A Lecture for Little Faith part two

A lack of trust keeps you from really getting anywhere.Once I stop being sure about God’s attitude towards me, once I stop looking to him as the sole source of my security and satisfaction, that failure to trust, it will keep me from really stepping out and doing what I was designed to do which is to glorify Him.I say that for a couple reasons.One of them is when you look at the way the writers motivated Christians throughout the New Testament it’s often, I am tempted to say almost always, with God’s mercy and grace.It’s this being gripped by God’s mercy that gives Christians the energy to live for His glory.I think of Romans 12:1 and 2.Paul says “I urge you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice to God which is your spiritual act of worship.”By the mercies of God.Paul takes like eleven chapters to talk about the mercy of God because he knows it is the mercy of God that should motivate them to offer their lives as a sacrifice to God. And when a person isn’t confident about that it is obviously going to affect him. We are not going to do this whole offer ourselves as spiritual sacrifices thing right unless the mercies of God are in view.I think you have all seen the kid on the edge of the diving board who is looking down at his dad and just won’t jump in because he isn’t confident about his dad’s ability to catch him. That pictures the way many people are living their Christian life. They’ve got all these commands that in a sense they would really want to obey but they are not confident enough in either God’s ability to come through on His end or maybe they are not sure enough about His willingness and so they spend much of their time on the edge of the diving board with that feeling in their stomach that they would really like to jump off but there’s this fear there that is keeping them back.A lack of trust it is dangerous because it is like the ultimate good works killer.Trust is really fertile.It gives birth to a lot of good works. But not trusting God, unbelief, lack of faith, it is like this killer abortion doctor. What a lack of trust does, it murders good works in the womb.You want to lay yourself on the line for God but unbelief comes in and says whoa, whoa, slow down.You want to give all out for others but unbelief comes in and says don’t, because you know, maybe you won’t have enough to provide for you.You want to say something to somebody about their sin but unbelief comes in and says don’t because maybe if you do they won’t like you and that means you won’t be important.You want to lead in church but unbelief comes in and lists all your sins and inadequacies and makes you so uncertain of God’s attitude towards you that you just keep holding back.It’s funny we usually think in order to accomplish something for God we need to be something, whereas I look at pretty much every great thing that was ever done in any part of the Bible and it seems like every single one, the way God set it up, the main thing they needed wasn’t any great ability, but trust.Faith.David fighting Goliath.Joshua and the battle of Jericho.Gideon delivering God’s people.Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.And what I am saying, without trust, you are not going to step out like they did. They didn’t need to be anybody special. They just needed trust. And it may be in fact that there is all this stuff that God has for you do and yet you don’t do it, because a lack of trust in God, it grabs hold of you. And the crazy thing is you think the reason that you are not able to do more for God or why you are not experiencing His joy in your life is because He’s not providing more for you when the reality is you are not experiencing all that because you are so tied up by unbelief that you never step up to the plate to see Him provide.A lack of trust is dangerous because it keeps you from doing what God made you to do.