Welcome to A.T. Stewart and Sons Ministries. I'm your host, A.T. Stewart. I'm glad you've chosen to join us today as we look into the Word of God. So take your Bibles and let's hang out in God's Word for a few moments and see what God would say to us today. And the food was good, and the accommodations were great, and the atmosphere, just kind of being caught up in a revival spiritual time. I think if I could just live there like that, I could almost live without sinning. You know, kind of like Peter was on the Mount of Transfiguration. And he said, Lord, let's stay here. Let's build a tent and let's stay here, man. This is great. But couldn't stay. Had to come back. And no sooner had we come back Thursday afternoon than stuff began to happen. Got home and Brittany had gotten her wedding invitations in. We began to look at them and we noticed they had put the return address on the outer envelope. And we had specifically requested they not do that because they were going to charge us $53 extra to put those return addresses. So here they were on there. So we had to call and try to get that straightened out. They said, well, you needed to contact the proof department, not just the customer service. And when you told the customer service that you didn't want it on the back, well, that never got communicated to the proof people before they started printing the invitations. So basically, we're stuck with it. No sooner than I had walked in and saw that, I started going through the mail, saw this letter from a doctor's office, opened it up. said that I owe this doctor over $300. That one of the kids had gone to the doctor and had some tests run and had some things done and had given them the wrong insurance card, the old insurance card. And so, as far as the doctor was concerned, we didn't have any insurance and therefore I owed them $300. Okay, so I got a call and tried to get that straightened up. And then I saw this other envelope that Actually had Terry's address on it, but I went ahead and opened it because she tends not to open mail because she thinks it's junk mail a lot of times. And it was from a collection agency. Said that we owed them over $70, almost $80 on a belt credit card. So I naturally said, Terry, do you remember charging anything to a belt credit card? No, man, it's been months since I've charged anything on a Belk credit card. So we went through our checkbook trying to find out. Best thing I could come up with was back last October. She charged $17.17. So we called them up. They said she charged $17.17 in October and it's not been paid on. I said, Terry, do you remember getting any bills from Belk credit card bills? Well, you know, all that stuff's always just junk, so I just kind of toss it. Bless her heart. I know she just doesn't like going through junk mail. And, you know, most times they will send you one, even if it's a zero balance and it's got all that ad stuff. But anyway, for some reason, those letters had continued to be tossed since October. So now that $17 was $80 plus. Stuff happens. And, you know, Each one of you, if I could give you an opportunity, you could stand right up here and you could start going through your list of stuff that's happening in your life right now. Probably worse stuff than what I've just talked about. Maybe you found out you've got cancer. Maybe you think you're about to lose your job. Maybe you think you're about to lose your house. Maybe your marriage is falling apart. Stuff happens. Now, why does stuff happen? That's the question that we're addressing today. Why doesn't God just remove all that stuff from the Christian life so that it's just easy going? Why do we always have to have stuff happening to us? Well, Paul gives the answer in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. Take your Bibles, turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. And we're going to read in verses 8 through 11. Because stuff always happened to Paul. Paul's life was filled with stuff happening to him. And he tells us why stuff kept happening to him. And it's why stuff keeps happening to us as well. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, beginning with verse 8, I'm going to ask you to stand in respect for the Word of God. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life." Now, that's stuff. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. who delivered us from so great a peril of death and will deliver us. He on whom we have set our hope and he will yet deliver us. You also joining and helping us through your prayers so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many. You may be seated. May the Father bless the reading and the hearing and the obeying of his word. Paul basically says The reason stuff happens in your life is so that you will learn to trust in God and not in yourself. Now, I believe the truth that God wants to share with us today will have an application for you personally, and I think it will also have an application for us as a church. So as I go through this, I will apply it both to us personally and to us as a church. Now, there's a spiritual truth that I believe God wants us as individuals and as a church to understand this morning. First one is this. You will only learn to trust God by trusting God. You only learn to trust God by trusting God, you will not learn to trust God by reading books on trusting God. You cannot learn to trust God by reading books about, say, George Mueller. You remember George Mueller ran the orphanage back in England in the 1870s and on. At one time, he had over 2,000 orphans there on the premises, and he funded those orphans and caring for them without making a single plea to anyone for funds, never wrote a letter asking people to give money, never had an ad on radio asking people to give money. He simply prayed and trusted God to provide what was needed. People would come up to him sometimes and they would say, tell us, do you have a need in the orphanage that we can help out? And you know what he would say? You need to pray and ask God. And then you do as he directs you. During the time of the orphanage, he raised, or over $8 million came in as a result only of prayer. No pleas ever made for funds. He knew how to trust God. One time, you will remember that there was no food in the orphanage for breakfast. I mean, they were out all the way. So he called all the people together. He had the orphans sit down at breakfast and he said, we're going to pray and ask the blessing, although there was no food there. But he trusted God. And you remember when he finished the blessing, there was a knock on the door and it was his catering service that had catered to breakfast that morning, but went to the location and to find out that they were a week off. That the breakfast was going to be the next week. And somebody in the catering group said, well, why don't we take it down and see if the orphanage needs it? And there was all they needed for breakfast. Now, you can read books on George Buehler and you might be encouraged to trust God. But you will never learn to trust God by reading books on trusting God. You will never learn to trust God by attending seminars, even on trusting God, or retreats on trusting God. I do not even believe you will learn to trust God by studying the Bible. You'll be, again, encouraged to trust God as you study the Bible. You will see examples of those who have trusted God, and that will be a source of of moving you to seek to trust God, but you will not learn to trust God simply by studying the Bible. The only way you learn to trust God is by trusting God. You don't learn to swim by reading books about swimming, do you? You can go to a seminar about swimming and you won't learn to swim until you get in the water and start doing it. You don't learn to drive a car by reading the manual. You read the manual, you go take the test, and then kids have to spend a year driving, doing it, before they can get their license. And then they have to demonstrate to the examiner that they can actually drive. Right? Now, how would you like to get on a plane and the pilot said, hey, you know, I've never flown a plane before, but I've been through every course you can be on. I got a Ph.D. in aeronautics. So, hey, you know, I haven't even been in any simulation, but I've never actually flown a plane. You can only learn to trust God by trusting God. Second truth. You will not trust God unless you have to trust God. You will not trust God unless you have to trust God. Our human nature is to trust in ourselves first. And not to trust God unless we have to. Our first response in a situation is to try to figure out how we can handle it. When stuff happens, we try to figure out how can I handle this? What do I need to do? How can I use my resources, how can I use my abilities to solve this problem and get myself out of this stuff? So we looked ourselves first. That's what Abraham did. Remember, God said, you're going to have a descendant. Right. came for a period of time, and Abraham immediately says, OK, now we've got to figure this thing out. Sarah says, hey, why don't you take my handmaiden, Hagar, and have her descended that way? Trying to work it out on their own. I'm convinced Moses was trying to work it out on his own when he killed that Egyptian. I mean, God had placed it in his heart to deliver his people, to be a deliverer. And when he saw the Egyptian abusing his fellow Israelites, he reached out and sought to deliver them himself by killing the Egyptian. But that was his way, surely not God's way. So we try to trust in ourselves or in our bank account. We think, well, maybe I can buy myself out of this situation. Or we trust in the experts, you know, the doctors, the bankers, A church consultants. But we will only trust God when we have to trust God. That's the only time you're going to trust when you have to. All right, so only trust learn to trust God by trusting God, you only trust God, you have to trust God truth. God will see to it that you have to trust him. That's why stuff happens. Because God knows unless He brings you to your extremity, you will not trust Him. Until He piles up so much stuff on you that you have no other recourse but to trust Him, you won't trust Him. You see, God will move heaven and earth to engineer your circumstances so that you have to trust Him. He's put you in a situation in which you have exhausted all of your human resources. You've tried everything and nothing has worked. You can't buy yourself out of the problem. You see, this is where Paul found himself in our passage, in verse 8. He says, For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively. This was a lot of stuff he was going through. beyond our strength. It was more than he could endure, so that we despaired even of life. Now, nobody knows for sure what Paul was referring to. Some think it was a riot that took place when he was in Ephesus, you remember, by Demetrius, the silversmith. Others think that there was a plot out against Paul's life. He had a contract on his life. But we really don't know exactly what it was, but there are two things we do know from what he says. It was a situation of such severity that apart from God's intervention, Paul was convinced it would kill him. And then secondly, it exhausted Paul and all of his human resources, and it forced him to trust in God and not in himself. Verse 9, Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. God did the same thing to Abraham. God worked in Abraham's life. God constructed the stuff in Abraham's life to the point that Abraham had to trust God. God kept Sarah from getting pregnant for 99 years. Here, Abraham was 100 years old. Sarah was 99. And God says, by this time next year, you will have a child. Paul says over in Romans that Abraham looked at himself being 100 years old. And he says, this old body's dead when it comes to having kids. And then it says he looked at Sarah, who was 90 years old, and looked at the deadness of her womb and thinks, man, as far as having kids, she's dead, too. Now, there was absolutely nothing that Abraham could trust in except God. That was all. God had constructed and engineered and moved heaven and earth to bring Abraham to that place that he could only trust God. And trust God He did. And God worked. Jesus was continually bringing the disciples to this point that they had to trust Him. You remember when the feeding of the 5,000? Probably were 20,000 to 25,000 people there. There were 5,000 men. Well, the account tells us that Jesus went to Philip, one of his disciples. Philip was the accountant. Judas was the treasurer, but Philip was the accountant. And so he says to Philip, Philip, how can we get enough bread to feed all of these people? So Philip does his calculations. And he says, you know, even if we bought $9,360 worth of food, we still wouldn't have enough for even everybody to have a little bit. In other words, he was saying it's humanly impossible. We can't do it. Our resources, humanly speaking, are exhausted. And then Jesus moves in And He supernaturally provides the bread, the fish from five loaves and two fish to feed over 20,000 people and have plenty left over. The storms on the Sea of Galilee, these were seasoned fishermen, but they knew the storms were so terrific that they knew that unless Jesus did something, they were going to die. And they said, Jesus, we're perishing, we're dying here, we're drowning. Do something. They couldn't depend on their human resources, the stuff was too much. They were forced to trust in God. And God's doing the same thing in your life today. The stuff is happening to you so that you will trust God and not trust in yourself. And God is bringing the stuff because He knows you will not trust Him unless you have to trust Him. Unless you've exhausted all of your resources. And so He has lovingly engineered your circumstances. There are no accidents. There are no coincidences. It's a loving God engineering, constructing your circumstances so you will learn to trust Him. by trusting Him and not trusting yourselves. God has divinely constructed our circumstances at Westside so that we will trust Him alone to enable us to reach our community. We're not to put our trust in our updated building and our beautiful welcome center that we have now. We're not to put our trust in our Upward program or any other outreach program. We're not to put our trust in any person. We're to put our trust in God. And that's where God has brought us, I believe, as a church to the point that He's saying, you've got to trust me. As Henry Blackaby loves to say, it never works. He works, but it never works. And God wants us to quit looking to it to work and look to Him and Him alone to do what needs to be done. Next truth. Your hope is only in God. Look at verse 10. Who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, he on whom we have set our hope, and he will yet deliver us. See what Paul is saying? All these delivered and will deliver. Paul is saying that his trust in God gives him hope. It's so easy when the stuff is piled up on us to lose hope. Because we've tried everything we know to try, done everything we know to do, and it hasn't gotten any better. And so what do we do? We give up. We get hopeless until we put our trust in God. And then He becomes our hope. Paul says God has delivered him in the past. He says God is delivering him in the present and that God will deliver him in the future. It seems that this situation Paul is talking about is an ongoing thing. And he has to continually trust God to deliver him. You are to put your trust and your hope only in God. When the situation looks impossible, put your hope in God. When your circumstances seem devastating, put your hope in God. When the circumstances seem hopeless, God is your hope. He is the one that we must turn to and see as our hope. That's our theme for this year. God is our hope. Our hope is not in a program. It's not in a person. It is in our great God. So when you're trusting in God, He is your hope. And the last truth, A key to trusting God is prayer. Look at what Paul says in verse 11. You also joining in helping us through your prayers. So that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many. You see, trusting in God and not in yourself does not mean you do nothing. I hear that. Because somebody might mistake and say, well, I'm just trusting God, so I'm not doing anything. No, no, no. Trusting in God means. You trust God to do what only God can do. And you trust God to enable you to do what you must do. Abraham and Sarah. Had to trust God to do what only God could do. But at the same time, they had to trust God to enable them to do what they had to do in that situation. Right? The disciples had to trust Jesus to do what only Jesus could do, and that is multiply the fish and the bread. And they also had to trust Jesus to enable them to do what they had to do, and that is pass out the bread. So trusting God doesn't mean we don't do anything. It means we trust him to do what only he can do, and we trust him to enable us to do what we must do in the situation. And normally there's something that he would have us to do. Now, sometimes in the Bible, God delivers his people and they do nothing. He just says, stand by and see the salvation of the Lord. And they just stand there and God moves in and delivers them. But most of the time, as with Gideon, and you can name them over and over, God delivered, but he said, I want you to do something in the process. I've given you the promised land, but you've got to go out there and fight for it. You've got to trust me to enable you to do what you have to do and trust me to do what only I can do. And prayer is a very primary key in trusting God. Now look what Paul says. He says these Corinthians prayers for him were being used to put a blessing on him. He says, you also join it in helping us through your prayers. As they were praying for Paul, Paul says God uses this to release his power in our lives to help us. And he says, so Thanks may be given for many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many. Paul says, actually, there is a favor that God places on us because of your prayers for us. And what does that mean for you and me? That means when we are going through the stuff and we're coming to the place that we know we have no choice but to trust God, We need people praying for us during that situation, undergirding us in prayer as we move into what it means to trust God. Well, that means we got to let people know when we're going through tough times. We got to say, look, you know, man, so much stuff has happened to me. I'm just getting totally exhausted, totally weary. I'm about to give up. I need to trust God. Pray for me. And God uses those prayers to strengthen His people. Amazing, isn't it? Also, as a church, we need to pray that God would enable, would show, teach us what it means to trust Him in everything. Prayer is so crucial. All right, let me summarize for you. You only learn to trust God by trusting God. OK. You will not trust God unless you have to trust God. Thirdly, God will see to it that you have to trust him. Because he loves you and he wants you to grow into Christ likeness. And then fourthly. God is your hope. And your hope is to be only in him. And then last. Prayer is a primary key in us trusting God and in other people trusting God as well. As we close this morning, I believe some of you are going through some stuff. And you're coming to the place, if you're not already there, that you realize God's bringing me to the place I must trust Him. There's no other solution. There's no other way. And I need you to pray for me. I need people to pray for me and help me to trust God. Now, as we have our invitation, I want to just open up the front here. If you are going through some stuff, and you don't have to tell us what the stuff is, but if you're going through some stuff and you say, man, I need prayers. I need somebody to pray for me. That's what you come down front. And if you see somebody down front, you feel free to step out and come alongside of them and pray for them. OK, and then maybe when you finish praying for them, you might say, hey, brother, I'm going through some stuff, too. How about you praying for me? All right. So. If you are going through some stuff right now and you just need somebody to pray with you, if you'll just come out. If you see somebody down front, you feel free to step out, pray with them. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you that you do work. In our lives to bring us to the point that We are stranded on Your omnipotence. That we have no way to turn but to You, to look no way but up. And You do this because You love us. That we might learn to walk by faith. But without faith, it is impossible to please You. I pray now You'd be working in the lives of Your people. In Jesus' name,