Stories of Trusting God: What is He asking You to do?

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Stories of Trusting God: What is He asking You to do?
  • What about your story?
  • What is God asking you to do?

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Full sermon notes - Stories of Trusting God: What is He asking You to do?

Abraham

Abraham

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Genesis 12

  1. Now the LORD said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
  2. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
  3. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
  4. So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
  • What was God asking him to do?
    • What might make him reluctand to do it?
    • Blockers: Fear, comfort, risk of son’s death
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: Leaving his safe, comfortable city
    • Trust: Going where God told him to go
  • How might this relate to us today?

Naaman

Naaman

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II Kings 5

  1. So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house.
  2. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.
  3. But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.
  4. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.
  • What was God asking him to do?
    • Blockers: Pride, looked down on believers, was not willing to be humbles
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: drop his pride
    • Trust: bathe in the Jordan
  • How might this relate to us today?

Rich Young Ruler

Rich Young Ruler

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Luke 18:18–22

  1. Now a certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
  2. Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
  3. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’ ”
  4. The man replied, “I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws since my youth.”
  5. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
  • What was God asking him to do?
    • Blockers: Wealth
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: Sell all he had and give to the poor
    • Trust: Follow Jesus
  • How might this relate to us today?

Zacchaeus

Zacchaeus

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Luke 19

  1. He entered Jericho and was passing through.
  2. And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich.
  3. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small of stature.
  4. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way.
  5. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”

Luke 19 cont’d

  1. So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.
  2. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”
  3. And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”
  4. And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.
  5. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
  • What was Jesus asking him to do?
    • Follow me
    • Blockers: wealth / sinful behaviour (corruption)
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: stopped cheating people
    • Trust: believed and followed Jesus’s teaching about the best way to live
  • How might this relate to us today?
    • Do you think there are people today who would be interested in following Jesus except they know there is stuff in their life they would have to clean up.

Herod

Herod

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  • What was God asking him to do?
    • Blockers: sinful behaviour (adultery)
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: clean up his life
    • Trust: identify himself as a follower of Jesus
  • How might this relate to us today?
  • Also Pilate, Mk 15:15, Mt 27:24

Paul

Paul

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  • Tell story first
  • What was God asking him to do?
    • Follow Jesus
    • Blockers: self-reliance, self-confident, ignorance of Jesus (although he thought he understood)

Philippians 3:4–7

  1. though mine too are significant. If someone thinks he has good reasons to put confidence in human credentials, I have more:
  2. I was circumcised on the eighth day, from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. I lived according to the law as a Pharisee.
  3. In my zeal for God I persecuted the church. According to the righteousness stipulated in the law I was blameless.
  4. But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ.
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: stop persecuting Jews
    • Trust: publically identify himself as a follower of Jesus
  • How might this relate to us today?

People of Athens

People of Athens

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  • Acts 1
    1. So Paul stood before the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects.
    2. For as I went around and observed closely your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown god.’ Therefore what you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you.
    3. The God who made the world and everything in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands,
    4. nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone.
    5. From one man he made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live,
    6. so that they would search for God and perhaps grope around for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
    7. For in him we live and move about and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
    8. So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human skill and imagination.
    9. Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent,
    10. because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom he designated, having provided proof to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
    11. Now when they heard about the resurrection from the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We will hear you again about this.”
  • What was God asking them to do?
    • Blockers: self-reliance, trust in their own solution
  • What did trusting God look like?
    • Repentance: turn from worshipping idols
    • Trust: follow Jesus’s teachings
  • How might this relate to us today?

What about your story?

  • What is God asking you to do?
  • What is blocking you?
  • What do you need to turn from?
  • What would your life look like if you were trusting and following Jesus?
  • Christians have to keep doing this (Abraham offering up Isaac)
  • What did Ab think was going to happen? —he actually thought Isaac would be raised from the dead
    • Paul parallels this with our faith in the resurrection
  • Trust means dying, believing that God will raise you up again
    • In all these stories something is being laid down.
    • E.g. what Jesus said to the R.Y.R. about the reward (in this age also)
  • Pray that God will reveal to you what he wants you to lay down in trust.

Updated on 2014-07-30 by Andrew Fountain