March 9, 2025 | Trust Issues | Proverbs Part 4

Trust Issues | Proverbs Part 4

Proverbs 3:1–12

My son, do not forget my teaching,
    but let your heart keep my commandments,
for length of days and years of life
    and peace they will add to you.


Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;
    bind them around your neck;
    write them on the tablet of your heart.
So you will find favor and good success
    in the sight of God and man.


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 straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
    fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
    and refreshment to your bones.


Honor the LORD with your wealth
    and with the firstfruits of all your produce;
then your barns will be filled with plenty,
    and your vats will be bursting with wine.


My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline
    or be weary of his reproof,
for the LORD reproves him whom he loves,
    as a father the son in whom he delights. (ESV)

Jed Gillis’ sermon, “Trust Issues,” unpacks Proverbs 3:1–12, emphasizing the challenge and necessity of trusting God fully. He explores the well-known verse, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding,” by breaking it down into its key elements. Trust is not just belief; it’s resting in God’s care, as a baby rests in a parent’s arms. True trust requires knowing God’s character, His integrity, strength, and faithfulness.

Gillis highlights several reasons trust is difficult: we forget God’s commandments, we doubt His love, we rely on our own wisdom, and we trust in our resources. He urges believers to bind God’s steadfast love and faithfulness around their hearts, to remind themselves daily that God’s love is unwavering. Without this, trust becomes nearly impossible. He also warns against self-reliance, pointing out that wisdom begins with humility and the recognition of our need for God.

The sermon also addresses the reality of hardship. Trusting God does not mean life will be easy, but it does mean He will guide us on the best path, even when it feels uncertain. Gillis reminds listeners that trust is most evident in difficulty, when we don’t understand but still choose to follow. He connects this to the gospel, where Jesus’ sacrifice reveals both our deep sinfulness and God’s immense love. Only by knowing that God loves us with all of His heart can we truly trust Him with all of ours.

The challenge is personal: Where do I struggle to trust God? Whether in relationships, finances, decisions, or suffering, trust means surrender. The gospel provides both the reason and the strength to trust because Jesus has already proven God’s love. Gillis closes by urging believers to meditate on Proverbs 3, confront their fears, and let the gospel reshape their trust in God.

Transcript of Trust Issues | Proverbs Part 4

Jed Gillis: Thank you for your singing this morning. As we often say, the worship team at Berean Bible Church doesn't just stand up there. We're all part of the worship team, and it is a joy to hear all of us lift our voices together.

This morning, we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 3. As we are there, children, if you're headed out the door to Children's Church, you can go ahead and go out now. We also are glad to have you with us in our service as well.

I want to just start by reading Proverbs 3, beginning in verse 1. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. 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 straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof. For the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father, the son in whom he delights. This is God's Word for us this morning.

It has one of the most famous passages in Proverbs. All right, if I were to ask you when we started a series of Proverbs, what verse comes to your mind out of Proverbs? I would bet many of you would say the first thing that comes to mind is trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge it... that passage is probably at least one of the most dear to us from Proverbs, the most well known.

I think it's also probably one of the most challenging, although we don't always think about it that way. And really this morning, what we're going to do is start at verse five and six and press a little more deeply, hopefully, into what those verses mean and ask ourselves, where do I struggle to obey those verses?

Our Struggle with Obeying "Trust in the Lord"

Jed Gillis: Where do I struggle when it says trust in the Lord with all your heart? And depending on the emphasis of the way you read it. It could sound very different and you might feel the challenge, the battle, the friction in your soul at different places. If I were to say, TRUST in the Lord with all your heart, or if I were to say, trust in the LORD with all your heart, or how about trust in the Lord with ALL of your heart, or we could even go to the end of it and say, trust in the Lord with all your HEART. The core of who you are.

Every one of those, you might, you might feel a little different friction, a little different challenge in your soul to say, do I really trust in the Lord with all my heart? Most of the room could have quoted that verse. Do we really live it out?

TRUST in the Lord with all your heart

Jed Gillis: So if we start with just the word trust. You've probably heard many pictures. I want you to think of a couple of pictures to say, do I really trust? "Do I really rest?" Would be another way to say that.

Think about when you hold a baby. That baby is not all tensed up because you might drop them. They're not worried about that. Now, if you shake them around too much, they might think you would. But when that baby's relaxed in your arms, what we know that the baby's not thinking about is if I drop them, they could be seriously injured. So it's not that there is no risk. That's not why the baby rests. The baby rests because the baby trusts you.

I think in my soul, plenty of times, that I would say I'm trusting in God. But actually what I'm doing is He's holding me, and I'm tensed up as I can be, because I might get hurt in the process. That's not really trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do you really rest?

The elders and I were going through a book by Paul Tripp, which is about marriage, and he wasn't talking about how you trust God. He was talking about how two people trust each other. But it's a really great definition that works for God as well. He said this, Trust is being so convinced that you can rely on the integrity, strength, character, and faithfulness of another that you are willing to place yourself in their care.

And I might add, and rest in their care. Not just place yourself saying, well, I can't guarantee my safety so I guess I'm in God's care, but rest in God's care.

I'll read it again. Trust is being so convinced that you can rely on the integrity, strength, character, and faithfulness of another that you are willing to place yourself in their care. You could just sit with that and say, Am I really so convinced of God's integrity, strength, character, and faithfulness, that I willingly rest in his care.

TRUST in the Lord with all your heart.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

Jed Gillis: If we emphasize the next section, trust in the Lord. He's not calling you to some vague sense of trust. Some, I think it'll all work out. Why? I'm generally optimistic. That's not what he's calling you to. He's not calling you to say, Well, I'll trust in the Lord, but I've got backup plans in case God doesn't protect me well.

Trust in the Lord. Trust in Yahweh. Trust in the God who rules everything. That's another thing. He's not saying, Trust in a God who might help you and can help you with some things. He's saying, trust in a God Who knows absolutely everything. This trust in the Lord is like Joseph saying, My brothers treated me like this. God meant it for good. Trust in the King.

Do you trust in Him personally? Sometimes as Christians, we trust in like, Christian values are basically good. So as long as I come to church and do what I'm supposed to do and try to be kind and try to be nice and all those things, then I trust life will work out better. That's not what he's talking about.

He says there's a king. Do you trust his care?

Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart

Jed Gillis: Just watching your reactions when I emphasize different words, I think you probably feel like I feel that the next one is probably the hardest word in the whole passage. Trust in the Lord with all. of your heart. Not a little slice, not a percentage. Trust in the Lord with all.

It's one thing to trust God with some of our heart. That might even feel easy. But to trust in the Lord with all of your heart. And if that word weren't difficult enough there, verse 6 has it again. In all your ways, acknowledge Him.

That word for acknowledge is In our modern usage, it can sound too light. It doesn't, like, we might think I acknowledge someone.

Like, I didn't really talk to them. They walked by and I kind of tipped my hat and walked past. That's not what he's saying. He's not saying go about your life and tip your hat to God every once in a while. The word is often translated, know. In fact, it's one of the deepest words for know in Hebrew. It's used as an idiom to talk about husbands and wives knowing each other.

In all your ways, know God, intimately, deeply, know God, everything, your relationships with other people, your business decisions, your investment decisions, your life choices, what you do on Monday morning at 10 o'clock, what you do on Friday night when you feel like you have a productive week. What you do when you feel discouragement, what you do when you feel encouraged. Every single path that you take in your life, in all your ways, know God.

That's why all is hard. It might be easy enough to come to church and say, I come to church and I know God in church. But it's like Paul saying, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. In all your ways, know God.

Trust in the Lord with all your HEART

Jed Gillis: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, at the very core of who you are. At the very heart, we use it the same way, same idiom, at the very heart of the deepest things you're afraid of, the deepest things you love, your biggest questions, your biggest confidence, at the heart of all that, Trust God. That's hard because our world tells you, be yourself, be true to yourself.

God tells you actually something better, which is, trust me to make you who you're supposed to be. Trust me to change you. That's the kind of trust that's there. Transform at the very heart. Do you trust God enough to let him, ask him to reshape who you are at any level he has to?

That's a different kind of trust.

There's a lot of people in this world I can say, I trust them somewhat and different levels. I trust that when I'm driving down Buffett Mill, the car coming the other way is not going to swerve in front of me. I trust that. But that's not the same kind of deep trust. I trust you all as brothers and sisters and friends. That's different than the way I trust my wife.

But none of those trusts are the same as the way we trust God to say, God, this is who I am. Even the parts of me I don't fully understand yet, like my heart. This is who I am. Change any of it. That's trust. And it feels scary. It feels scary to give up control and say, God, you have, you're gonna change me. And I want to follow. That's why it's trust.

Why is Trust Hard for Us?

Jed Gillis: So you come to verse five, and you say, I know it says trust in the Lord with all your heart and you feel friction and you say, I don't do all of that the way I should all the time. I know I don't. And maybe as we talk through it, maybe you say, I struggle in all those points. Maybe you say there's one spot right there that the spirit points out and says, I don't trust God enough there.

Then we should ask, well, why is it hard for us? And because God didn't just give you Proverbs three, five. In isolation. He gave you this whole text. Then let's ask, What does the surrounding context tell us about trust that will help us with our trust issues towards God?

Because We Forget God's Commandments

Jed Gillis: So we're gonna take a quick overview of little sections. If you look at verse 1 and 2, this text starts by saying, Don't forget my teachings are My commandments. We'll come back in just a minute to verse 2 of the result. But don't forget my teachings and commandments.

Sometimes trust is hard because we think, God hasn't really told me anything about this situation. Sometimes that kind of thing can come into our mind. But he starts, he says, God has not left you in the dark. You fight, you face situations that you don't know how they're all going to work out. How can I trust God? How can I trust God? Well, I I promise, if you don't go look at God's teachings and His commandments, you're gonna have a hard time trusting God.

Because it's just vague trust, then. It's just an idea of, I hope, maybe God works it out. You say, what did God actually tell me? What can I trust?

This morning, we sang songs that talked about truths like that. If you struggle feeling guilt, and you don't remember, God has taught that my guilt is on Jesus, and His grace is on me. That's a teaching you have to remember. If you don't remember that, you can say, Oh, I trust God, I trust God, but what are you trusting?

He starts with the fact that God did not leave you in the dark. If you want to have a personal relationship of trust with God, you need to know what God has said. You need to know His Word. So, trust is hard because we might think, God hasn't told me anything about that.

Because We Forget God's Love

Jed Gillis: Another reason, I think might be the biggest one. Trust is hard because we forget God's love. Look at verse 3. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.

Notice he doesn't say, you go have steadfast love and faithfulness. That's not the way it's worded. It's worded to say, Here's steadfast love and faithfulness. Keep those things with you. Remember, God has loved you with steadfast love and faithfulness.

It's always going to be hard to trust if you don't remember that God has the kind of fully committed, never giving up, Grade A, heavy duty love for you. If you don't start there, it's gonna be hard to trust.

And not only does He have that love, but faithfulness. That means what He has been is what He will be. So if you look at it and say, I know God poured out steadfast love at the cross, but you don't know how much of a scoundrel I am. I'd say God knew when He poured it out on the cross. And who God is, is who God was, is who God will be. Steadfast love and faithfulness.

Notice He says bind them around your neck. You take something new, I realize if you have a necklace you wear all the time, you might forget about it. But if you take something new and wrap it around your neck, you don't forget.

You walk around and the first time you're wearing an ID badge or a lanyard or something like that, it catches on everything. You feel it all the time. Bind it around your neck.

Write it on the tablet of your heart. Keep God's love for you and His faithfulness where you'll see it and remember it over and over and over and over and over again. That's what he says right before, trust God. Because if you don't know God loves you, you won't trust Him.

That's true for all of us. In our human relationships. If you don't know somebody cares for you, you don't trust them. You have to know God's love. That must have been what Paul did when Paul's writing Romans. And he goes through, he gets to Romans chapter 8. Here, he's talked about theology, he's talked about justification, he's talked about all these different things. And he gets there to a climax of the book and he says, If God is for me, who could be against me?

And then right afterwards he says, What could separate me from the love of Christ? Nothing. Paul had wrapped around him. Because of what God had done in his heart, he had in front of his eyes, he loves me and he's faithful.

We have to know this because you'll never trust the way verse five requires unless you know God's love as verse three invites you to know God's love.

I was chatting with Isaias, our new family pastor about this this past week, and I'm gonna steal his line about it. Cause it was good. He said, you'll never trust God with all your heart unless you know that he loves you with all of his.

If you have doubts about how much of God's heart he loves you with, that's why you won't trust him with all of yours. We have to know God's love. Otherwise, what we're gonna do, and remember, this is all about wisdom in Proverbs. Otherwise, what happens is, I won't look at my own flaws, honestly. If I don't know I'm loved, Think about contexts where you say, I'm not sure this person really cares for me. Then it's easy to be defensive. It's easy to look at my weakness and say, But you don't understand, I have all these reasons. But in order to be wise, you need a good picture of what weaknesses do I have? What sins do I face? What limitations do I have? In order to make wise decisions, you need to know that. Unless you're convinced that you're loved, you won't actually look at those. And if you do look at your weaknesses without knowing you're loved, it will drive you to despair.

That's why before trust, before trust in the Lord with all your heart is don't let God's steadfast love and faithfulness depart from you. Remind yourself over and over and over, He loves me like that and what He was is what He will be.

Now, throughout church history, of course, Some people have been afraid that if you over emphasize the love of God, people will think, well, I can do whatever I want to.

Or people will think, I don't have to seriously fight sin. That's not true. The problem with somebody who says, if God loves me, I can do whatever I want, the problem is not that they think too much of God's love. The problem is, they don't understand God's love in the first place.

The problem is not that they go, God's love is so great that all these things disappear. The problem is that they think God's love means, I can do whatever I want and He just forgives me, when what God's love actually means is, I want to take you and help you for what is really good in your life. The reason you need to seriously fight sin is not because God might not love me, it's because God loves me so much. He's told me, fight this sin because it will hurt you. He's told me, fight this sin and live this way because it is what is good for you. Understanding the love of God in a deeper way does not make you fight sin less.

We could point to that scripturally, but I would just say, as I've met believers who have walked with God for decades, the ones who know the love of God the most fight sin the most. So keep God's love with you.

Because We Often Put Our Trust in Ourselves

Jed Gillis: Trust is hard for those reasons. Trust is also hard because we trust ourselves. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding. Or verse 7, be not wise in your own eyes. We have this problem in our modern world. I, I think it's human, but it's more now because I have so much information. I think I can't trust unless I understand how all of it works out.

That's not true. I don't have to understand how everything works to know God has said, Trust in the Lord. To know God has said, Take your pick of any of his commands. Love your neighbor as yourself. I don't have to know how it all works out to know God has said when others persecute you, you turn the other cheek. You don't fight back. I don't have to make sense of how it all works out to know I can trust God because He said this. Here He says, Don't lean on your own understanding.

Now the book of Proverbs is not against understanding. We've seen that over and over. We cry out for it. The problem is, your own understanding, without God's input.

As God gives you understanding, there are many times you look at a decision and you say, this seems wise because of these principles. And you say, I'm going to act on my understanding. That's good. You should.

But not just leaning on my own understanding, not withholding trust from God if I don't know how it all works out. But the heart that says, I trust what God has said over and over and over. I'm not going to be wise in my own eyes.

Really, in verse 3 and in verse 7, this text gives you two different things that can make it difficult for you to trust and blind you to wisdom. If you think, I'm not loved, then you won't really trust God, and you won't really have a good view of wisdom.

But on the other hand, if you think, I've got this all figured out, we all know that's not a wise person. We see the blindness. We see how pride can blind you. Both sides, he says, if you don't know God's love, You'll be blind to wisdom if you think too highly of your own intellect and understanding and wisdom. You'll be blind. You won't trust.

So trust is hard because we think maybe God hasn't actually spoken about this. Maybe he hasn't given me anything. I'm in the dark. Text says remember his teaching. Trust is hard because we aren't really sure that we're loved. And so he says, Keep God's steadfast love and faithfulness. where you'll be reminded over and over and over again. Trust is hard because we trust ourselves.

Because We Are Blinded by Our Own Resources

Jed Gillis: And we could go to verse 9 and 10 and say, trust is hard because we do have some of our own resources. Trust is hard because what he tells you to do, notice the picture, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce. So if you're a farmer and you gather the first part of the harvest, It's really easy to say, now I'm going to keep this for myself, meet my needs with my own resources, and then as I get more things, then I'll be generous.

And if you do that, you're trusting in your resources and your power. And he points you and says, no, this is the other way around. Even though you could, humanly speaking, trust in those resources right now, he says, no, take the first part of your harvest, Whatever resources. And we could talk about money. We could talk about time. We could talk about all kinds of different things, emotional energy, all kinds of resources that we could trust in. And he says, take the first part of it and trust your God. He wasn't randomly saying in verse five, well, trust in God, and then down here going, I should talk about harvest. This is related to trust. So he says that you need to honor God. By trusting Him, even in the things that you think, I could trust myself.

I think a lot of us, we think, I'll trust God, like I get to a certain point, now I'm gonna trust God. I can handle things up to here, now this is hard enough, I need to trust God. He's saying, no, no, no, start trusting God.

To give one example, we all feel like we have a certain amount of emotional energy, right? And we do. And it's easy to think, well, I'm going to trust God when I finally get to the end of my rope. He's saying, no, trust God at the very beginning.

It's easy to think, I've got this much time in my day and if I can accomplish this part at the beginning, okay, then I'll trust God for whatever's left over. I couldn't get to that God, you'll have to take care of it. He's like, no, no, no, flip that around. Don't trust your resources to start with. Trust in God from the very beginning, and then say, God, I trust you. Direct me to use my resources where you want me to.

Because trust is hard, because sometimes we feel like we have our own resources. We have to remember, I need to trust God from step one.

Because Life Isn't Always Easy

Jed Gillis: And the last piece is in verse 11 and 12. Trust is hard because life isn't always easy. Because you get to this section where he says, My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or training, or be weary of His reproof or correction. He says there are things that are difficult in life. Sometimes they're correction, sometimes they're training. But there are challenges that come from your heavenly Father.

But notice how he returns to the idea of love at the end. In both of these in verse 12. The Lord reproves him whom he loves. He corrects as a father the son in whom he delights. He goes back and says keep this in front of you. God delights in his children.

God loves you. Keep that in front of you. That's how you can trust God when difficulties come.

And if you think about it, trust is never actually revealed without difficulty. Right, if you want to know if somebody trusts you, as long as everything's nice and smooth and easy, you can say they trust you, they can say they trust you, but there's not testedness to that. The question is, can you look at Proverbs 3, 5, when tragedy strikes your life, and say, yes, trust in the Lord with all your heart. That's hard.

Can you look when the bank account looks really good and say, trust the Lord with all your heart. Can you look when the bank account looks really bad and say, trust the Lord with all your heart. If you were in Job's situation, we went through the book of Job a few months ago. Though he slay me yet will I trust him.

What Are The Results of Trusting God?

Jed Gillis: Now I've jumped over as we went through the results. They're scattered all throughout.

We could look at verse two. Length of days and years of life and peace, these teachings will add to you. We can look at verse four, favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Verse eight, healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Verse ten, then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.

I've jumped over, over all of those things as we went because one, they're a challenge for us. We say, it doesn't seem like it. And we need to see that in verse 11 and 12, he's not promising everything is always going to be smooth and easy. But what we have, as we see consistently in Proverbs, we'll see things that you say, they are eternally, perfectly true.

If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you will enjoy the most incredible riches ever in heaven. I don't promise your bank account will explode right now, but I promise the riches in heaven are yours. They're eternally completely true.

We can also say, in this life, generally, is it true? If you follow after God's truth, generally speaking, you're more likely to have a longer life than if you say, I'm going to go out and be a gang drug lord. More likely. Is it always going to happen? No. But more likely.

That's how proverbs work. We say things like, give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. Well, maybe. I mean, it's generally true, right? But we don't actually know that he'll be able to eat for a lifetime based on that. You say you teach him how to fish and then an accident happens and he gets paralyzed. Well now he can't fish anymore, so that doesn't work, right?

We use proverbs like that all the time. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. I mean, what we really mean, right, is good nutrition generally brings better health results. But we've probably all heard of those people who are like, they were a marathon runner, their nutrition was fantastic, and they had a heart attack at 34. You're like, it doesn't always work like that, but the proverb is still true as a proverb to say, an apple a day is good. Good nutrition brings good results.

He's doing the same thing here. He's saying, pay attention to God's teaching. That's going to add length of days to your life. Now we can all look at martyrs and say, wait, it didn't quite work out for that guy. Sure. They're proverbs. These are all things that God has pointed you to.

And the other result is found in verse six. Honestly, this one means more to me. Verse six says, he will make straight your paths. Or some people translate it. He will direct your paths either way. It's not promising you that he's going to give you the shortest path between point A and point B. What it's saying is God is going to so order your paths. That you get to the best end. He knows the best point B, or Z. The best ending for you, and He knows the best way for you to get there.

And when He says He's going to make straight your paths, that, in our minds, often means they're curved like this, and He's going to straighten it. Now it can be used that way, but it's also used this way. Your path might be up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and down, and he's going to flatten it.

Now, we all know, we live in Tennessee, we know a mile hike can be easy or not. Depending on this, right? If it's a mile hike, but you climb up a thousand feet and down a thousand feet, it's a whole lot different, right?

In all your ways acknowledge Him. He's not promising you an easy path in life. Sometimes it's hard. He's not promising you the shortest path. So you go, oh, this is where I was headed. What He's promising is this. He will give you the strength to handle the climbs and He will straighten those out so that you're not exhaustedly needing to give up.

In all your ways know Him, and He'll lead you on the right pathway. And He'll lead you all the way home.

Sometimes sheep need to be guided by a sheepdog, right? Have you ever thought about, as a sheep, that's probably not pleasant? I, I don't know, I've never been a sheep, but I would imagine there's probably some fear. You're going off this way and that dog's kind of barking and running around. You're like, oh no, I'm gonna go this way. But it's way better than falling off the cliff you didn't know anything about.

Sometimes we are guided by what feels like sheepdogs, and we're scared and we run away from them, but our Good Shepherd is the one who's in charge of all the sheepdogs. And He is guiding your path. We need to recognize, admit, His wisdom is so much better than mine.

Some Questions to Ask Yourself

Jed Gillis: So I want to leave you with a couple questions.

How do you know if you're really trusting God? Trust the Lord with all your heart. Alright, self diagnosis. Do you think too highly of your own understanding?

Do you recognize that you have weaknesses and struggles, and you need others, and you need God's wisdom? Or do you say, I basically got it under control, and if it gets bad enough, I'll go to God? You want to say, do I really trust? That's one question. Do I think too highly of my own resources?

On the other hand, do you think too low of your own value?

God couldn't love me. I'm just an idiot. I've just been a rebel. God couldn't care for me.

That will blind you to wisdom too. You need to know God's love. You need His steadfast love and His faithfulness right in front of you. Do you experientially, like in your life, day to day, consistently remind yourself of God's perfect love for you? Without that, it's going to be so hard to trust.

But as we said earlier, walking the path of wisdom requires trust, and you'll only trust God with all of your heart if you know He loves you with all of His.

Are you willing to obey God whether you agree or not? That's what it means to trust. When He says, forgive others, And you say, I don't want to. That's not trust.

Are you willing to trust anything God sends in your life, whether you understand it or not? I think most of us can trust when we understand how it all works together. Are you willing to trust God whether or not you understand how it works together?

All of this, trust is scary. If you feel that impulse, so do I. Trust is scary, but the good news is Jesus Christ, who perfectly demonstrated God's love for you. He is our wisdom. In Jesus, in the gospel, we see we are so bad that the perfect Son of God had to die for you. That should crush your pride.

But you're so loved, that the perfect Son of God was glad to do it. For the joy set before Him. Not because He felt like He had to, begrudgingly.

In the Gospel, we see what we need to crush our pride and to lift us up. To say, Jesus had to die for me, but Jesus loved me enough to be glad to do it. Hold that before you. That's how you keep the steadfast love of God and the faithfulness of God before you.

I want to ask you this week, sit with God on Proverbs 3. Do I really trust you? Do I really trust in the Lord? Do I really trust in the Lord with all of my heart? And where you find the rub and the challenge and the friction there, when you find the, oh, it's really hard to trust Him to transform me at that level, at that deepest level, that's so hard, where you find that, take that difficulty and take the gospel of Jesus Christ and put them beside each other. And say, it's hard to trust, but this is what God did for me. This is His love.

And I don't know how God will use that in your life, exactly. But I know what I find is the more I see the fear of trusting God, every time the gospel of Jesus Christ is stronger. And God takes you places you didn't think you could go. He changes you in ways deeper than you thought would happen. And He will direct and straighten your paths.

Let's bow our heads, let's respond to God's truth in prayer, and then we'll sing together.