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It is a well-known fact that the 117th Psalm is the shortest chapter in the Bible. It wins this distinction handily having only two verses! The nearby 119th Psalm happens to be the longest chapter in the Bible and stretches in length to 176 verses. I know this well because my mother used to make me read one portion of the 119th Psalm every morning before I went to school in my Junior High and High School years!

It is another quirk of scripture that it just so happens that the one chapter between the shortest and longest chapter, the 118th chapter, is the central-most chapter of the Bible. It's the place where the middle of the Holy Bible is found in terms of verses and chapters. If you want to get more specific, then you should know that the very central verse of scripture is actually the 8th verse of the 118th Psalm and let me read it to you:

Maybe it is a quirk of the English version of the Bibles that this happens like this, because the verse numbers are not from the original languages and were added in the translation process, but whatever the reason, this central verse also happens to be the central theme of living for God and it is a very fitting verse for such a position! The central issue of your life is always going to be the decision of "who do I trust?" And "in whom do I trust!?" And so if the Bible was written with any theme at all as its core, it is the theme of "trusting in God" more than anything else! We read a similar commandment in our text this morning:

Don't trust in your own abilities and don't trust only in what you are able to fully understanding but rather "Trust in the Lord!" Such a decree is a commandment with our best interest in mind, because -- as we read in our other text:

If you trust first and foremost in yourself or in another human or in earthly and fleshly things, then you will end your life cursed. But if you will trust in the Lord, you will be blessed! And so we find that given time and in the long run of life, our successes and our prosperity and our survival and our spiritual fruitfulness is determined by in whom we place our trust. If the Lord God of the Bible is that trust, then we will eventually prosper in all that we do. If not, then no matter what the short term is, we will eventually dry up and wither away in our spiritual pursuits. Spiritual survival and true happiness is really a matter of trust!

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You should realize that there is a vast difference between faith and trust. Faith is important because without it, it is impossible to please God. Now this doesn't have a lot to do with my message, but before we get into the difference between faith and trust you should also realize that there is a difference between faith and believing. Believing is mental acceptance that something is true. Faith is believing in something that we cannot see proof for yet, but yet believing it so much that we act upon that belief before we see the evidence for it! Our dear Bro. James in the book that bears his name taught us that faith without action is dead, and many Christians don't have a true revelation of this distinction. We must believe, but just believing will not save you. Just saying in your mind that something is true will not save you. Only faith will cause you to truly be saved and grasp all that God has for you. And true faith is believing something so much that you act upon it. Faith -- at least the Bible kind -- always produces action.

Our church does not teach salvation through works -- that you are saved through simply mindlessly doing good things or checking off a "to do" list to be confirmed by God or priest. But we also don't make the error of stating that you are saved through only simple mental or verbal belief. Just saying that you believe in Jesus and accept Him as your savior has never saved anyone. Believing inwardly is important, but believing is only the first step leading you to genuine faith. The scripture says:

Grace provided the plan, but we are saved "through faith." And remember: faith without action is dead! Therefore you must believe in Jesus as your savior, but you must also have faith in Him as your savior. If you have faith, then you will obey what He commanded you to do! Your action in itself does not save you but the fact that it proves your faith as genuine is important because your faith is what saves you. Such teaching is scriptural:

Even Jesus ran into disciples in His day who wanted to verbally and mentally believe in Him as Lord but who do not have true faith and He told them:

You need to believe in God, but even the devils believe in Him! What they don't have and what we must have is "saving faith" -- faith that produces obedience; faith that produces action that is quick to obey what Jesus has said.

That's why the fact that some preachers do not preach that water baptism is essential for salvation is absolutely necessary is ludicrous, foolish, and a lie from the pits of hell. Jesus said:

Peter, who had the keys to the kingdom of God, said:

Some foolish preacher said, "but water baptism is a work." To which the scripture replies, "no, it is a commandment and an act of faith." Just getting in water does not save you. You cannot scrub yourself enough with soap on the outside to wash sin from the inside. But when you truly have faith towards Jesus Christ, then you will obey what He has commanded you to do and your action and obedience proves your faith alive and well! Someone who believes but does not have faith to obey what God has commanded them and be baptized in the name of Jesus does not truly have saving faith and has no right to call Jesus Lord because they are not moving with action according to what He commanded!

So, to review, when you first hear of the things of God, then it is a matter of belief, in that you must first believe and mentally accept that there is a God and that His Word is true. But if you believe, then your salvation quickly moves from a matter of belief to a matter of faith and that if you truly believe that God is real and His Word is true, then you will be quick and zealous to do and obey all that His Word has commanded! That is saving faith because it will lead you to obey the command of Christ to repent of your sins. It is saving faith because it will lead you to the waters of baptism in His name as He decreed. It is saving faith because you too will then tarry until you are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire! It is saving faith because you will obey His commandments in every area of your life. When you first heard of Him, it was a matter of belief, but upon believing, your salvation quickly became a matter of faith! You had to act upon what you had heard!

But after you have had saving faith and obeyed the commandments of Christ, then your surviving and being saved moves from the realm of faith and becomes a matter of trust and so we come back to the difference between the two. Faith is a one time momentary action to receive something for God in a moment. You believe that if you are baptized in His name, that you will have your sins washed away in His blood as He has said, and so you act and are baptized and you receive such a cleansing! You have faith that He will give you the Holy Ghost as He has promised and so you repent, are baptized and worship Him in Spirit and in truth and because of your momentary faith you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit just as He had promised. You need healing and the prayer of faith is prayed and we believe God to do the work now and in the here and now we receive the healing and then go off and rarely think about it again. Faith is important, but it is also a fleeting momentary action.

Trust, on the other hand, is a long term attitude of living. To have faith means that I believe and act on that belief for the moment, but to trust God might require me action on my beliefs for days or weeks or even months and years before I see the fruition. Faith says, "I believe that God can act in this situation now and I receive it now" and then you are done. Trust means that "God has chosen not to heal me or to fix this situation so I will endure and keep doing what is right until the full purpose of God in this is revealed to me!" Trust requires patience. Trust requires waiting on God. Trust requires a day to day extension of the momentary confidence of faith. Most people can have faith in a moment after they have heard a sermon and the Word of God has just settled into the good ground of their heart. But trust means that you still believe and act upon it even after the glow of the service is gone and after many days have gone by. Faith is a one time action but trust is a decision and a way to live!

Have you ever noticed how the commands to trust and to have faith are divided in the Bible? It is very uneven. This works for virtually any literal translation, but for the sake of example using the King James Version, the OT mentions "trust" or "trusted" or "trusting" 130 times. In the NT such words are found 27 times and most of them are Paul saying to saints something like "I trust that you are still in the faith" and not speaking of a trust in God. On the other side of the spectrum, the word "faith" is found in the KJV NT 245 times and in the OT is only found twice!

There is a reason for this and listen carefully. The New Testament was written to new believers and to detail and help people reaching for those who are outside of a covenant relationship with God and who need to become His child and to obey His new birth. Therefore the focus is on "faith." The Old Testament, was largely written to the nation of Israel who were people already in a covenant relationship with God and with the sacrificial blood already applied to their sins and with the Word of God already having been preached to them and received. Therefore the emphasis in the Old Testament is "trust."

What I am preaching to you is that when you first believe and are coming into the family of God the central most issue is the matter of faith in your life! But after you have entered into a covenant relationship with God and the blood of the Lamb of God has been applied to your life, then you should know that "he that endures to the end shall be saved!" Once you have been born again into God's kingdom, your salvation and your making it becomes more of a matter of trust!

And so I ask you today: if you have believed in Christ, that is great but have you had faith in Him resulting in obeying what He has commanded you to do? If you have had such faith, that is also great, but be honest and ask yourself, what do you trust in most on a day to day basis!? I have known people to in a moment of faith, get baptized and received the Holy Ghost and head out the door and make virtually no changes in their life or exhibit absolutely no fruit of living for God. They had faith in God for the moment, but they did not make Him their trust in day to day life! If you have acted in faith, then you should know your very spiritual well being and as our text said, whether or not you will be blessed or cursed from this point on is a matter of trust! Where does your trust lie, day in and day out!?

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I've come to preach to you about your trust level! I hope your belief in God is still unwavering. I hope you have faith in all that He has said that He will do, but how much do you trust Him!? If you have faith for the promise and He decides to delay the promise, what will you do then? Will you get mad and walk away or will you just trust in Him that He is good and He knows what He is doing in your life!? If you are going to make it to heaven, it will be a matter of trust in your life!

If this is true, then we do a great injustice by focusing on faith all the time at the detriment of preaching about trust. Faith is important, but just as important is learning to trust in God. Let's go deeper this morning; let me preach to you about what we can learn about trust from the scriptures. First:

Here is the test of how you can see if you truly trust God more than mankind or anything else: check your fear level and the object of your fear! Listen to these scriptures:

When you are truly trusting in God, then you do not fear the unknown or your enemies! If you are experiencing fear then you must be trusting and leaning on your own understanding or your own power to work things out. Because if you are trusting in God Almighty and trusting in Him to produce the needed end, then you have no worries because He cannot fail and what is man to stand against the Almighty, Omnipotent God!? Fear popping up in your life is a signal to you that your trust has been misplaced! Fear should be the signal to tell you that it is time to start trusting in God again! It's time to stop depending on myself or someone else more than I do Him!

Listen to this preacher: if you are fearful because of your own inadequacies, then with God that becomes a reason to smile and be confident. Because compared to God, all your enemies have the same inadequacies and same shortcomings! But the difference is that if am trusting in God, then God is for us and if God be for us, who can be against us? Fear comes solely from trusting in something other than God!

What makes you sigh with relief? What alleviates your troubled mind? Is it having more money? Is it a person or human being telling you that everything is going to be alright!? Or is it the promise of God that He will never leave you nor forsake you!? How foolish it is that if we have money to fall back on or if a human pats us on the shoulder, we sigh with relief and cease worrying because we trust such things, but if the God of glory says "I will not put more on you than you can bear" and that "I will not leave you, I will come to you and deliver you" we still fret and worry!

How foolish that we would fear temporal circumstances and allow our faith to be affected by seasons and passing issues of life when God has already said that "I go to prepare a place for you!" You should trust Him! Just as He told the disciples to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee and so obviously despite the storm in the middle, they were going, so has He said "I will come again to you and you will be with me for forever in a better place." If that is true, then little children, do not fret the storms on the sea of life because He has promised your successful crossing and you will make it! At least you will make it as long as you don't let fear overtake you and cause you to stop trusting in Him! Somebody needs to put your trust back in the Lord in your circumstances -- He is still there and still able, but He is waiting for you to come back to trusting fully in Him! Your survival is not a matter of how severe the storm is or how secure your little man-made boat is, but rather a matter of who you trust through it! It's a matter of trust!

You've heard the saying "you are what you eat?" In God's kingdom, you are what you trust in. Listen to the Word of God:

God said that the danger of trusting in idols is that they cannot speak, see, hear, or breathe and that those who trust in them become just like them: they cease to speak for God, hear His Word, or live spiritually! It is a theme in scripture that you become like what you trust in most.

If you trust your mother and father's way of doing things in life then you should know that you will become as your mother and father became. If they based things upon the Word of God, then that might be a desirable result, if they did not base their lives upon the Word of God, then you'd better change whom you trust lest you end up with the same issues and problems as they did!

It is true in all things: if you trust most in the fleeting comfort of a shallow relationship, then you will become someone who only gives and receives and is only capable of shallow and fleeting love. If you trust in your work more than God, then take a good look at your boss and those executives for whom you work, because you are on your way to being like them! If you trust in money, you will become green and wrinkled -- just kidding -- but you will become up and down and very much a fluctuating and fleeting Christian because such is the nature of worldly wealth. And need I remind you that money will burn up in the end times -- beware trusting in it lest you share its fate! If you trust in human tradition, then you will become just as spiritually dry and desolate as that tradition is. You will become like what you trust in most!

In talking about the wicked, Job said:

Again we see that what we trust in is what we will receive! And Job well classifies all the things of this life by the word "emptiness." The tenants and focus of this world is fleeting and has no true eternal substance or merit. Why are we surprised when we trust in man-made things and only receive man-made nothingness and voids in return!? Make a lifestyle of sin your trust and your dependence and you will end up with emptiness and nothings and barrenness and lack. You become what you trust in most

But the good side of that is if you make the Lord God Almighty your trust! If you make Jesus the main center of affection and your dependence, then over time we will only see more and more of His traits in your life! You see, to become more like Christ, we must trust and depend upon Him more than anything else in life. And so this commandment to walk as He walked is more of a matter of trust than anything else. If I will trust Him most, then I will become like Him!

We are commanded to trust in the Lord "forever!" Trust is in many ways harder to have than faith. Because it is one thing to have faith in a moment in time for your healing and quite another to spend years waiting patiently on God's perfect will and work! No wonder we preach so much about faith to the neglect of trust! People are excited about the faith that brings the blessing in the here and now, but preach about a long term commitment and they start doing what they do at the mobile phone place when the hear the word "contract!" Scoodazzling away!

But if you are to please God and make it in living for Him, then you ought to know that He does no short term deals. Rather, our God is a God of the life-long contract. But might I add, the benefits of such a covenant last for forever and result in eternal benefits! And so this trust stuff is something that you never outgrown on this side of glory. Even if you have been living for God for years and trusting in Him all of your life, there is still the danger of you having a shift of trust in the end. For an example of this, we have to look no further than King Asa.

King Asa's reign was a breath of fresh air after the previous two kings of Judah and Asa began a time of spiritual revival. He tore down idols in the land and broke up the high places where they worshipped false gods. He commanded Judah to seek God and to follow His commandments and reemphasized the sacrifices at the temple. The Bible says that Asa did all that was good and right in the sight of the Lord and we have the scriptural account of the man of God, Azariah, coming to him and telling him:

That is a promise and a true word in all of our lives! The Lord is with you while you are with Him! Be as faithful to God as you desire to see Him faithful to you! It really is a matter of trust!

King Asa ran with such a promise and trusted in God. Several times against great armies with superior numbers, he prayed to God and went into battle trusting God to be with him and God granted through supernatural means the victory! King Asa even took his own mother's idol and destroyed it! Because of this trusting in God, God gave Asa and Judah years of peace. If the story would have ended there, it would have been a marvelous bright spot -- one of the few bright spots -- of this part of Israel's history.

But in Asa's last years, the 36th year of his reign, after having been faithful in trusting God, we find that the king to the north came against him and instead of trusting in God to keep Judah and deliver the people, Asa looked at the enemies' numbers and sent for the king of Damascus as his father had done to hire him to come and fight. And God sent a man of God named Hanani to tell Asa that because he had not trusted in the Lord, that God would cease to protect him and from this point on in his reign, he would have wars and trouble.

To our eyes, it seems almost unfair that God would be so harsh, but obviously through the years there had been a change in Asa from trusting in God to trusting most in other things. And so we find this sad, sad ending to the good King Asa's life:

"Even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians." There is nothing wrong with calling on the doctors, but seek God's help first! There's nothing wrong with a medical opinion, but woe to us if we do not turn to God and ask His help first before we go to that option! And Asa's attitude with his foot disease was really just an extension of an attitude that had crept in toward the end of a life filled with years of faithfulness. He had stopped relying and trusting in the Lord most of all!

And so the Word of God today is simple: "trust in God forever!" Even if you are here and know what it is like to have trusted in Him for months, years, and even decades, yet be careful that your trust still lies in the Lord of hosts! Make sure that your focus in still on Jesus and your hand within His! No matter how much time you have spent with Him and living for Him, know that your walk with Him and whether or not you will be successful in "enduring till the end" has still the same focus, whether or not you will keep trusting in Him! Being saved, no matter where you are in your journey, is still a matter of trust!

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And so I close with this final simple principle about trust from God's Word:

This exact verse is found twice in scripture so it must be extremely important to grasp:

The Hebrew word for "act" here means "to do or perform in the broadest sense." In the King James Version Bible it is variously translated as implying to:

The key to having God do such things in your life is to first, "commit your way to the Lord" and that deals with believing and faith. But then you must also "trust in him!" When you do so, God will act!

Sometimes we use faith as a weapon trying to coerce God into performing what we want Him to do. We say such things as "I believe and have acted on it, so God you have to do the miracle." But I have found that the true miracles of my life came when I adopted the attitude of trust and sought the Lord in faith and then continued on trusting Him to make everything good! For God to perform all that He has said requires more than faith, but someone that trusts in Him!

So this altar call today is a different type than the normal. If you need to believe and have faith and obey God's Word, then certainly you are welcome to come and repent of your sins and receive His Spirit or anything else that you need specifically today at this moment in your life. Faith has always and will continue to be a vital part of our services and serving of God. But this altar call goes beyond just faith for a moment. It is a call to decide to trust God no matter what life brings and no matter what the status of the current waves of the sea of life today and tomorrow. God is seeking someone who will commit for the long haul even if they cannot lean on their own understanding as to why or how. Come and make your calling and election sure today, because really it is a matter of trust!