Transferring Trust // What do you Trust

We're going to be in a first Kings, chapter 17,.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

First King 17.

I grew up in a family where, whatever my mom cooked, that is what we ate.

Okay, so, somebody, you know what I'm talking about.

Now you know that a lot of times this was a good thing, but sometimes mom made Brussels sprouts and let me tell you, as an eight year old, brussels sprouts were not my jam and this is what me and my sister would do.

My mom allowed this.

I don't know if any of you guys were rebellious children like us, but we would do so.

We eat our Brussels sprouts as we would pinch our nose and eat it, so we didn't have to taste it.

My mom, let us do that, but any help, anybody else do that.

I was the only bad kid in the room.

Um, I was just me.

My mom make Brussels sprouts, but for me, my sister, there's actually something worse than Brussels sprouts.

There's a vegetable, cooked vegetable, that was worse than Brussels sprouts, in fact, anybody.

What is it Not lion?

Lion beans those were kind of rough, but it wasn't that one.

Beets, I haven't heard it yet.

Cabbage Spinach I, somebody, somebody said spinach.

So did you say spinach?

Cook spinach?

The worst, it was cooked spinach it was, it was slimy, and my mom would say my mom would say, papa ate spinach.

And I would think, if this is what it takes, I'm not willing to go there.

We would have spinach occasionally, we'd have Brussels sprouts occasionally.

But thankfully, there are some things we never ate because if dad didn't like it, mom never made it.

And one of those things that I never ate it was never made in our house.

I never ate.

It was never made in our house was a liver.

Anybody, anybody in the room like liver, anybody.

A special breed of people they're.

They're scattered amongst us.

Okay, I never had liver until I was in my early twenties and I went to some friend's house.

Now, these friends are the type of friends that they will eat anything.

Have you guys ever heard of a belute?

Because they're a belute, they eat this stuff.

So I go to their house and they say I'm friends with them.

So they say we're having liver for dinner and do you want some?

When I give them the story grown up we never had liver.

Blah, blah, blah.

And they're like you should just try it because it's really good.

I'm a little skeptical about this.

You're the same people like you guys think belute tastes good.

No, nate, you can trust us.

You trust us, right, it's really good.

And they had this.

They made this sauce and the sauce smelled really good.

You know the sauce basically to smother it, so it's not actually like you're not tasting the liver.

Just try this sauce with it, it's so good and if you don't like it you don't have to eat it.

I was like, okay, fair enough.

So I put a little piece of liver on my plate.

I'm just going to try it, just going to try it.

Put it on my plate and I walk over and I put it on the dinner table and I sit down and we go to eat it and I, on the way up, I'm a little skeptical, but you know that point where, like the point of no return, I was there, so I put it in my mouth and immediately I learned why my dad never had liver in our house.

If you're wondering why, it's because he loved us.

He loved us.

It was terrible.

And at that moment I said I am never trusting you people when it comes to food.

Again, I cannot trust you when it comes to food.

I'm trusting what I like in my palate and what I think I'm going to like I can't trust you anymore, and not only with food, but in life.

Isn't it easier to trust ourselves than to trust other people?

Isn't it easier to trust ourselves than to trust other people, or even to trust God?

It's easier.

We're actually starting a three week little mini series entitled Transferring Trust, and if I were to ask you right now, if I were to take a poll across the auditorium, how many of you in the room you trust God, a lot of you guys would raise your hand, which is great.

You'd say Pastor Nate, of course I trust God.

I trust God.

Yes, I trust God.

What we're going to see is we are going to see the place that shows how much we trust God and, according to Jesus.

We're going to see a place that shows our heart, and we're going to see a place that, if we're really honest, for most of us this is the hardest place to trust God.

I can trust God here.

I can trust God here.

I can trust God here.

I can trust God here.

But this over here is really really hard to trust God with.

What is that place?

We're going to talk about Brace yourselves Finances.

Now some of you, right now you guys just talk about finances in church.

I mean, you know, there's like some baggage there for some of us and maybe there's some preconceived notions.

But something that I've discovered that I really hope that you'll discover over the next couple of weeks it's this really simple truth and it's so small, but if you can grasp it it can really change a lot Is that when it comes to finances, god doesn't want something from us, he wants something for us.

When it comes to finances, god doesn't want something from us, he wants something for us.

When it comes to finances, god doesn't want something from us, he wants something for us.

That's right Now.

The foundation of all of this is what we're going to see in 1 Kings, chapter 17.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

And here's the foundation of it all.

It's learning to transfer our trust from the provisions that God gives to the provider God himself.

It's transferring our trust from the provisions that God gives to the provider himself.

And when we can learn to transfer our trust from the provisions from the provider, we're going to begin our journey of being able to experience what God wants for us, instead of what some of us think right now, that God just wants something from us.

So, first Kings, chapter 17,.

1 Kings 17 · chapter mention

If you are excited to learn this truth this morning.

Would you say amen?

It says this in 1st King, 17, verse 2,.

Then the word of the Lord came to him.

Him is the prophet Elijah.

Now a prophet is somebody in the Old Testament.

They would speak to the people on behalf of God.

So the word of the Lord came to Elijah.

What did he say?

Verse 3, leave here, turn eastward and hide at the wadi charath.

Word wadi here it just means stream.

Here's a stream of water.

Hide at this stream, charath, where it enters Jordan.

There's a drought that's happening.

They've got massive drought.

We don't know anything about droughts around here, right, we've never experienced droughts.

There's a massive drought that's happening.

It's even bigger than the drought that we've experienced, and what God's going to do is God's going to provide for Elijah through this stream.

So verse 5, elijah proceeded to do what the Lord commanded.

Elijah left and lived at the stream charath, where it enters the Jordan.

The ravens kept bringing him bread and meat in the morning and in the evening, and he would drink from the wadi, from the stream.

So there's a terrible drought going on, but Elijah's got a pretty good situation, like he's getting hooked up here.

He's got birds bringing him meat.

I don't know what kind of meat, maybe it's flaming on, maybe it's baloney Bring him meat.

Somehow he's got a stream that's providing for him.

And this is what God's trying to show Elijah.

He's trying to show him a couple lessons that, well, he wants us to learn too.

He's trying to show him, number one, that he's the provider.

Number one that God is the provider.

The source of the meat was not the ravens, the source was God.

Those were the meat and the water was the provisions, but it came from the provider.

God was the provider.

Now, this is really hard for us to grasp, especially as Americans, because we think that we're the providers.

It makes sense, right, because we work and we work and we work and we work and we commute and we do all these things and we provide for our families, for ourselves.

We provide and we think I'm the provider, but sometimes we forget who gave us the physical ability to work?

Who gave us the mental ability to be able to think so we can have a job?

Who allowed us to live in a country where there's actually opportunities for us to work?

Who opened up the door for us to have that employment and what can happen is.

We can think that we're the provider instead of God's the provider, and then we don't even realize this.

But it causes us to transfer our trust from the provider to seeing ourselves as the provider.

So we trust us, kind of something funny.

I have a little something in my wallet here and I'm rich $10.

I might be able to get a small coffee at Starbucks, might be able to.

So you got a $10 bill and on the back of it I don't know if you guys can read I mean, I know you guys can read, but I don't know if you can read it.

It's so small but there's, there's some font on the back of it.

You guys read what's on the back of this, what it says United States of America.

That's right on the top, and underneath that it says something that's on all of our currency.

It's in God, we trust, god, we trust.

In God, we trust.

I was listening to somebody and they were talking about Americans and and really Jesus followers that are Americans, and they said, if this was accurate, they should actually change the currency, that they should take off the words in God, we trust and instead they should replace it with in this we trust.

Oh, in this we trust and I wonder if the reason why in this, we trust is because we have forgotten that the provisions come from the provider and we have forgotten that this is just a provision.

This is not what we trust in.

We trust in the provider, and what can happen for all of us is somewhere along the way we can shift from trusting the provider to either trusting ourselves or trusting the provision.

And then God does something in our lives that God's about to do in Elijah that we don't really like.

He starts to shake things up.

Has God ever shakin' things up in your life?

I'm talking to you.

Maybe you had the good job and you had the security and then all of a sudden you got the email that your company's downsizing, or maybe your health kinda went down and you weren't able to work at the level that you were.

Because of that, the provisions are kind of going away.

Or maybe what's happened in your life is you've experienced inflation, you've experienced your rent going up, you've experienced all these medical bills, and now it's like you're all shakin' up because it's like these provisions aren't going as far as they used to and what it forces us to do is transfer our trust from the provision to the provider, because we don't even realize how we're gonna make it.

And for Elijah this is gonna happen.

In fact, in verse seven it says after a while, the stream where he was getting water, it dried up because there had been no rain in the land.

Now, for us, this is what we're thinking.

We're like, hey, we live in America.

We're like, bro, just run down the road to Arco A&P and get you 64 ounce of water.

There's water fountains everywhere.

Good, not in this time period Drought, no water done.

What's gonna happen?

Think of here Elijah, no water, elijah's gonna die.

He didn't have the provision anymore, but the provider is still there.

And what the provider's gonna teach Elijah is a really important lesson.

It's lesson number two and it's this is the provider can provide provisions in different ways.

Y'all hear, the provider can provide provisions in different ways.

And Elijah's gonna have to make this really uncomfortable decision Trust the provider and experience his provisions, or trust himself and not experience the provisions of the provider, because God's gonna ask him to do something really uncomfortable.

I don't know about you guys, but I don't like being uncomfortable.

You know, it's like there's a lot of things.

I like the idea of certain things, but then when I actually do them and I'm uncomfortable, I'm like I don't wanna do this.

I'll give you an example.

Let me ask you anybody in the room like to run?

Any runners in the room?

Any runners in the room?

Okay, god bless your souls, god bless y'all.

I got friends that you know they like to run.

They do these half marathons and all these marathons and I'm like, oh, that'd be so cool to do that.

I wanna go run a marathon.

And then I run like 100 yards and I'm like this is a bad idea, I don't wanna do this.

This is uncomfortable, and sometimes what happens is God asked us to do things that are uncomfortable.

But sometimes, on the other side of our comfort zone is where the provisions of God lie, and this is what's gonna happen with Elijah.

Look what God wants Elijah to do.

The word of the Lord came to him.

Verse eight Get up and go to Zeraphath Zeraphath, that belongs to Sidon and stay there.

Look, I've commanded a woman who is a widow to provide for you there.

First problem here Zeraphath, it's 100 miles away from where Elijah is.

That's a long walk, guys.

There ain't no Uber.

They're not.

Elijah's not picking up the city bus, he's not waving down a taxi.

There's none of that.

Zeraphath, 100 miles away Also, this is a Gentile city.

In that day and age, with the Jews, gentiles, it's like, ooh, stay away from them.

Gentiles, non-jewish people.

Gentiles think Jews got the cooties.

Jews think the Gentiles got the cooties.

Like I'm staying away from them.

God says go 100 miles to a Gentile city.

And then he also says he says, did I read this right?

A woman, ooh, in this culture, a man's gonna go to a woman to provide A widow.

You know what that means?

That means you shouldn't have no money.

Okay, okay.

So God, you're telling me, go 100 miles away to a Gentile city, to a woman that don't have any money.

That's the best thing you can come up with.

God, this is your plan.

But let's just be honest, guys.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

They're in a drought.

Elijah has no water.

Elijah's like what am I gonna?

Do?

You ever been to that place?

If you're honest, the times we a lot of times it takes us to the point of hitting rock bottom that we finally obey God because we have nowhere else to go.

Right, this is where Elijah's at.

Look what he does.

So Elijah gets up verse 10, and he went to Zeraphat.

And I wonder, on this 100 mile journey, what is Elijah thinking?

Why am I going all the way to Zarephath, god?

Isn't there a closer city?

I mean a hundred miles.

It's really hot, it's really dry out here.

Where's there was a convenience store where I could fill up my big water bottle.

I mean, you want me to go all the way to Zarephath?

It was great when I had the ravens bringing me meat and bread that sourdough bread, god, it was really nice.

And now I'm on this 100 mile journey, 100 miles.

You want me to walk 100 miles to this Gentile city, to this woman, to a widow.

God, why can't you just provide for me right now, like you're God?

Can the ravens come back?

What's going on, god?

God's going to teach him a really important lesson that we all need to know, and it's this is that God doesn't always God doesn't always make things happen in our time, but he always does things on time, because he's about to go.

He's about to go to Zarephath and, right on time, god's going to deliver for him.

And God may not do things on our time, but God always does things in his time, and some of us need to hear this today.

I got a word for some of you right now.

Right now, some of you are frustrated with God.

Right now, some of you are in a season of waiting.

Right now, some of you guys are like what is happening?

I don't get it.

And right now you're on a 100 mile journey to Zarephath and you're in the middle of the desert.

Maybe you're on mile 73 or maybe you're on mile 82.

Maybe you're on a mile 98 and you're about to give up and it's hot and it's dry and there's no water and you don't know where you're going this way.

And you're like God, I'm trusting you by faith, but it doesn't seem like you're coming through.

And God says listen, I may not do things on your time, but I do things in time.

And God say hold on Because, as Elijah is about to find out, provisions are coming in the form of a widow.

It says he gets there, he arrives at the city gate and there was a widow gathering wood.

Elijah called to her and said please bring me a little water in a cup and let me drink.

Now we have the widow on the scene and this is where the story takes a twist and gets really intense, like real heavy, as in this, can turn out really bad.

He talks to the widow and look what she says.

He calls out to her verse 11, he says bring me a piece of bread in your hand.

And verse 12, she says this as the Lord, your God, lives.

Can we get verse 12 on the screen?

I don't have anything baked, only a handful of flour in a jar.

She got a little jar there, a little bit of flour in the jar.

And she says I got a little flour in a jar.

She got a little jar there, a little bit of flour in there, got a little bit of oil in the jug.

Just now I'm gathering a couple of sticks in order to go prepare it for myself and my son.

Here it is, so we can eat it and die.

She's got one meal left and then she's gonna die.

She has no more money.

She has no more food.

Imagine the anguish that was on her heart.

I wonder if she had told her son we got one more meal left.

I said I wonder if she had thought in her mind who's gonna die first, me or my son?

I wonder if she had thought is my son gonna watch me die?

I wonder if she had thought if my son dies first, how am I gonna bury my son?

How am I gonna bury my son?

She's got one meal left, guys.

She's got one more left and Elijah is gonna ask her to do something.

That seems completely insensitive, but God wants the widow to know and learn the same thing that God wanted Elijah to learn.

This is what it says in verse 13.

Elijah says to her don't be afraid, go and do as you have said, but first make me a small loaf from it.

Make me some bread and bring it to me.

Afterward you may make some for yourself and your son.

Verse 14, for this is what the Lord, god of Israel, says the flour jar will not become empty and the oil jug will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the surface of the land.

So she proceeded to do according to the word of Elijah.

Then the woman, elijah and her household noticed they ate for many days.

The flour jar did not become empty, that jar that had just enough food for one meal.

It did become empty and the oil jug, it did not run dry.

According to the word of the Lord he had spoken through Elijah, she gave, she took a step of obedience and the jar didn't run out.

And there are two lessons this woman learned that we all know about generosity and we all know about giving.

And the first one is this is that giving is sometimes scary, isn't it?

Giving is sometimes scary, like the idea of actually giving and stepping out and obeying God.

That's kind of scary.

I think it's scary for a couple of reasons, for most of us at least.

One is it doesn't make sense logically.

So you're telling me, if I give, I'm gonna receive.

You're telling me, if I give, that God's gonna provide for me.

What makes more sense is I just take what I have and I just use what I have for what I want.

I also think, on the other side, giving is sometimes scary because we're relinquishing control.

As long as I have this money, I'm in control of it.

But when I give to God, I'm trusting Him to take my resources and provide for everything, like I'm giving up control.

But what this woman did was she was trusting the provider because notice, elijah says this is what God says.

So what she can do is she can either take God at His word and trust the provider, or she can say no, this is my last provision, I'm gonna trust this.

But if she would have done that, she would have never experienced the miracle of that food never running out.

But it started with her doing a scary thing and giving is sometimes scary, I know it is and true giving.

Second of all, real giving requires sacrifice.

There requires a sacrifice.

This is this woman's last meal.

You talk about a sacrifice.

This was a massive.

This is literally.

She had to give everything.

Everything.

Now it wasn't a lot, but when this is all you got, that's a lot to give Everything.

And she sacrificed it.

She made a sacrifice and the provider met her needs.

And here's something that she learned here that I hope that every person in our church community can learn, and it's this Is you can never out give God.

You can never out give God.

Some of us think that if I give, I don't think that God's gonna take care of me.

I don't think I can get things back.

I don't know how I give God a little bit of this.

Guys, you realize that when you give your little spoonful, god's got a big dump truck that he can back up and pour out on you.

You can never out give God.

And this right here, this is kind of hard, because this requires me transferring my trust from the provisions to the provider.

And this is what I'm gonna ask you to do today.

I'm gonna ask you to take a step.

Growth happens one step at a time.

I'm gonna ask you to take a step today and learn to trust the provider in this way.

And here's how.

Number one if you don't give something regularly, begin giving something.

If you don't give something regularly, begin giving something.

Now, the amount doesn't matter, like God doesn't need our money.

But this is what it is.

It's us learning to cultivate a heart of generosity.

It could be I'm gonna give $2.50 a week.

I'm gonna go on to soonshirescom and I'm gonna set up recurring giving for $2.50 every week.

Okay, you're giving something.

You're cultivating a heart of generosity.

Number two increase the percentage of what you give.

Some of us already give, but maybe we give $10 or $50 or $100, but increase the percent of what you give.

I had a professor in college this is back in the 2000s, right Back in the dark ages.

He was in his mid-70s then.

He's actually still alive today and he had a lot of joy.

I mean, he was just super joyful and he was like a spiritual father for all of us right, and he would talk to us as college students, as broke college students trying to pay our school bill, about giving.

He would say guys, you guys need a gift, sir.

We are broke college students.

We don't have anything to give.

Do you want us to say in school or do you want us to go home?

We don't have anything to give.

Giving is not about your money, giving is about your heart.

We're broke college students, we can't give anything.

You need to learn how to give.

You need to learn how to give.

You tell the story Not in a braggadocious way or anything like that, but he was trying to teach us this truth that we can't out give God.

He said when my wife and I were in my early 20s, we decided that every year we were going to increase the percentage of what we gave by just a little bit every year.

Now, going from the age of 25 to 30, that's not that big of a deal, but when you're in your mid-70s, 25 to 70, that's a lot.

That's a lot.

And I remember sitting in class I'm thinking do you increase your percentage every year?

You're not a young buck man like, and he would say, not a braggadoceous way, but he would say me and my wife give over 50% of our income to God's kingdom purposes and to God's work going forward Everything that comes in, we give more than 50%.

And he would say we've never missed a meal or joyful as we've ever been.

And we would sit there like somebody right now and we would say there's no way.

That's insane.

And this is what he was trying to get us to learn is that you can never out give God and you don't go from not giving anything to giving 50% of your income.

You don't go from most of the time.

We don't go from not giving anything giving 10%.

Most of the time we don't do that.

But what we can do all of us is we can just increase our percent just a little bit and just say I'm just going to take a step Maybe it's a small step to trusting the provider.

Number three I'm not going to let you do this is to begin giving.

Learn to give 10% a threshold, gift Threshold giving.

We see this pattern in scripture and I really believe that at this percentage, this is when something shifts in our heart.

As a church, we've done this before.

We've invited people to take a 90-day Tide challenge that you would give for 90 days a Tide of 10%.

And this is what we said and this is still up for anybody is that if you will do this for 90 days and you don't think God has met your needs as a church, we will 100% give you back every single penny that you have given.

We'll do that happily easily.

You know what's happened.

We haven't had one person ever come back and said Tide didn't work, didn't work for me, give it all back, didn't have.

This is why Because we can trust God with our giving.

I want to end with this story to encourage some of us in the room.

There's a story in Luke, chapter 5, about when a man named Peter, named Simon.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Peter, was really unsure if he should obey Jesus or not.

Sometimes what we think, guys, sometimes we think faith is really clean and cut and polished.

No, faith is raw and messy.

Like faith is raw and messy, peter is a professional fisherman.

This is what this bro did.

Like he knew fishing.

He went out fishing all night, all night long.

Didn't even catch him a little six inch fish, nothing.

Fishing.

All night Comes and he's tired.

And Jesus, who is not a professional fisherman?

He was a carpenter.

Jesus, who is not a professional fisherman, had the audacity to tell a professional fisherman to go back out and cast your nets in deeper water.

And Peter, the professional fisherman that has been fishing all night long, here's Jesus, who is not a professional fisherman, who is a carpenter.

Tell him to go back out in deeper water and fish again.

And this is what Simon Peter didn't say.

Simon Peter didn't say thanks for the tip.

Jesus, I want to go do it right now.

I can't wait.

We're heading out.

Boys, let's go.

He didn't say that.

Look at what he says, and some of you have already been looking at it.

Master, we've worked hard all night long and caught nothing.

Translation I don't want to go back out, jesus, I want to do this.

Is there any better options?

I want to go home.

Look at the underlying phrase.

This is really powerful and this is one of the most beautiful and pure pictures of faith.

I'm not sure about it, but if you say so, can we say the underlying phrase together ready, but if you say so, but if you say so, I'll let down the nets.

I don't know.

I don't know, jesus, I don't know if I should do this, but if you say so, but if you say so, and this is what we see here Faith in doubt, coexisting, peter moving forward with faith, but also a little bit of apprehension.

I don't know, but nevertheless, at your word, I'm gonna do it.

And some of you right now, when it comes to giving, you're like I want to, I know I should, like, I know I should trust the provider, I know I should really give.

I know that you can't give out, give God, I really believe this, but I'm not there at that place in my faith where I'm willing to do that.

I'm not ensuring.

Can I say if you're at that place, this is the perfect time to take that step of faith, because later on in that chapter, this is what happened Peter caught a massive boat full of fish.

He couldn't even hold it all, and it happened at the intersection of faith and doubt.

This is what I'm asking you to do, guys, today.

I'm asking you to take a step in this direction, because we in our lives, either trust the provisions or we trust the provider.

And when you trust the provider, you're going to see him trust the provision.

You're going to see him provide the provision.

We have to take the step of trust.

Let's pray together this morning.