Unwavering Trust in God

[upbeat music]

>> By definition, a testimony is normally

a spoken narrative.

On the other hand, a testimonial

is normally a written narrative.

I've written a testimonial today

and I'm going to vocally share it.

So I'm giving you a testimony of my testimonial.

[audience laughing]

46 years ago today,

my life as a prodigal came to an end

and I returned to the fellowship of believers.

I'm standing here now because of the mercy

and the grace of the Father,

the redemptive reconciliation of the Son,

and the comfort, correction, and guidance of the Holy Ghost.

That's my testimony to God's blessedness

and his loving kindness toward me.

Now I have a word of encouragement for you.

I'll use the words that Jesus gave to his disciples,

those who considered themselves his followers.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,

Matthew 6, 33.

That quest should be the very top

of your personal to-do list.

If it's not, perhaps a spiritual adjustment

would be worth considering.

Is Pastor Ronnie up next?

Yeah.

[audience applauding]

>> Oh, what a day.

I mean, I never thought I would see Wayne Berry

looking at an electronic thing in front.

[audience laughing]

Okay, give me a moment to compose myself.

[audience laughing]

Yeah.

Almost 30 years ago, I met Father Ray Kasch.

We met at a community Thanksgiving service.

He was the rookie in town,

and so he was speaking at that service.

We bonded over a little joke about who,

it's more appropriate to have wearing a robe,

the choir or the guest speaker.

And in case you're wondering, they both were.

But he missed his opportunity today

'cause we don't have a choir.

You'd have it all to yourself.

You'd just be able to come out of that.

Over the years, the Lord has really knitted us together,

I would say.

Of all of my acquaintances and friends in the ministry,

Ray is the only one who walked this building with me

over 20 years ago when it was just steel beams sticking up.

He spoke at the dedication of this building.

He spoke at my retirement service.

I've walked through a couple of building projects with him.

We don't share a common worship style.

There's a lot of theology that we don't share.

When we get together,

when you get together with people in your own camp,

you tend to talk about your camp,

and you tend to talk about the people in the camp

and what's going on and stuff.

But when you get together with somebody from another camp,

you've really only got one thing to talk about,

and that's him.

And that's enough.

That's all that you need.

The Lord has bonded our hearts together,

and it's a great privilege to introduce to you

my dear friend and my dear brother.

Would you welcome Father Ray Kasch.

[audience applauding]

- Good afternoon.

Thank you, it's such an honor to be with you.

Thank you, Pastor Kevin, for the invite.

I love that you do the sacrament here every week,

that he may dwell in us and we in him.

In 1951, Richard Niebuhr wrote a book

called Christ and Culture,

and I think it holds up very well today.

In it he says essentially there are three views

that the church can have when connecting to the culture.

The first one is Christ against culture.

So whatever they're doing out there in the culture,

we're not supposed to do, and we're supposed to be a gamut.

Why?

'Cause it could lead to dancing, right?

[audience laughing]

The second view is Christ of culture,

and that view is that whatever the culture is doing,

that's God doing a new thing and we should embrace it.

And it's okay if what the culture's doing

goes past scripture because in process theology,

God is evolving, and so our understanding

of scripture is evolving, and so it's okay

if the Spirit moves us beyond and even contradictory

to Holy Scripture, to which John Calvin would say,

"The Holy Ghost doth not stutter."

What he said, he said, and what he meant, he meant.

The other, and I witness this in your community,

is Christ above or Christ transforming culture,

and that is bringing everything in life,

everything in life, including the arts,

under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

That's why this building is built

this way this building is built.

I'll never forget the first time Pastor Ronnie asked me

to come to a play in Smyrna Assembly of God Church.

[audience laughing]

And old judgey me, I'm thinking, oh, good grief,

we're gonna watch paint dry, this is gonna be,

but I love Pastor Ronnie, so I'll go to support him.

The level of professionalism blew me away.

My wife and I had walked out of Murfreesboro

a little theater a couple times, it was so bad,

and this was unbelievable.

Another time I doubted you, Pastor,

I've never told you this, but I thought,

Ronnie, I love you, but there ain't no way

you're gonna hit that note in the impossible dream,

it's just not gonna happen.

[audience laughing]

And you nailed it, you nailed it.

It was just unbelievable.

So in 1996, my wife and I moved here

to plant an Episcopal church,

and first time I met Pastor Ronnie,

I knew he was the real deal.

I had been around enough clergy

that were building their own little kingdoms

that I could recognize a man of God

who was only interested in the kingdom of God,

and we became friends and started meeting weekly,

and he was a great source of encouragement to me.

Planting a church from scratch is a really lonely business,

and to have a friend like him was just unbelievable.

Well, God blessed the work, and in about five years,

we had a parish that was self-supporting.

We had built All Saints Church over on Lee Victory Parkway,

and things were going well for us as a parish,

but not for our denomination,

because unfortunately, the Episcopal church

had embraced the Christ of culture model,

so whatever new thing came down the pike,

they embraced and called it the work of the Holy Spirit.

It included process theology,

it included feminist theology,

it included every kind of radical view you could think of,

promoting, revising marriage,

promoting unbiblical views on human sexuality.

We held on as a parish as long as we could.

We were waiting for the bigger communion

to come and rebuke the American church and change it,

but they didn't, and so the breaking point for me

and for the parish was they elected as presiding bishop

a woman who was interviewed by Time Magazine.

Her name was Schori, and Time Magazine

asked her this question.

Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

"No one comes to the Father but by me.

"Do you believe that?"

And she said, "No, I don't."

That would put God in an awful small box.

So not willing to be under the authority of a heretic,

we pulled out of the Episcopal church

and came under the Archbishop of Nigeria,

who at the time was over about 25 million Anglicans.

He reached out to American Anglicans and said,

"If you can't stay Episcopalian,

"but you wanna be Anglican, I'm your man."

So we did that.

The local bishop had retired,

and so there was no real authority over us locally.

The head of the standing committee called me and said,

"Hey, you can keep your building.

"We don't want your mortgage."

And so we thought we were just gonna go on business as usual.

But the retired bishop was so angry

that we had left the Episcopal church,

he came out of retirement,

demanded the keys and the checkbook,

and kicked us out of our church.

I hadn't made any plans.

I had no plan B

'cause I didn't think I had to have a plan B.

I was devastated.

Five years of work just gone.

I call Pastor Ronnie, what do I do?

He said, "Our building's empty Sunday afternoons.

"Come here."

And unbelievable gratitude.

We came and met in your old sanctuary on Sunday afternoons.

In fact, Fox News showed up one day

and videoed the thing, which was very interesting.

So we did that, but as summer was coming,

we knew meeting in the afternoons was gonna be hard

to attract new people, so we had to find a new space,

and we found a new space.

You might have heard of it.

It's called Lancaster Christian Academy.

And we met in their cafeteria for about five years

until we built St. Patrick's Anglican Church

in Murfreesboro.

And it was a wonderful time.

It was really a wonderful time for us.

We would meet on Saturday afternoons and set up,

and then Sunday after church, break it all down

and put it into a little U-Haul,

and drive away from it.

It really bonded us as a parish.

We called it the wilderness,

but it was a really great time.

My biggest challenge was I chant the mass,

and so we were in the cafeteria,

so I had to listen for the pitch of the Coke machine

when it kicked on to be here.

Was that an F sharp?

What was that?

So.

But it was wonderful.

It was just wonderful.

Okay, that's not my sermon.

That was for free.

Here's my sermon.

I really said all that to say thank you.

We are forever in your debt,

and the way your pastors and this church

has woven into the tapestry of St. Patrick's,

it's a God thing.

It's a God thing, and we're so deeply grateful to you,

so thank you.

My text today is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.

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 your past straight.

Beautiful passage.

But think about it for a minute.

That's a very tall order, isn't it?

And think also, there are three imperatives

and one promise here.

This is not a suggestion from God.

This is a command.

Listen to it again.

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 past.

One biblical scholar said this about the verse.

"With all your heart indicates that trust

goes beyond intellectual assent

to a deep reliance on the Lord,

a settled confidence in his care,

and his faithfulness to his word."

Settled confidence does not just drop out of the air.

That's not a gift you receive one day

and then you've arrived.

This kind of trust, this level of trust,

must be cultivated over a lifetime.

It will deepen as the relationship deepens.

We're called to make that trust a commitment,

and gratefully, Holy Scripture shows us how.

My first point is going to sound like

I'm insulting your intelligence,

and I don't want it to do that,

but honestly, I have made this mistake,

and I've seen other people make it.

We are not called to trust in our trust,

or to put it another way,

to believe we have enough faith,

or to trust in the consequences

of what will happen after we pray.

Our trust is in the Lord.

You've probably run across this

in the so-called health and wealth gospel.

You see a job you want,

you claim the job in the name of the Lord,

and if you have enough faith,

then you'll get your job.

That sounds very spiritual,

but it misses the mark by a mile.

On the surface, it sounds good,

but that's not the way this works.

When Jesus rebuked them for having little faith,

he wasn't rebuking them for their amount of faith.

He had already told them,

all you need is the faith of a mustard seed.

What he was rebuking them about

was their misplaced faith.

That's why it was little faith.

And he said, what you need to do

is trust your heavenly Father

who feeds the birds of the air,

and clothes the lilies of the field.

If you who are evil know how to give good gifts

to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father

gives to him who asks?

Don't mistrust your place.

And it's particularly misguided

when we focus our faith on the results that we want.

This paints a picture of our heavenly Father

as if he's some celestial genie

who's up there to grant us our wishes.

That's not the way the kingdom works.

We don't trust the outcome.

We trust him, and then we let the outcome be

whatever it's gonna be,

because a good Father is only gonna do good for us.

I love this from Habakkuk, this view from Habakkuk.

Though the fig tree should not blossom

nor the fruit be on the vines,

the produce and the olive fail,

the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold,

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord is my strength.

Don't trust the results.

Trust him.

Second, we cultivate trust through prayer, Psalm 62a.

Trust in him at all times, O people.

Pour your heart before him.

God is a refuge for us.

In all my years, I've never had one person come up to me

and say, "Okay, Father Cash,

"I've got that prayer thing down, what's next?"

Are you happy with your prayer life right now?

Probably not, 'cause I don't know anybody that is.

How do we get there?

We learn to pray by praying.

That's how we learn.

And we just keep doing it, and we keep doing it,

and we keep doing it.

I had a priest friend of mine once say to me,

I had to think about this,

and he said, "God even likes it when we pray badly."

And I thought, "What?"

And then I thought about it, and I think he's right.

Because I can remember when my children

were little tiny babies,

and they started babbling, trying to communicate.

My ears didn't get it, but my heart did.

And I think that's how our Heavenly Father sees us,

even when we pray badly.

Years ago, I had a plan called the 29-59 Plan.

It was a prayer plan.

If you need to know about prayer,

please talk to me.

I have failed at every prayer plan

that has been in Christendom,

so I can guide you on this one.

So there's another one I failed at,

but I kept it for a while.

And the neat part about this plan was

you would write out your prayer,

and you'd date it when you started praying it,

and then you'd put a date when that prayer was answered.

I did it for a few years,

and then I moved on to what we Anglicans call

morning and evening prayer from the daily office.

And so I packed up that prayer plan.

I moved several times, and so several years later,

after several moves, I'm unpacking boxes,

and I come across the old 29-59 Plan,

and I thought, I wonder what's going on here.

And I opened it up, and every prayer had been answered,

even the ones I had quit praying.

The Bible says He is faithful,

even when we are faithless.

He's that faithful.

Let me tell you about the most astonishing

answer to prayer that had happened to me.

I was pastoring a church in Florida,

and had a fellow in my church who's part of a ministry

that would smuggle Bibles into Communist China.

This is in the 1980s,

well, actually all the Communist countries.

So I was to do a teaching mission in the Philippines,

and he came to me and said,

"Ray, you're gonna be on that side of the world.

"Why don't you smuggle some Bibles into China?"

And I thought, ooh.

(congregation laughing)

Mission impossible.

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

This is gonna be the coolest thing ever, right?

He said, "Go to Hong Kong.

"There's gonna be a facility there.

"They'll train you.

"They'll give you everything you need.

"It'll be okay."

So I finished up in the Philippines,

flew into Hong Kong, went to this secret place,

and here was the training.

Blend in and don't get caught.

(congregation laughing)

Do I look like I'm going to blend in China?

So they gave me 50 Bibles in a suitcase.

I'm nervous as I can be now,

'cause I don't know what I'm doing.

I get on the train, go to China.

It's Chinese New Year's.

That's why we're allowed to get into the country.

First thing that happens is two red guard

with automatic weapons come running up to me

and start yelling at me.

And I don't speak Mandarin.

I don't know what they're talking about.

But I'd seen enough World War II movies.

The Nazis always wanted to see your papers, right?

So I pulled my papers out and thought,

well, maybe this is it.

And they went through that.

And then they gave me some paperwork to fill out,

and they're yelling at me

while I'm filling out the paperwork.

And by this time, I'm not even sure I spelled my name right.

I'm just totally rattled.

I look over, and everybody's putting their suitcase

on this conveyor belt.

I thought blend in, blend in, blend in.

So I go over and put my suitcase on the conveyor belt.

And I'm walking along thinking,

oh, this is good so far, good so far.

And then to my horror, I realized the conveyor belt

is leading to an X-ray machine

of the type I had never seen before in my life.

And as the psalmist says, pour out your heart.

Boy, did I pour out my heart.

I actually had, I had two prayers going at the same time.

One was forgive me for being such a knucklehead.

I'm gonna get caught.

And the people aren't gonna get their Bibles.

And I don't know what's gonna happen to me.

In the other was, God,

maybe you could do something miraculous.

Maybe make a seeing guy blind.

Let's do that.

Let's just, you know, something.

I'm just melting down.

And all of a sudden, the machine stops,

conveyor belt stops, and the guy in front of me,

his suitcase is at the X-ray machine.

And this official sticks his head out of a curtain,

points at him, and two red guard come up

and grab this guy and arrest him,

and drag him out, kicking and screaming, and I'm next.

They turn on the machine.

The machine does a hiccup and shoots my suitcase

past the X-ray machine,

and the suitcase behind me was being X-rayed.

I couldn't believe my, I couldn't believe my,

I just, I froze for a second.

Thought, what just happened?

Oh, that's what happened.

So I made it to the taxi, and we did the trade-off,

and they got their Bibles.

But here's the point.

I had managed to turn Mission Impossible

into Mr. Bean Goes to China.

(congregation laughing)

But God in his faithfulness was gonna have his way.

We trust him.

We also cultivate our trust

by finishing up what the psalmist says,

"And do not lean on your own understanding.

"In all your ways acknowledge him."

Some translations say, "In all your ways submit to him."

One reason that we're not to lean on our own understanding

is because the Scriptures are clear

that our hearts are deceitful.

The truth, the sad truth of me is,

if you give me enough time,

I can convince you about anything that I wanna do

is not only right, it's probably God's will.

And that scares me.

But I think that's true of most of us.

But we're also not supposed to lean on our own understanding

because, as a 19th century Scottish preacher put it,

"Leaning on our own understanding

"is a kind of practical atheism."

That sounds harsh, but if you think about it, it's true.

Because the more I'm leaning on my own understanding,

the less and less I'm leaning on the Lord's understanding.

And so I do have practical atheism going on in my life.

Practical atheism starts the day this way.

It's okay, God, I gotta cover today, I'm good.

That's practical atheism.

Let me give you a great prayer to start your morning.

(audience laughing)

The sheep looking for the shepherd.

That's how you start your morning.

I need my shepherd.

And this, of course, is not to say

that our understanding is all wrong.

The Scripture doesn't forbid us

from using our understanding at all.

It's just that we're not to lean on it.

I heard one country preacher once say,

"Well, when God breathes in the Holy Ghost,

"he doesn't blow out your brains."

So God's given them to you to use,

but they are tools to apprehend the will

and the Word of God, not to replace

the work of the Holy Spirit.

Back to this Scottish preacher.

Speaking of our understanding,

while we use it, we're to depend on God for success,

trust in the promises of his Word,

and trust in the care and overruling direction

of his providence.

Trusting in his promises.

That's another way to cultivate trust in the Lord.

The more familiar we are with Holy Scripture

and his promises, the deeper our trust goes,

and the converse happens as well.

The less we understand and know of Holy Scripture,

the less we know of his promises,

and the less we have reason to trust him.

That's key to our spiritual growth.

You remember how our first parents fell.

He was doubting what God said.

Did God really say?

You need to know the Scripture so well

when the enemy comes to you and say,

did God really say?

You say back to him, as a matter of fact, he did.

Be gone.

That's just the way Jesus handled the temptation, right?

Isn't that what Jesus did?

He quoted the Scripture back.

Now, what's wonderful about trusting in God

is the fruit that'll produce in your life

is an unbelievable blessing.

Let me just mention a few.

First, trusting in him fills your life

with joy and gratitude.

Listen to Psalm 28, seven.

The Lord is my strength and shield.

I trust him with all my heart.

He helps me and my heart is filled with joy.

I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.

I have read so many times about the benefit

to our whole being that happens when we live lives

of gratitude and thankfulness.

Better mental health, better physical health.

We live longer.

It strengthens our marriages.

People want to be around somebody

that's filled with gratitude.

Nobody wants to hang out with Eeyore.

Life is meant to be lived in joy and gratitude.

That's how God has wired us,

and that happens when we trust him.

I would never the wonderful benefit

as trust is the antidote to fear, Psalm 112, seven.

He is not afraid of bad news.

His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.

I've known so many people who live their lives

like they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop,

waiting for the next disaster.

I really believe that there is a force in this world

that wants us to live in fear because fear enslaves you,

and God does not want us to live in fear.

Pastor Ronnie can testify, we're about the same age.

I cannot remember a time in my life

that Chicken Little hadn't been saying

the sky is falling, right Ronnie?

In the '50s, I was in grammar school in the '50s,

we would get under our desk, our wooden desk,

'cause the Russians are fixing the bomb-its.

Isn't that a joyful thing to do a grammar school kid?

The other side of that, I was in Cub Scouts.

I'm thinking, all right, bombs means fire,

I'm under a wooden desk, I'm kindling.

I mean, can the adults not come up with a better plan?

(audience laughing)

In the '60s, the world was gonna end

because of overpopulation, we were gonna run out of food.

In the '70s, scientists told us there's an ice age coming.

In the '80s, acid rain was gonna kill all the crops,

we were gonna starve to death again.

So in the '90s, it was the ozone layer.

Y'all using your spray deodorants,

we're gonna end the world

because we're killing the ozone layer

and we're all gonna burn like a bunch of ants

under a magnifying glass.

And then the turn of the century,

the polar ice caps were gonna melt,

the levels of the sea were gonna rise,

and Florida and California would be underwater right now.

There's never been a time in my life

that Chicken Little had been running around saying,

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling."

When they come to you and tell you the sky's falling,

tell them whose sky it is.

(audience cheering)

He doesn't lose control, he's got a plan,

he's bringing all things so they're appointed in.

We do not live in fear.

2 Timothy 1.7, "God has not given us a spirit of fear,

"but of power and love and a sound mind."

Listen to that again, power and love and a sound,

kinda like the work of the Trinity, doesn't it sound a bit?

Power from the Father, love from the Son,

and a sound mind from the Holy Spirit.

That's why our inheritance, that's how we're to walk,

that's how we're to live.

Listen to this promise, Psalm 37.5,

"Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him,

"and He will act."

And we also know the opposite, true,

because the gospels tells us of Jesus,

and He did not do many miracles there

because of their unbelief.

But the theme of God acting when we trust in Him

runs through the entire length of the Bible.

I mean from Genesis to the maps,

it's a story of people in all their failings

trusting in the Lord and seeing Him act.

Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son,

and God steps in and acts.

Moses is in front of the Red Sea, God steps in and acts.

Think of the prophets, think of David facing Goliath,

think of Daniel in the lion's den,

think of Mary saying yes to the angel,

think of all the prophets went through,

God kept acting and acting,

the apostles are singing in prison

and God gives them an angelic jailbreak.

The stories are there for our edification,

the stories are there over and over and over again saying,

you can trust Him, you can trust Him, you can trust Him,

and when you do, He will act.

One last point about this, cultivating trust,

and it's not one you're gonna welcome,

but it's one that I have to tell you.

Trust is not trust until it's been tested.

Trust is not trust until it's been tested.

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brendan Manning says this,

"The story of salvation history indicates

"that without exception, trust must be purified

"in the crucible of trial.

"David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history,

"was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure,

"and even sinister plots to destroy him.

"Yet, he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust."

And as the great hymn tells us,

that fire is not there to hurt you,

that fire is there to purify you, to consume the dross.

My freshman year at Florida State University,

I heard Josh McDowell give a lecture

on evidence of the resurrection of Christ.

And that was my motion, put me in motion

to make a commitment to follow Jesus as my Lord.

I wanted with everything in my being at 18 years old

to be his disciple.

And I can remember standing in the quad

with these incredible buildings

that represent the consummation of human wisdom

and knowledge, and I'm standing there at 18 years old

and I'm thinking, I'm 18 years old,

and I know the key to life.

The truth is not found in these buildings.

The truth is a person who is the fountain of all truth.

I was blown away.

I'm 72 now.

It's been a long journey, and it's not been an easy one.

I've had years of my life sorely tested.

It was either seven or eight years

of what the ancients called the dark night of the soul.

Really hard time.

Like many of you, all you have to do

is live long enough for this to happen to you.

I've had things happen in my life

I would not wish on my worst friend, enemy,

on my worst enemy.

There's been times when I was hanging on

only by the skin of my teeth,

only to find out later, no, Ray,

you weren't holding on to me.

I was holding on to you.

Nevertheless, nevertheless, my wholehearted testimony

before you and before God today

is He has been utterly, utterly,

utterly trustworthy and faithful in it all,

above it all, under it all, and through it all.

He has never failed me once,

even when I have failed Him over and over and over again.

He remains faithful even when we are faithless.

So above all, hear this.

We are called to trust in Him with all of our hearts

because no one and nothing else even comes close

to deserving our trust as He does.

Nothing comes close.

After chapters of glorious theology,

Saint Paul brings an altar crescendo

asking the most important rhetorical question

that's ever been put to mankind.

If God is for us, then who can be against us?

He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all,

how will He not also with Him generously give us all things?

Who shall bring a charge against God,

let it be this God who justifies?

Who is to condemn?

Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, who was raised,

who is the right hand of God,

who indeed is interceding for us.

What shall separate us from the love of God

shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine

or nakedness or danger or sword?

No, in all these things, in all these things,

we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither life nor death nor angels

nor rulers nor things present nor things to come

nor powers nor height nor depth

nor anything in all of creation will be able to separate us

from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Here, Saint Paul, nothing, nothing, nothing

can separate you from His love.

Therefore, make a commitment to trust Him

with all your heart and spend the rest of your days

cultivating that trust.

Make a decision that you're going to trust Him.

Enter into that room, shut the door behind you, and lock it.

And He will make your path straight.

And He will make your path straight.

May the God of peace who brought again from the dead

our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep,

by the blood of the everlasting covenant,

make you perfect in every good work to do as well,

working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight.

And may the blessing of God Almighty, the Father,

and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit be among you

and remain with you always.

Amen.

(audience applauding)

- Would you stand with me with those who are going to pray

with folks, come forward.

Maybe today is a day where you need to evaluate

your trust level in the situations and circumstances

that you're walking through.

And you can meet this Almighty God today, right now,

in the altar space agreeing with folks down here.

So if you need prayer for anything, come, let's worship.

(gentle music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]