Trust
by Sam Hodum
August 5, 2021 · Cornerstone Apostolic Church
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Proverbs 3:5-6, Job 13:15, Romans 4:18, 2 Timothy 1:7

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/sam-hodum--trust
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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katie's handing out a handout for tonight we're going to talk about trust and i mean what can you say about trust other than hey man i trust you or hey i don't trust you how about that you know but what can you say about trust i want to make sure all right so i'm not gonna lie y'all last time i committed i committed the unpardonable uh was when i got up to preach i forgot to it's it's like 101. i forgot to make sure to honor my pastor and i was smoke i was smitten with well i went smitten he punched me upside down me upside the head and was like don't you ever do that he didn't do that but it hit me later i was like oh my lord that's one on one so i want to make sure i want to thank pastor sloan pastor sister sloane for allowing me to entrust in me to teach and i know that's not an easy thing to trust someone with and i'm very appreciative very humbled and honored by that but if we want to talk about trust how many know that the bible is full of it of trust full of trust yeah i should should finish that one out the bible from from the front to the to the end of it it's full of trust we can we can everything in our syst in our belief system is built around trusting god it's built around trusting the word of god it's built around trusting the things of god it's built around holding on to the word of god our our faith our relationships our jobs our economic our activity when we buy something we're trusting that that's a good product or we're trusting that the money we're we're buying or selling uh something for the money we're giving or receiving is real money well there's there's faith involved in it and everyone at different times develops trust issues we were i don't trust anyone or anything but you drove here today and i don't know how you feel about other people's driving but you realize that the only thing between you and them is a mutually agreed upon decision to not run into each other into oncoming traffic that's that's it like sometimes there's a concrete wall but the majority of the time it could very easily if someone was just not having a great day just don't drive anywhere near where sister kathy's at today that homecoming traffic thing that could be a real problem but we we have to have a certain amount of trust in order to function in order to live in order to walk around in order to be a part of a church in order to be a part of a community a country trust is a economists call it the it's the uh it greases the wheel of every of every transaction because if there's no trust then you can't have enough lawyers you can't have enough documentation you can't have enough bribes trust is it's essential to culture it's essential to human interaction that is no there there's no exception when it comes to the bible we look at the bible and and we find it from beginning to end all throughout it and in the middle someone's trusting god if you talk to an elder right you talk to somebody that's been through something and you see that you you bring your problem to them you bring your issue to them and well did you pray about it okay well just trust god well gee thanks appreciate that it was that was very helpful thanks thanks a lot that was that solved all my problems but give it give it some time and somebody will come to you with a similar problem hey can you help me with this can you show me some guidance and you know what more than likely you'll give them the same answer just trust in god because that's that's the time tested method of of getting through something of of sometimes we don't i heard a preacher say we don't get over something but we get through it we pray through it we we get and we trust in god in that if you want to if you want to look at proverbs uh proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 through 6 it starts out it's a cornerstone of of how to be it's a proverb of how to live it is trust in the lord with all your heart and do not lean in your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths trust god job the story of job's amazing i know we're all familiar with this we we we know that job had everything and then he lost everything he including his family his children he lost the things most precious and most dear to him and yet in the middle of it he said one of i don't know it may not mean a thing to you it may not strike you anyway but he said though he slayed me still i'll trust him that i don't know i don't know if y'all have ever just had to tell yourself that that scripture i no yeah one of those days though he slayed me because god he controls all those things but he's testing us but i'll trust him i've lost everything poor pitiful pearl but i'll trust god if you if we we look at that he had no one to depend upon he had no no one encouraging him his friends were just lambasting him his wife was turned her back on him and job said though he slayed me still i'll trust him if if we've done a character study on him like it would just honestly we all can resonate with joe he's an easy guy to resonate with because we've all had harsh times we've all had harsh issues but i don't know that many people's had as bad off as job and then come back from it this guy he he knew a thing or two and when we look at the words in the used if we don't we've done a a a word study on trust through the bible there there are some very interesting facts to go with that it it appears 134 times in the king james version and but there are several different hebrew words behind the the english the english word trust it's an abstract it's not it's it's not a concrete we have a lot of abstract thoughts and a lot of abstract ideas in our language and the way we speak the way we think it's it's ideology it's it's ideology and not just something we can grab onto all the time but the hebrew is it's a concrete oriented language they were you know shepherds they were farmers it was so things you can grab onto or it's going to be a little closer it's going to mean a lot more in that language so when you're looking at the words the root words especially in the old testament of trust i know that's some exciting stuff if you really need a good nap one day do it look at look at the the root words just not today we'll look at them but just briefly don't don't lose me here you can find that that it adds a little extra meaning other than just trust it adds a little extra because in our in our in our culture in our language we kind of it's a bucket word so there's a lot to dissect within that uh in isaiah 30 and 3 there's a word called chassooth it just means refuge or mibtac means confidence but these are all translated into trust uh there is there's one that was that was very particular and i thought i thought it was really cool is i'm not a man or a man but it's not amen so we say amen if we're in the south are both the same i guess but so it's a-m-a-n and it's the verb form of amen it's it's just a slight different but it means to remain steadfast and give credence or to be firm so it has some negative connotation to it in in some of the uses of it in job and in judges and micah talking about things not being firm but in in isaiah you'll see the words translated as sure you you want to know that you're on a sure foundation that you're on a sure trusted ground we go on it's kind of like when we say amen we agree this is this is so that's that trust all these words are are different ways of saying trust of we trust god we believe in god we trust in his word baitac is to lean on to trust to be confident to cause to trust to cling to the the root of this came from a melon and it has some some hebrew name that i don't know how to pronounce but the melon was large and the vine was just little bitty and it looked like at any point in time the the melon would fall off the vine and and lose its source but it didn't and it just it it was made to cling on to to to trust in that vine jesus is that vine a lot of times right we we feel like we're going to fall off we're going to to fail we're going to lose grip but he's still there he's he's steadfast we're clinging to him and he's clinging to us there there are many many more words that you could we can go into and mispronounce all night long but the essence of it is trusting god there's in in job 13 and 15 what we just we just quoted was though he slay me i will trust in him that word trust there is yahkel or yacht i'm not hebrew i i have no idea y'all it's it's a word though in the in the english standard version which is what they have on the screen it's though he slay me i will hope in him that hope is not i'm i'm hoping this is going to happen i'm it's not just if something will happen but it's i know that this will happen in the future i he was he was hope he wasn't just hoping that god but he was sure he was absolutely sure that god was going to be there though he slayed me i'm hoping on him i'm trusting on him i'm reaching for him and we this this same context could be found in romans 4 and 18 said in in in hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told so shall your offspring be abraham here this paul was writing about abraham he's hoping against hope of something that didn't make any sense that didn't make a lick of sense here that he was his offspring shall be this was a word he had from god that for decades he had to hang on to he had to trust he had to hope against hope with everything within him then we we see that word it starts to kind of change form instead of just being just trust just being something that i trust that that wall is not going to fall down but i i trust that this is going to happen i hope i know this will happen it becomes a forward-looking afford thinking word but and and we kind of use that sometimes in our language today our society and our culture today i trust that you'll do this i trust that i trust in you i have hope in you in it and it becomes a forward-looking word in in our in how we look but if you've been anywhere in culture today you know that there's not a whole lot of forward-looking trust is there our society it's not it's not all about it in fact the data kind of stands behind this i got a graph here if you can sister mandy we have this first graph here and i don't i don't know how well or not well you can see this but it's the shared of people agreeing with the statement most people can be trusted and this is my country all right so we see the very top one sweden and that's around upwards of 60 percent and then the second one's china but i'm honestly let's just be real we all know that ain't true like i mean their their data methods are not the best there then we get down to the united states and it's it's hovered around 40 percent since since the mid-90s the uk is a little lower pakistan it's a little lower and then you got brazil and colombia they're just bottoming out there that these societies are not trust is not a major factor it it seems like i don't know i i and and i know i grew up in the middle of nowhere so i don't i don't remember ever having an actual house key for my house like the door was not locked except at night when we weren't when we were asleep uh and i know that's that's that's different that's a different context but as a whole our nation is no longer rule we no longer know one another as closely so we don't trust one another as much if we can if we look at graph two this one i like this one's this is the public trust in the government of the united states from 1958 to 2015. honestly i think they're being really optimistic like honestly like they must ask the people in the government do you trust the government because i mean 20 right i anyway that's not great public i mean it's just and and there's there's notable marks if you look at it you can look around the time of jfk's uh in assassination vietnam or vietnam uh and it just started trending down and then there was some economic increase in it and it kind of comes back up and then just it it kind of does this and it ain't big it ain't picked up in in in quite some time after 2001 it was just it was all downhill from there uh and rightfully so i think i'm not here to to bash the government too much but you know trust though we you see that all throughout society we we have so many it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on okay the the left really doesn't trust the government we want you know there's corruption there's misuse there's abuse the right really doesn't trust the government there's corruption there's abuse there's misuse now the ideologies behind how to solve that they're a little different but i think the common the common concept here is nobody really trusts the government that much it and it shows now on graph three this gets down to us because it's easy not to trust the government but this is the people that can be true most people can be trusted and this was from in the us from 1972 to 2014 it's it's kind of taken a hit we went from what almost 50 percent down to around 30. people 30 percent of people believe that most people can be trusted i would ask you here dude dude why why is this trended down do you know is do you have an idea do you trust people this much do you trust 70 or 30 percent of people anybody media yeah yeah do you i don't know i don't know where everybody's parents grandparents are from but do you know like do you know your next door neighbor as much as your parents or grandparents or maybe not your next door but the one right next the one two or three down does would that have any indication on it i don't know it's just these are thoughts to think on would you would you let someone that lived in your neighborhood say next door to two or three doors down would you let them borrow your car would you let them borrow something of importance to you no no anyone maybe yeah sister song all right sister sloan yeah you've lived in your neighborhood for quite some time so that kind of makes a difference doesn't it it how well do we know these people but that trust in society right so it's not just the random stranger out on the street somebody that lives close to us that we kind of i don't know about them and i'm not talking about the the one that's you know always in trouble i was trying to figure out a nice way to say that i'm just just talking about somebody you know just somebody that goes to work and comes home every day we still we have our reservations about trust uh sales sales persons uh going door to door like people would shoot you right but like walking up knocking on their door ain't nobody coming i i remember uh when i was a kid we our our youth fundraiser was best thing we done was sold donuts krispy kreme donuts and i made it a competition i could outsell anyone everyone we would buy 500 dozen and we i could sell like 100 of those in in a day out of everyone else i could sell i could sell a good percentage of them and i remember i would run all day long getting that done we'd be done about lunchtime and when i got like six foot i was still young all right and i remember the look of terror on people's faces this six foot gangly kid just like running towards them and then i had all right calm down jess that ain't that funny six foot gangly kid running at them with a box of donuts they did not know what was going on i had to change my strategy right then and there but i mean can you blame them i don't know if i'd trust somebody running towards me like that either but it's just a we hesitate with those things when we're out in public we're on guard but even in all that everyone kind of has somebody they trust somebody to tell your secrets to don't tell anyone this but it's kind of funny though because everyone has secrets but we don't want everyone to know everyone has secrets i don't i can't anyway uh i've been reading i've been i've been studying on trust and and trying to to understand it from a psychological standpoint uh why why we trust and honestly i've i've read a bunch of studies and papers uh done by psychologists who've who've made careers out of this and it they don't it's it seems like they're missing something i don't know if they've tried to simplify it down so much to the point of in a laboratory it's hard to capture what trust is because it's more than just something you can measure observably uh it's it's it's so much to have trust in someone to have trust in something and to have that broken because many times we don't realize how much we trusted something or someone until we don't right that trust uh and and it can generalize for example if someone hurts you in in an emotional or a physical or a relational way then in in their they're off the scene but then someone that that had nothing to do with that that you'd never you didn't even know they just come along and they generally remind you of that individual you're like i don't like them hate their guts what'd they do to you well there was this one time that one person done that one thing to me and i don't like them like okay well i can't help you with that but it it can do that we can do that uh we can do that if look is there any redheads in here tonight all right good deal there's a saying there's a saying i'm not i'm not being a proponent of this saying but everyone's redheads are crazy i don't know who started that rumor i have no idea okay not having anything to do with that but at some point in time somebody got hurt by redhead because she may or may not been crazy okay i don't know but then it got generalized across all redheads oh ethan ethan all right we're gonna have to like close that window off now all right redheads anyway same thing can be happened if if uh if a father figure or somebody hurt someone that is generalized to all men all men are evil and and that's not true but in our defense mechanisms because that's so deep there's a there are a million things to say about trust a million ways to experience it it takes a lifetime to build but a moment to break just one one one lady was talking about and she said it's like a wall built out of bricks you're constantly building it and it can be broken down just super easily and it can't be repaired you have to rebuild it it's not you can't just put a band-aid on it it's it takes intentional energy to build but if neglected it'll fall down uh it can make or break us as an individual trust can be tied to our success to our relationships to to who we are how fulfilled we are as people trust it's an emotion and a bond that goes deeper than just words we got five fingers trust t r u s t trust starts and ends with trust our day-to-day interactions and i i struggled i struggled to find an explanation a a a model to bring out trust to to look at trust and if you if you got a handout i wanna uh and if sister sister mandy if you can put these put that last graph up it is this model was the the best way that i could i could see trust broken down in a simplistic form to kind of explain what makes up our abstract idea of trust this this was this was done by uh some business people they they put it into place they it's not just a theory they've put it into practice in trying to build trust so they they started out defining it by these three things authenticity logic and empathy so authenticity i experience the real you uh it's a concept it's it's the degree to which a person's actions are congruent with their beliefs and desires despite external pressures to conformity uh it's being genuine or genuine depending on where you're from right it's being true through and through if you've ever worked with someone that's not genuine you pick up on it real quick real quick like i can't trust the thing they say i can't be around that person they make me want to knock them out i mean not really but jesus forgive me i'm sorry i i don't want to be around someone that's not authentic in who they are that's two-face that is i can't trust them you can't you can't offer an opinion up all of a sudden it's twisted around this way or that you can't uh you definitely can't confide in them on anything they're not authentic in who they are it's and if we want to if we want to i mean this is bible study so maybe we we ought to look at bob a little bit with this but the idea if we if we look at authenticity we look at a testament the bible talks about the testament is not established until the testator is dead until the individual so their life their the authenticity the testament of who they are as an individual is not established until they passed off the scene their legacy tells how authentic they were when you step out of a room okay so let's let's be less less severe than our our entire life but when we step out of a room what we leave behind in that room that's who our that's who we are that when we step out if we move that legacy we leave behind that's that's where our true authenticity is shown when we die that's when our true authenticity is shown because you can fake it till you make it but authenticity it just it don't stick like that it's not it's it's got to be true through and through now the second one is logic uh i know you can do it your reasoning and judgment are sound uh in second timothy it says for god gave us a spirit not a fear but of power and love and self-control or of a sound mind logic's important you can get wrapped up in in in any type of emotional uh wind that you would like to but when you get down to it it can get lost there there has to be some solid ground and and when i say this solid ground i'm not just talking about man's reasoning here uh because man you know we can be authentically wrong in and of ourselves every man doing what is right in his own eyes doesn't doesn't always that's not sound thinking sound thinking is what does this look like compared to the word of god what do my actions my thoughts my intents what do they look like i think through something but what does it with with how does it line up with the word of god there's a flaw in it if it's messed up because we know this is this is foundations right we know we've been through all year of the foundations reestablishing reaffirming building that trust in in our religion in our faith in our walk with god in our love for god and making sure that we we know that we know that we know so that logic is it's more than if you look into the dictionary you'll discover that the definition of a sound mind is the state of a man's mind which is adequate to reason and comes to a judgment i should say a man or a woman's mind that is adequate to reason and comes to a judgment upon ordinary objects like other rational rational men or women it said man on purpose i don't know no all right i'm just kidding y'all i'll sit down now communication is key here right because somebody can have a good point how many how many look my grandma god bless her so love her love her to death and she is authentic as they come and she is empathetic as they come but let me just tell you something about when she tries to explain how she got to a point in something y'all you might as well sit down go make some coffee take a nap and maybe by the time you wake up she may have got to her point what she was trying to get it's just like it's hilarious if she starts telling a story pops i have to tell her just get to the point just get to the point that logic is not it's sometimes it's not easily communic communicated we have to some and if and in this uh the individuals that came up with this when they were they were talking about it and this this was a lady presenting this so i i felt all right she was like sometimes you know we get frustrated in in trying to get to our point she said sometimes we just start with it just just start with it and then do the underlying there that's that's part of the communication side and then we get to because if we can't communicate it i guess then people lose confidence in it then we get to empathy i believe you care about me and my success it's not sympathy sympathy is a feeling of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune how many really like to feel someone else's sympathy uh somebody starts feeling pity for me i'm gonna get real mad real quick pity is not you know sympathy is it's not genuine uh but empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another that's that's knowing that someone where someone's been and not just feeling sorry for them but understanding them and i would take it one step further as christians we've got to have compassion because compassion is it's that when we're empathetic but we have a desire to help we don't just want to understand them we want to help them now how we help them that may not be going up and picking them up and carrying them through what they're going through but it may be just being there when we need them when they need us a compassionate individual is hard to find and that true compassion that'll change someone's life we but in this there's there's something not everyone has this right not that we we all have some areas we lack in and it may not be that we're con artists and we're trying to get the best of everyone so we have a good logical process and we're we can fake him with empathy for a little bit but we're not very authentic it may not be that we may not have bad intentions but we have a wobble in our communication we have a truss wobble we we lose a leg somewhere if you're uh no no offense to any engineers but if you're engineer right sometimes engineers are they're very authentic they believe they they are they are very set in what they're going for they're very logical in their process but man the empathy side of it just they just lose all feeling like i say i've worked with some some engineers great i'm not not they just don't it's not communicated as well some people are better at that communication side than others for example my sister she can be real and authentic right and she can be empathetic with someone but her trying to explain how to fix something with that empathy the logic it just ain't there sometimes and i hope she's not watching because i might get hit but you see it's not that she doesn't have that logic it's just the the communication side of that that's the key in in all these things the same thing with uh with empathy or with with authenticity sometimes people we don't see right and we don't we don't hear what someone is really about uh how many the the communication circle is it's a send a signal and receive a signal if if if i say something to you you nod and i know that you've you've received what i said and you sent a signal back that yeah i saw that i i hear you i received that trust goes the same way you walk into a room you're automatically looking around all right what am i seeing what am i what what is that what is sister kathy putting off like in her in her appearance and her words in her actions and then the same thing she's sending that back to me but then i'm sending that message to her so if it if it came down to it sometimes our trust wobble comes out and we don't even realize it have you ever had somebody that just in that didn't trust you you're like why why don't why don't you trust me i've never done anything to you for you not to trust uh you know or not purposefully i've never been aware of that uh this this skeptic if they felt you're misrepresenting some part of you you might have an authenticity communication you may not you you may not be pushing that as much or as well because we all have different ways of communicating we all have different ways of receiving communication so these are things to be aware of if you're if they felt like you were being a little selfish putting your interests first you might have an empathy communication they don't understand they don't see what what do you mean this is all about you no no it's really it's about you but you the way you present it the way you say it it may be completely different than what you meant in the way they receive it and that perception they have these are the and then if we get down to if do they question the rigor of your analysis or your belt or your ability to execute this plan or this idea then you may not be commuting com communicating your logic correctly that step by step process those things all those things are important because if we if we if we can let's let's to come full circle jesus was a excellent communicator he was a he's what we're all here for right he's the he's the only reason we're here jesus his legacy he was authentic his testament has stood the test of time it it has it's proven itself it proved itself when he was alive it proved himself in his death and it proved it in his resurrection and has proved it out today he he's authentic through and through but then we look at his reason his logic you know he astounded the scholars of his day by by the way he would he would present an argument to him and leave him and they just would not have words to say and his empathy or his compassion that's unquestionable all these things those that we put our trust in him because of that now if we're going to be christ-like if we're going to be a reflection or a representation of of christ here then how are we going to best do that we have to examine ourselves in this how am i presenting how am i communicating trust am i authentic am i making sure i'm communicating that authenticity and if i'm if i'm trying to witness to someone am i being empathetic to their needs am i being real with them am i just christian around them am i just am i different when they see me out or am i different when the if they come to church that authenticity there that will make or break and say a new soul the empathy same way if we can't if we can't relate to them if we can't have compassion on their needs they can't trust us and then it's on the on the first steps it's sometimes the logic doesn't play as as a big of a role perhaps but if they think we're crazy we got like a sense if we hadn't we hadn't got our ducks in a row at least you know it when it comes to our what we believe in if we don't have a sure foundation in why we believe what we believe then our logic is gonna it's just gonna fail we're going to have that wobble and we're all going to have those in different areas we're all going to have those those trust wobbles but i i put some questions on the handout these are not i don't wanna i don't wanna answer these out loud uh if that's okay because we all have different trust wobbles we all have different areas but these are thoughts these are things for introspection here can god trust me can i trust do i trust god but can he trust me uh do what what have i appeared inauthentic have i appeared on you know without logic have i appeared un unempathetic i mean i know i have i i'm that's because sometimes it's hard not to like why are you so stupid that's not empathetic at all is it but i have to you know that's that's something i have to work on personally of how am i going to get to be christ-like how am i going to represent someone to that they can trust paul said follow me as i follow christ that's hard y'all right i fail i mess up i don't want to call someone else to mess up i need to be on a sure foundation i need to be on a a solid solid i i need my wobble to be as as little as possible if you would would you stand with me though i find that trust is is not an easy thing and over the next over the next few weeks i hope i hope that that we can examine ourselves we can examine our actions we can examine our our motives our insight our thoughts and we can work i hope to to be able to at least bring some information to bring some some ideas that we can be introspective in our selves of how can i be someone that god can trust how can i be someone that someone else can trust because the soul it's all about souls every bit it's about serving god and in helping others to serve god how can i do that best we've we've looked at almost every foundation you can think of i am uh last last months with brother gibson that was some good stuff that and you could feel the difference yeah we got our minds to to thinking it got our hearts to praying god we need we need to be more sensitive to your spirit amen i hope we can i hope we can do that in in this coming this coming month of god help us to be trustworthy help us to be trusting but help us to be trustworthy of what you've entrusted with us if we can let's pray and we'll be dismissed jesus we love you god we're so thankful for your goodness for your mercy for your kindness and your grace lord god i thank you so much for what you've entrusted in me god i thank you so much for all that you've done for me god but god i ask you lord to help me help myself god to be true through and through god help me to be someone you can trust me god that you can you can you can trust me to be authentic and and and logical and empathetic god with a soul god that you can trust me god to lead someone to you jesus i pray lord that you would be with us this week god to walk and guide us lord to direct us god to help us lord to be like you this week god help us to be christ-like god we'll be sure to give you all the praise the glory and the honor in jesus name