Debt: The Fear of Financial Collapse

Message Description:

The phrase, “In God we trust,” is printed on all United States currency. But no matter where you live, it should also be evident in your financial behavior. Dr. David Jeremiah considers the futility of pinning your hopes to material wealth when true riches come from trusting God.

• Fret Not
• Dr. Jeremiah’s message – Debt: The Fear of Financial Collapse”
• Next Time on Turning Point

And here’s what I love. Download your worry to the lord. Just do it. Download it verse seven.
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
The Bible says, don’t get yourself caught up in worrying about what’s going on with other people.
I mentioned earlier that one of the things we do sometimes as Christians is we kind of look around and say, Lord, god, I’m serving you.
I’m honoring you with my life. I’m doing everything I know to do to be an obedient Christian.
Why am I having a hard time, and all these people that don’t even know how to say your name without cursing, they seem to be doing well.
And the Bible says, fret not. Fret not.
The word fretz is a very interesting word. It has two different meanings.
One meaning is the word fret means to gnaw at, like a rat gnawing at a rope or something.
And the other meaning is is to have a kind of like an explosive burst of flame.
And that’s what worry is like. It’s like something non etch on the inside.
It’s like something burning on the inside.
And So the lord Jesus says, when you look out at how life seems to be laying out in front of you, don’t fret.
Kill the rat, put out the fire and get on with your life. Amen?
Because if you if you worry about it, it’s not gonna change one thing, not gonna change one thing, except you.
It’s gonna ruin you. The number one command in the Bible by a whole lot is the command fear not over and over and over again.
There are over two hundred people in the Bible about whom it was said they were afraid.
So if you ever struggle with any fear, you’re in good company. A lot of people in
the Bible struggled with fear as well.
I wanna begin with a story about someone who experienced what I am going to talk about today.
Her name is Athelda Lopez, and she was ready to let go and enjoy the golden days of her time here on this earth.
She had worked hard all
of her adult life. She’d planned well for her retirement.
And now when that pension check arrived each month, She just felt so secure and had such a sense of well-being.
And then one month, the check did not come. It had to be a mistake.
I mean, after all, she had done her part.
She made a few phone calls, and her discomfort began to grow.
Sacramento accounting firm had managed her investment, but the company was no longer to be found.
Every time she phoned, she got a repeated recording, This number is no longer in service.
Afelda had worked for AT and T for three decades.
Her benefits should have been rock solid.
She had paid into the plan all of those years, and now she was no longer in possession of where that money was.
Her ultimate worst case scenario was looming. She couldn’t make her mortgage payment.
So she fired off some more phone calls to mortgage company to her political representatives, to bank managers, anyone, everyone who might be able to shed some light on the craziness that was going on in her life.
But it was all to no avail.
Her money was gone, lost, bezel, stolen, what difference did it make?
She was suddenly unexpectedly destitute. Every night, she cried herself to sleep.
Loss is integral to life. Nothing that’s visible is lasting.
And one of the first harsh moments in life is the occasion when we first discover that truth.
The larger the loss, the deeper the pain.
So the question arises when we’ve lost our home, our possession, our bank account and our investments, and the very concept of financial security has been swept away, and we have nothing left or if we find ourselves fearing that that could happen to us, where do we turn?
Does god have anything to say that will give us comfort?
And of course, you know that he does. And the Bible itself is a book of comfort.
The Psalms in our Bible is the go to book for comfort, and one of my favorite Psalms we’re going to look at today for a few moments, and that’s Psalm thirty seven.
This Psalm speaks to our hearts when the fear of financial calamity is stalking us, how should we respond when we look out at a world And we’re doing all the right things.
We’re obeying god. We’re coming to church. We’re raising our families in a godly way. We’re tithing.
We’re doing all the things we know we should do.
And we’re failing, and the people we know who don’t do any of those things, in fact, do a lot of evil things.
They seem to be succeeding. How can that be right? And why is that fair?
And why does it happen? I would like to suggest to you that there are two major scriptures in the Bible that deal with that, and it’s kind of easy to remember them.
One of them is Psalm thirty seven and the other is Psalm seventy three.
And if you just put those two things down in your mind, you’ll remember where to go when you’re trying to figure this out.
I would like to suggest to you that Psalm thirty seven is an incredible portion of scripture for our discussion today because It is a simple statement of some things almighty God wants us to do when we’re feeling insecure, not just about life What about everything?
Sometimes when you read the psalms, you have to read, and then you develop principles having read it, Here, the principles are just stuck right in the Psalm.
There are seven of them here in the first few verses, just places where god through the Psalm says to us, Here’s what you should do.
I kinda like that because it’s always helpful when you know what you’re supposed to do.
And it begins here in the third verse where we’re told to decide to trust in the lord.
Chapter thirty seven verse three says trust in the lord. I’ve underlined that in my Bible.
Trust in the lord.
This is one of the themes of the Psalms to trust in the lord.
And, you know, that’s very important in this discussion because this whole issue of financial stability is an issue of trust.
We even put things in what we call trusts, and we put our trust in people to care for those things.
And here the Bible says, if you want to survive the uncertainty of life as a follower of god, you need to learn to put your trust in god.
And that’s a decision that you make. You decide to trust in the lord.
This is mentioned three times in Psalm thirty seven.
Here in the verse we just read over in verse five, where we’re told to commit our way to the lord, and trust also in him, and in verse forty at the very end of the Psalm, it appears again.
Now, everybody has to trust in something, If you put all your trust in your resources, you’re probably gonna find disappointment along the way.
If you put all of your trust in what you’ve been able to amass out of your work on this earth, you’re never gonna feel a sense of great security because If you put it in the bank, what if the bank fails?
If you invested in the stock market, what if it goes upside down?
If you get it converted to gold and silver and put it in your safe at home, what if somebody breaks in and steals it?
Where can you find something to put your trust in that will not fail you?
Insama says, trust in god. And let me just suggest to you that this is not emotional.
This is not some feeling that you have. When you trust in god, you make a decision to do that.
I’ve been very convinced of that more and more of late, even when it comes to the matter of salvation.
How does a person become a Christian? That person decides to put their trust in god.
Does that mean they have all of the answers to all of the they might ever have about being a Christian?
Absolutely not. But there comes a time when they have enough answers that they say, I am going to put my trust in god, and they make the decision to do it.
It’s a choice. And when as Christians, we’re dealing with the uncertainties of life, we have to make that same choice, don’t we?
What about what’s going on in this country? Where are we going financially?
Are the are the government officials getting us in so much debt that it’s all gonna come down on us like a house of cards is inflation gonna go crazy.
I don’t know. I don’t put my trust in any of those things.
I’ve put my trust in god, and I know that god will not fail me.
Beginning at the very beginning of this is a choice that a person makes to put their trust in god.
If you look down in your bibles at verse twenty five, here’s an affirming verse.
I have been young, and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his descendants begging bread.
Paul said in the new testament, my god shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
I’m here to tell you today. God is trustworthy. You can put your trust in him.
He will help you in every situation.
Second Corinthians nine eight says, God is able to make all grace abound toward you so that you always having all sufficiency in all things will have an abundance for every good work.
Go through the Bible, and you will find promise after promise that just simply underscores this truth that when you put your trust in god, you have found the one place where you will not be discouraged or disappointed.
And then the next part of the verse gives us our next instruction.
Trust in the lord and do good. Trust in the lord and do good.
That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? Put your trust in the lord and then do good.
And if you want to know what that means, there’s a commentary on that in first Timothy chapter six verses seventeen through nineteen.
Let me read this passage. Command those who are rich in this present age, not to be haughty, or to trust in uncertain riches, but to trust in the living god, who gives us richly all things to enjoy, and let them do good.
That they may be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come It’s almost as if the psalmist says, when you’re in a situation where you don’t know what to do, first put your trust in god, and then instead of sitting around and wondering how things are gonna be for you, look around for somebody to help and do some good things with what you have.
What an incredible way to deal with life as we face it today? Trust and do good.
All of us are into the trusting part, but what about the do good part?
What about taking what god has given us How many of you know that no matter how bad things are for you, somebody you know
is doing worse than you
are, That’s the second instruction. Here’s the third one, dwell on the faithfulness of the lord.
Notice the last phrase in verse three. Three principles in one little verse, and feed on his faithfulness.
The Bible says when you’re trusting in the lord, You fill up your mind and your heart with the realization that he is a faithful god, and he is worthy of your trust.
Feed on that. He is faithful.
The early verses of Psalm thirty seven draw our attention to the faithfulness of the lord.
I’m gonna do what you should never do when you’re reading a novel.
I’m gonna take you clear to the end of the chapter and notice what it says in verse forty where the word trust appears again.
And the lord shall help them and deliver them.
He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in him.
When you trust in god, and you do good, and then you fill your life and your mind up with truth of his faithfulness, which is like memorizing verses and putting truth into your spiritual computer, you develop a kind of, teflon spiritual personality, that bad things just roll off of you.
You you say, well, my My four zero one has become a one zero one, but god is still on his throne, and he’s always been faithful to me and I know he’s worthy of my trust.
How do you know that? Well, let me just share what you what I’ve learned from the Bible.
The Bible says that when I am faithless, he’s still faithful.
His faithfulness is not troubled by what I do or what happens in the world.
He is worthy of our trust.
And how many of you know you cannot really know that until you go through some difficult things in your life?
Because when things are good, you probably think it’s you.
When things are going well, you probably think how smart you are where you’ve put but as soon as some of that is threatened, you become aware of your vulnerability.
I remember a story that I read not long ago by, uh, that was told about Doctor.
Gardner Taylor, who was preaching in Louisiana, He’d been assigned to preach in a poor rural church happened to be one of these churches, and I’ve been in a couple of these, where the sanctuary was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.
And one evening, he was preaching in this little country church, and he was just going strong, and the power went out.
So there was no light.
And Doctor Gardner didn’t know what to do, what the protocol might be, so he stumbled around in the dark, made a few statements, and All of a sudden, from the back of the room, an elder cried out, preach on brother.
We can still see Jesus in the dark.
And George said, sometimes we see him best in the dark.
And the good news of the gospel he wrote is that whether we can see him in the dark or not, he can always see us.
He’s worthy of our trust.
The Bible says to decide to trust in the lord when you’re going through uncertain times.
To do the things that honored the lord with your life, even though things are kind of upside down, to dwell on the faithfulness of the lord.
And here’s one of favorite ones in the text. Delight yourself in the lord. Verse four.
Delight yourself also in the lord and he shall give you the desires
of your heart.
Even when our circumstances hold nothing that seems delightful to us.
We can always find our delight in the lord.
We could be facing loss and oppression, but these things do not define us We should never let the challenges we face in our life define who we are.
We are not the difficulties we face.
We are who we are because of our relationship with almighty And when we trust in him and delight in him, something wonderful happens.
You know, and the person who wrote this was a man named David, And I don’t know if you’ve ever studied David’s life.
I did a whole series on David some years ago, and one of the things I realized about David was David was a man for all seasons.
Have you ever noticed David just he sucked every bit out of life you could get.
He squeezed life like it was an orange. And just think about David, what he was all about.
David was a singer. He was a songwriter. He could dance. He could write poetry.
He could devise battle plans. He had an aching desire to design a temple for god.
He was a passionate man who found in his life every delight, but here is David, this man who lived life to the full saying, what you really need to do?
Find your delight in the lord.
Covant a relationship with god that becomes central to who you are.
Now the interesting thing about this verse is that there’s a promise attached to it, and often it’s misunderstood, and I want to try to explain it the best I can today.
The Bible says, delight yourself also in the lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Years ago, I was reading a book on the will of god and the writer of the book said the simplest way he knew to explain how to get the will of god in your life was to fall in love with god and then do whatever you wanted to do.
I thought that was pretty simplistic, but maybe he’s not too far from the truth.
This passage of scripture doesn’t say that when you delight in the lord, You can ask him for anything you want.
He’ll just give it to you no matter how frivolous it may seem. Lord, I’m delighted in you today.
I’d sure like to have a new corvette. No. That’s not what it means.
Some teachers teach that, but that’s not what it means. Here, listen to this.
The Bible says, if you delight in the lord, if you delight in him, if you truly have all of your delight in him, you will never ask anything him, that does not coincide with who he is.
In your delighting in the lord, you define the things that you need and that you want.
It becomes the context in which you ask so that if you’re truly delighting in the lord, you can ask him for what you want, and he will give you the desires.
Of your heart. And I have a wonderful, little, personal story to tell you about that.
I don’t know that I’ve ever told you exactly how I got into doing what I do, how I was called to preach.
So I’m gonna tell you this morning. I was a senior in college.
I had been a speech major and had done some homework in radio and television.
Actually, I was a disc jockey.
I actually worked in a little radio station in Springfield, Ohio I had the three to eleven shift every afternoon.
I put on all of the Christian music on this station. I did the news. I introduced the music.
Uh, I was not very good at but I was learning on the air.
And I believe that’s what god wanted me to do, and that’s where I was headed.
I’d asked Donna to marry me.
We had a year left before we graduated, and this is what we have planned.
We had our life all planned out.
And then one day, my father, who was the president of the college that I was going to, came to me and he said, David, we have a little church up in Columbus that needs a speaker for the weekend, and I’ve already assigned all the faculty members.
There’s nobody left to go. Would you go up there and speak for them?
And I remember exactly what I said. You have got to be kidding. That’s what I said.
He said, no. He says it’s not that big a deal. He says it’s only thirty people.
It’s a little farm community. They got a little church. There’s a cemetery outside of it.
You know, you got the picture. He said, just go up there and give your testimony.
So I told Donna, and she said, Hey, that sounds like a fun thing to do.
So we drove up there on Sunday morning to the Fairfield Baptist Church in Thirston, Ohio.
Still there, and I gave my testimony.
It took maybe fifteen minutes or twenty minutes at the most.
And then we were invited to go to lunch with one of the farm community families, and we went to their farm and had dinner.
And to my shock, while we were eating dinner, they began to tell me how decided they were that I was going to be there to speak in the evening service.
Which my father had conveniently forgotten to tell me.
And the problem was I had already delivered everything I knew. I I I didn’t have anything else.
I had no notes, no old sermons.
So I remember going into the corner of that house in the afternoon and repackaging what I gave them in the morning and gave it back to them that night.
To my surprise, they said to me, would you come back next week?
And so Don and I drove back next week.
And the week after that and the week after that.
And all of a sudden, I realized God was doing something in my heart.
And that he was saying to me, Jeremiah, this is what I want you to do.
You already know I told you this once. I told Donna that and she broke up with me.
I’m not kidding you. She did.
She had told me she would never be a pastor’s wife, not live in a glass house like they have to do and all that stuff.
And What she was prepared for was my mother worked at that college, and she put the mail out every day in the mailboxes where the students went, and she started stuff in Donna’s box with stuff about the joy of being a pastor’s wife and all the she she that’s that really happened.
That really happened. And so we got back together, and I’m telling you all of this to tell you that one of the one of the things I was really I didn’t know what to do with, was that I had this love for radio.
Believe it or not, I was one of those guys who built allied kits when I was growing up, built all these radio kits.
I was in it whole thing about communication, and here god is saying, no, I want you to go and preach.
And I realized that’s what he wanted me to do and without any holes without any conditions, I said, Lord, if this is what you want me to do, I will do it.
I registered at Dallas Seminary to go and be a student there the next year after we graduated and got married.
And, uh, I thought that was it, but I just had this ache in my heart because I had loved this radio thing.
But I delighted in the lord, and he gave me the desires of my heart.
What I do on the radio today, believe it or not, is far different than I was going to use radio.
And god made it way better and way bigger and more extensive than anything I could have ever dreamed up in my wildest moment.
He he took He took what he knew I was supposed to do and he brought that into my world, and when I delighted in him, he gave me the desires of my heart.
And so today I live in both worlds.
And it’s all one world now, and I look back over my shoulder and recognize how terribly poor I would be today in my own spirit if I had delighted in my plan instead of in his.
If I had said, no, lord, I’m not going to be a pastor I’m going into the radio world, but I delighted in him.
I’d I just thank God that he gave me the faith to do that.
So I want to say this to you today.
If you put your trust in the lord and you give him first place, and you say lord, whatever you want me to do, the probability is he’s going to get you to do something that you already want to do and he’ll marry what you want to do with what he wants you to do, and you’ll walk away thinking, how did that happen?
God, is it work?
And so the Bible tells us that there are some things we can do during times that are uncertain.
We can trust in the lord. We can do the things that honor the lord.
We can dwell on the faithfulness of the lord. We can delight ourselves in the lord.
And then it says dedicate your life to the lord.
It says here in verse five, commit your way to the lord.
Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.
That means you come to the place where you say lord, here is my life.
I have no idea what’s ahead.
I don’t know what you have in store for me, where this is all going, but I’m dedicating this to you.
I’m signing the paper at the bottom of the page, and you just fill in whatever you want.
And that’s who I am, that’s where I’m going. My life is yours. Lord god, we’re in this together.
I dedicate my life to you.
We used to talk a lot more about that in our churches than we do.
We used to actually have people come forward who wanted to dedicate their life to the lord.
When we find our delight in the lord, then we discover that because we know who he is, We can trust him with everything there is about us.
We can cast our burdens upon him. We can give him our life without fearing what might happen.
You know, most of us know the story of not ever giving the lord control of your life, because he’ll make you a missionary in Africa.
Remember that? Most people have had that fear in the back of their mind.
Well, let me just tell you this. He’s done that to some people, but you you know what?
He did it because down in their heart something they always wanted to do anyway, and he gave them the desire to go.
Well, if you put your in the lord, that doesn’t mean you’re going to sail through life without any challenges.
It does mean if you commit your way to him, he will be in every detail of your life.
God is not only the question. God is also the answer.
And so if you wanna go through life and think you’re not gonna have any losses, you’re gonna be disappointed.
But if you dedicate your life to the lord, when the losses come, he’ll be there for you, and he will help you make sense out of it as much as possible as you can in this life today.
Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.
If you know anything at all about missions, you know that one of the great missionaries, in fact, he’s considered to be the father of modern missions, is a man by the name of William Carey, William Carey, at one time in his life, had established a large print shop in India where he had worked for years, translating the Bible into the many Indian languages.
On March eleventh and eighteen twelve, Carrie had to travel to another town and his associate William Ward was working late when suddenly he smelled smoke.
He leaped up to discover black clouds belching from the printing room.
He screamed for help, and they tried to do everything they could to save the establishment but it was to no avail.
Everything in that print shop was destroyed that night. Now watch this.
On the next day, missionary Joshua Marshman entered a calcutta classroom where William Carey was teaching, and he placed a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, I can think of no easy way to break this news, the print shop burned to the ground last night.
Gone was Carrie’s massive translation work of nearly twenty years.
A dictionary, two grammar books, and whole versions of the Bible.
Gone were sets of type for fourteen eastern languages, twelve hundred reams of paper, fifty five thousand printed pages, and thirty pages of his Bengal dictionary.
Gone was his complete library. The work of his whole life gone in a moment.
In that moment, he understood the word loss.
And he said The loss is heavy, but as traveling erode, the second time is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first time.
I will trust the work will lose nothing of its real value.
We are not discouraged, indeed, the work has already begun again in every language.
We are cast down but we’re not in despair.
And William Carey had dedicated his life to god, including all of the imponderables that he’d experienced.
He knew that god was in this.
He didn’t know how or why, but he trusted god somehow to bring blessing even out of the ashes of his dreams.
This scary move forward, so did god.
News of the fire caused all of England to start talking about William Carey, he became a household word, and money began to pour in to the Cary Foundation.
Volunteers enlisted to help. The print shop was rebuilt in a matter of just a few months, and it was built bigger.
And by eighteen thirty two, just one year later, complete bibles were being printed, new testaments or separate books of scripture had issued from the press in that newly created print shop in forty four different languages and dialects.
It was the beauty that came out of the fire, because Carrie had dedicated his life to god, he understood what it meant to cast all of his burdens on the lord and let god take it.
As we look back over our lives, sometimes we have to admit that the things we thought were negative were just ways that god was getting ready to do something really positive, and we see him at work.
So we decide to trust in the lord We delight ourselves in the lord verse four.
We dedicate our life to the lord verse five. And here’s what I love. Download your worry to the lord.
Just do it. Download it verse seven.
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass.
The Bible says, don’t get yourself caught up in worrying about what’s going on with other people.
I mentioned earlier that one of the things we do sometimes as Christians is we kinda around and say, Lord, God, I’m serving you.
I’m honoring you with my life.
I’m doing everything I know to do to be an obedient Christian, why am I having a hard time and all these people that don’t even know how to say your name without cursing, they seem to be doing well.
And the Bible says, fret not. Fret not.
The word fretz is a very interesting word. It has two different meanings.
One meaning is the word fret means to gnaw at, like a rat gnawing at a rope or something.
And the other meaning is is to have a kind of like an explosive burst of flame.
And that’s what worry is like. It’s like something non at you on the inside.
It’s like something burning on the inside.
And the lord Jesus says, when you look out at how life seems to be laying out in front of you, don’t fret.
Kill the rat, put out the fire and get on with your life. Amen?
Because if you if you worry about it, it’s not gonna change one thing.
It’s not gonna change one thing, except you. It’s gonna ruin you.
In this sum, we are told that god has a plan, and that his plan involves getting things back where they should be.
Over and over again, there are phrases in the psalm that say things like They will soon be cut down like grass, speaking of the wicked.
They will be no more They will perish, they will be cut off. How many of you know?
God settles his counts, but he doesn’t settle them when you want them to be settled.
They will be settled ultimately one day. Nobody gets a free pass.
Here’s a creative exercise I’d like to suggest to you.
This was done by pastor and author, Leonard Griffin Here’s what he did.
He transplanted Rip Van Winkle, the beloved Washington Irving character from America to nineteen thirties Germany.
Listen carefully to this story. You remember the story.
Rip falls asleep for twenty years, And then he walks through town to find that everything has changed, and no one remembers him.
That’s the old story. Well, in Griffith’s version, Van Winkle is horrified as he watches Hitler rise to power and begin conquering Europe.
So he retreats into the Alps to get away from the terrifying events, and he falls asleep.
And when he wakes up, the 1950s are underway, and the world is vastly different. The Nazis are gone.
No more swastikas, no more eager Hitler youth, no more world domination arrogance, the masterminds of the third Reich are all dead or imprisoned or being hunted down.
Rick van Winkle then understood the words of the psalmist.
I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a native green tree yet he passed away and behold he was no more.
That’s the way it happens, isn’t it? It may look like they’re succeeding, but just hang on.
God does not measure time the way we do, and ultimately, that, which doesn’t seem resolvable gets resolved by almighty God.
There were many in the 1930s who wondered why god allowed the Nazis to prosper. He didn’t.
He dealt with them by his own timetable, and he dealt with them thoroughly.
Here’s the last one of the seven, and we’re finished.
Let me give them to again, decide to trust in the lord, do the things that honor the lord, dwell on the faithfulness of the lord, delight yourself in the lord, dedicate your life to the lord, download your worry to the lord, and finally discipline yourself to wait on the lord, and I wish that weren’t in the Bible.
I don’t like waiting.
I’m built more for speed than for comfort, and waiting is not my favorite thing.
Wait on the lord. What does that mean?
It means god is at work, but he works on his timetable and feels no obligation to coincide his timetable with yours or mine.
We may say god, would you please resolve this? And he says, yes.
Would you please resolve this now? And he says, wait, and we don’t like to wait.
In the waiting, we learn. In the waiting, we grow.
Waiting is what happens between the promise and the fulfillment. Waiting builds our faith.
Waiting reminds us that god does not live on our schedule, we live on his.
And if we will learn to wait, we will see god do some great things.
One of the joys of being a bit older is to look back over your shoulder and see how god resolved things that I wondered how they would ever get resolved.
God was at work the entire time.
I just didn’t see it, and I was left to wait.
Almost two hundred years ago, our nation went through another economic upheaval, the financial panic of eighteen thirty seven chronicled in the history books in detail.
Anna and Susan Warner and their father Henry Warner, at that time in their lives lived in a mansion filled with art treasures.
High class furnishings, and an army of servants, they were at the top of the world of wealth.
And then came the recession. The market crashed, took Henry Warner’s investments down with it, the family lost it all and were deeply in debt.
They moved to a decrepit old house up the river from New York City, Henry’s financial collapse devastated him emotionally.
He never did really recover from it.
The daughters accustomed to expensive parties in the social world now realized they had to pitch in and find something to do just to see if they could keep the family together and not have them go down uh, through debt.
They didn’t have a lot of talents, but one thing they knew how to do was to write.
This story from history is quite encouraging.
They wrote some things and tried to find a publisher and eventually putnam accepted Susan Warner’s novel, the wide, wide world.
And success began to happen.
Those two sisters ended up writing more than one hundred books, all built on the foundation of the gospel, and one of the books called, say and seal, contained a little poem that Anna had woven into the story, and that little poem begins with the words.
Jesus loves me this I know.
Song writer William Bradberry added music, and now Jesus loves me is loved throughout the whole world.
Untold millions of children first meet god through that simple little song.
I didn’t know this, but back in nineteen forty three when John f Kennedy’s PT one zero nine was sunk in the Solomon Islands, local islanders, and American Marines sang, Jesus loves me.
Jesus loves you. Jesus loves me as they rescue the survivors. Jesus loves me. This I know.
If you had been a part of the Warner Family, when all that tragedy happened, you would have wondered what in the world could come out of this of any value whatsoever.
You might have known, even then, that god had something special, but you didn’t know what it was.
Out of the wreckage of that family at that moment of time came a little song that has been used by god to bless the world and hundreds of thousands of children have come to know Jesus Christ because they discovered that Jesus loved them.
The devil sometimes likes to fool us into thinking that the defeats that we are experiencing now are because of us or because god has forgotten us, but they are not.
They’re the devils work. We don’t have to acquiesce to his agenda. We have one that god has given us.
Waiting is not always a bad thing. Sometimes in the waiting, we learn to build our trust in god.
So if you are facing uncertainty or if you know people that are, I commend to you the 37th Psalm, and you don’t have to go past the seventh first, if you don’t want to, because in this Psalm, are these crisp instructions?
I’ve underlined all of the instructions in my Bible.
The word of god tells us to trust in the lord, to do good, to feed on his faithfulness, to delight in the lord, to commit our way to the lord, to wait on the lord.
And when we do that, we discover the lord’s in charge.
And we can trust him, and we will be strong in the midst of it all.
And that’s a resource you only have if you know god through Jesus Christ.
In fact, let me just suggest you as we close this message today that if you haven’t ever put your trust in god, Here’s what you should do.
You should decide to do it today. Just decide to do it.
You don’t have to make anything mystical out of What I’ve told you about god is true.
Do you want him in your life? Here’s how it happens.
You accept what the word of god says about you as a person, I had to accept it about me.
It’s true of all of us. You know what it is? We’re all sinners. Guess what? Or all sinners.
And the Bible says that when we acknowledge that we’re sinners, we come to god and we say almighty god, will you forgive me of my sin?
And god says, yes, I will do that through what my son Jesus did for you on the cross.
He died on the cross and paid the penalty for your sin If you will trust him and put your faith in him and what he did for you on the cross, you can become a member of my forever family.
And you say, well, I’ve never done that. Well, why don’t you do it?
Why don’t you decide to do it? Why don’t you decide today?
I’ve had enough of this life dependent on myself and everybody else.
I want to get in on the god thing. I have decided put my trust in him.
We used to sing a song when I was growing up that goes like this.
I have decided to follow Jesus. I want you to decide that today.
Make that decision and just tell god I have decided to put my trust in you and in Jesus Christ.
And he will hear you and acknowledge you, and you will become a Christian and then all these things that I’ve promised from Psalm thirty seven will come into play in your life.
Why would you not wanna do that?
It’s you’re just one decision away from being involved in the blessing of god.
If your security and your hope are tied to your financial well-being, Well, we’ve seen exactly how fleeting that could be.
It can lead to brokenness and ruin on every level.
Wealth alone isn’t the foundation of a satisfying life, and never has been.
True riches come from knowing the god from whom all blessings glow.
And it’s my hope and prayer that you have a personal, growing relationship with God, the only source of real eternal security and hope.
Whether you’re a new believer or you want to take your relationship with god to a deeper level, there are two help resources, I’d like to send you at no cost.
The first is a booklet called your greatest turning point, and the second is our monthly magazine, turning points.
They’re yours free when you contact us here at turning point.
Next time on turning point.
When he calls you or me to anything, whether it’s difficult or easy, whether it’s a challenge close at home or far away.
If god has called you, He is obligated to help you, and I’m here to tell you after all these years, he has never, ever failed me.
Thank you for being with us today. Join doctor Jeremiah next time for his message.
Defeat the fear of failure.
Here on turning point.