijah is coming to this widow woman And he's saying, you know, I want you to trust in my God. I want you to believe what I'm saying, and I want you to go ahead and give up this last meal. And I want you to give it to me, and if you do so, if you obey the Lord and you do this, you know what? He's going to provide for you until rain comes again. I don't know about you, but that would be pretty hard, especially if I was the widow woman. And this man, this stranger, is coming up to me saying, hey, make me some food. You know what? I know that this is your last meal, but I want you to give everything to me. And it would be hard to trust that man, and it would be hard to trust in God at that moment. In verse 15, we see the widow woman's response. So she went and did according to the word of Elijah and she and he and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted, nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke through Elijah. Elijah and the widow women were faced were both faced with many tough decisions. They were faced with questions like, is God capable to provide for their needs? Are his promises true? Is God really in control, even in the seemingly hopeless situations of life? Both Elijah and the widow woman decided to obey and trust God, and they were rewarded for their faith. I know many of you at this point might be thinking, well, yeah, John, that was the Old Testament. God doesn't work like that anymore, right? You're right. God does not come to us and speak out in these verbal commands to us. But there's a couple timeless truths I want us to go ahead and take a look at. First, we must always be listening to the Word of God. And again, like I said, He speaks to us differently today. He came in an audible voice of some sort. Somehow He spoke to Elijah. He gave him this command. God doesn't come to us in dreams anymore. God doesn't, from the clouds, all of a sudden speak out to us. But you know what? We do have the Word of God. We have the promises of God's Word written down in front of us. So we must always be listening to the word of God. Not only did Elijah listen, he obeyed. The second timeless truth I want to go ahead and look at is as we listen to God and seek after him, we must act. As God leads and guides us, we must step out in faith and follow him. There are times where it doesn't make sense. It may seem impossible. But we must obey him. As we do God's will, he proves time and time again that he will take care of us and that we can trust in him. I don't know what situation you may be facing today. Perhaps your job is on the line. Maybe finances are tight. Maybe if you're a parent in here, your child is doing their own thing, and they're going their own way, and they're rebelling against God, and you don't know what to do, and you're crying out, and you're like, God, I thought I did everything right. I don't understand what you're doing. Whatever situation you're facing, we know that we can, and not only can, we must be trusting in God. Not only must we be trusting in God, We cannot rely upon our own understanding, and we also must be acknowledging God in all of our ways. Part of the reason why, if I can share my heart with you a little more, part of the reason why I chose this passage today is because this is something that God has really been speaking to me and really been teaching me a lot about lately. I will be a senior in college this year, and the question that I get the most is, so what are you doing next year? What are you doing next summer? Are you going on to grad school? I get all kinds of questions like that, and you know the truth is, I really don't fully know. And at the beginning of the summer, I really, I wanted to know. I began to fear. And there were honestly nights where I would lay there in bed, and I would talk to God, and I didn't understand why he wasn't making his will clear to me. And there were nights where I was losing sleep, I was fearing, I was worrying. Perhaps, perhaps that's you. Perhaps you're a person who lays there in bed at night and you're losing sleep because you're wondering what God is doing. That was me. I had several options, I still have several options, I still don't know what I'm doing. But I still know that I can trust in God. And I know that I can't rely upon my own understanding because the reality is my knowledge is finite, I don't know everything. But my God's knowledge and his understanding is infinite. He knows everything. He knows me from the inside out. He knows my future. He knows my past. And that is a God that I can trust in. And so right now, what am I doing? I'm acknowledging God. I have to come to Him. I have to humble myself. And you know what? This isn't a one-time thing. It wasn't like at the beginning of the summer as I began to realize that I was really sinning by fearing and worrying. You know, and I realized that I needed to trust God. It wasn't like that one prayer was enough. There's days where I still wrestle with fear and worry. And I have to come to God. I have to humble myself. And I have to ask Him to guide me and to direct me. And so I don't know what I'm doing next summer. But I know what I should be doing right now, and that is trusting in God. And I have a promise in Philippians chapter four, and I read it earlier. I know for a fact that as I come to him with all of my requests, as I come to him with all of my burdens, it's not that they go away. But as I bring them to him, as I fully place my dependency upon God, As I really, truly, honestly trust in him. God will give me peace. And it's a piece that really honestly goes beyond all understand, because I can't explain it to you, but I have experienced it. And I don't know, perhaps you're wondering, what is that piece like? What is what is it like not to fear and worry? I have so many problems, can I really trust God? And perhaps you're even thinking, John, you're young, your problems are small, but my problems are a whole lot bigger than yours. The truth is, God is bigger than any of our problems in here. We can depend upon him. We really can. And we have a promise in God's word. As we trust in him, he will make our path straight. As we come to him in prayer. And as we bring our burdens and cast them at His feet, and it's more than just one time, sometimes it takes prayer after prayer, day after day. But as we do that, God will bring us peace in our life. So, think about what trial you're facing. What is it? Search your heart, ask God, you know, am I really trusting God? Maybe you don't even have Anything going on right now? Everything seems to be going great. Are you trusting God? Because it's a command. It's not just when things are going wrong that we should be trusting in God. It's a command that we trust in God every day and that we acknowledge him in everything. And as we do so, he will bring us peace. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, I thank you for today. I thank you for your word. God, I thank you for your promises. I thank you that you are the almighty God. I thank you that you are all powerful and that you know everything. I pray for both myself and everyone in here, God, I pray that we would truly trust in you. And God, I thank you that that we can can depend upon your promises and that you are still the same God that worked in the Old Testament and you still work today. I pray that you bless the rest of this evening in your name. Amen.