When Life Overwhelms | An Exploration of Trust and Faith

Raw, unedited transcript from video

When the foundations are crumbling, stay put in the place you’re supposed to be.

Well, good morning, everyone! Welcome to Man Alive Bible Study. Today is kind of a very unique day for us. Pat is away, and I’m going to share with you the reason why Pat is away today. We have a—he’s not even a special guest speaker anymore—Ron Reed. He’s part of the family, and he’s going to come up and share a word today. But let me share a note from Pat, and then Ron will step up, open up, and pray for us, and then we’re going to continue.

Pat sent this to me yesterday and said, “Please make sure you read this note to the men at Man Alive: Brothers, I have some sad news. Our precious 48-year-old daughter, Jen, died of completely unexpected heart failure Saturday morning, leaving behind the husband she adored, Jay, and the two daughters she treasured—Story, 17, and Annie, 14. She was so vivacious and full of joy. She is with Jesus now. Paty and I are devastated and in a lot of pain, most of it for Story and Annie, but also Jay, who is such a loving husband and father. We are in St. Louis today for the funeral. Please pray for us. The love and prayers of so many are helping. I do sense the constant presence of Jesus and the comfort of His Holy Spirit within. Much love always, Pat Morley.”

Ron is going to step up now, and I do want to let you know, on behalf of the Bible study and the media team and staff here, we have sent flowers to Pat today. So, thank you for being with us, and make sure to continue to pray for Pat, not only today but also in the coming weeks.

Ron:

All right, so let’s say a word of prayer.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, a Father who comforts, who has given us assurance to be with us through whatever we face, we thank You for Your grace and for that assurance. And we do lift up Pat and Paty, and Jay and the girls today as they go through what has to be one of the most difficult things that any dad could ever go through. We lift them up and ask for Your grace and Your strength. But especially, Lord, we thank You for the hope that You give, and we pray that hope would be the strength and the sustaining force for them. Be with us through this morning as well, as we take a look at what we all need in times not only of grief and of loss, but literally just in any time we’re facing any struggle or foundations crumbling. We need that trust and that assurance. So teach us this morning, Lord. Be with us in this study that not only would You be exalted, but we would be encouraged. And we pray this in the authority of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, amen.

Well, I want to say welcome to all of you guys who are normally here, and if we have some newcomers, I think this is going to be the newcomers’ table afterward, and we’d encourage you to go to that. Pat texted me shortly after he received the news and let me know about the tragedy. So I texted back, “Do you need somebody for Friday morning?” And he said, “That’s why I’m texting you.” I’ve been on the road—I literally left St. Louis, where ironically, I live about 25 minutes from where his daughter and son-in-law live. I left St. Louis last week. I’ve been to Michigan, then drove through Indiana into Cleveland, Ohio, then into Pennsylvania, then up to New York, down to Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and now here on my cross-country road trip. I’ll leave here and head toward Dallas, seeing three area directors on the way. Then, from Dallas to Phoenix, I’ve got four area directors there. Then from Phoenix to San Diego, San Diego to L.A., up to Seattle, down to Boise, Idaho, and eventually ending up in Denver, and then back home. So the rest of this month, I’m going to be on the road. Jim had the great idea that I should have ridden my motorcycle for this, but I wouldn’t be walking! I’ve already put in 3,000 miles, and I wouldn’t be walking if I had done that.

So, guys, you see the title: When Life Overwhelms. Have you been through times in your life where life just seemed to overwhelm you? It’s interesting, we talk about being underwhelmed by something, and we talk about being overwhelmed. But when are we ever just “whelmed”? That actually is a word. I looked it up because I was asking myself that question. We don’t talk about being “whelmed,” but even “whelmed” means the boat has capsized. Overwhelmed is when the boat is capsized and the waves are washing over it, in danger of completely sinking it.

So, have you ever been whelmed—the boat is capsized—or overwhelmed? Yeah, we all have been. Mine, probably my worst overwhelming, happened two and a half years ago when my wife passed away. Pat and Paty today, with the loss of their daughter—all of us have experienced death. But sometimes, it’s not just death; it’s other things that hit our life.

Let’s go to the text in Psalm 11. David, who has certainly experienced a lot of life’s crushing blows, went through trials such as Goliath, you know, as a young man. Goliath—the giant. We face giants in our life, but David had faith in God. He was able to say, “I’ve killed a bear, I’ve killed a lion. I know that I can handle this.” And so, he based his future expectations off of his past experiences. And guys, foundationally, if we’re going to face the future with hope, we better have built up some past expectations. Then, we know he dealt with Saul. And of course, Saul—throwing the spear at him, and just all the difficulties with that. His own son, Absalom—and again, I think that has to be one of the most overwhelming things that could ever happen to a dad: to have a son not only reject him, but in David’s case, try to overthrow him and try to kill him.

So, we see David experiencing a lot of different issues. Psalm 11, if you have not yet turned there or can watch it on the screen, says:

“In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me: ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain. For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne. He observes the sons of men; His eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence His soul hates. On the wicked, He will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur; a scorching wind will be their lot. For the Lord is righteous, He loves justice; upright men will see His face.”

Again, we see David going through these horrible times, and his advisers come to him and say, “Just run.” And that’s kind of the natural tendency, isn’t it? When we face difficult times, when we face trials that are overwhelming, the natural tendency is, “I just have to get away from this.” You know, a vacation for my problems, as Bob in What About Bob? says. A mindset that says, “I just have to get out of this place.” That can be a change of job, a change of career, it can be a change of marriage. Sometimes what men are prone to do is say, “I can’t handle this, I’m just going to run.”

Here, we see that David’s anonymous advisers come to him and say, “Since you have all these problems, since the situation seems hopeless from their perspective, you should pack your bags and run for your life.” Again, that’s a natural feeling, especially for the natural man. We know from Corinthians, Paul wrote about the natural man, the carnal or the “sarx” man—the man who is controlled by the flesh—and the spiritual man. And he says of the natural man, “He cannot comprehend the things of the Spirit.” It literally says they are moronic to him. The natural man—and apparently, David’s advisers fit in that category—just says, “Pray? You’re going to pray about this?” Because what’s our natural reaction when somebody says to us, as Christian men, “What are you going to do?” Well, the first thing I’m going to do is pray, and obviously that’s the first thing we should do. But the natural man cannot comprehend. “What good is prayer going to do in this situation? You need to just get out of it. Instead of ‘I’m going to pray, I’m going to study what God has said,’ you just need to get out.”

So, here we have two things that the advisers are picking up on. It’s brought out in Psalm 11:

1. Bent bows—the wicked are bending their bows, pulling the strings, ready to fire at you. They tell David, “Hey, they’re shooting arrows at you.” When you’re the center of target practice, you really don’t need somebody saying, “Look, those are arrows.” You kind of know it, don’t you? When the trials are hitting, you can see it, you feel it. But you just know this looks like a hopeless situation. What’s the adage that says, “Sometimes a hopeless situation is simply an opportunity wrapped up in a problem.” And that’s how David sees it. He looks at the bent bows, he looks at the trials that are there, and though they’re pointing out that he’s under attack, he knows there’s reason to go under cover, but not to run from this.
2. Destroyed foundation—that’s really where I wanted to get to. We’re not told exactly what the foundations are that are being destroyed; we’re just told that the foundations are crumbling. Do you ever feel like your foundations are crumbling? Do you feel it as a nation? We see—there are so many discussions right now, obviously in the political season we’re in—about the political foundations. I think all of us would agree that the last three weeks have been the strangest three weeks of politics that any of us have ever been through. Not only from an assassination attempt, but from a sitting president deciding not to run, and all the different things that are happening. It appears the foundations are crumbling.

We could name a lot of different other foundations in our life—just in the years we’ve lived, watching marriage integrity, the church, many churches. If any of you guys have been through one of the most crumbling, foundational things that can happen, the fall of a pastor. A pastor who is respected and admired and listened to and loved, and all of a sudden we find out that he’s human too, and that he was doing whatever, and has fallen. So we see that the foundations begin to crumble. But what do many people do when those foundations begin to crumble? They run.

I went through an earthquake when I lived out in Seattle. We had a 6.8 Richter-scale earthquake. The first tendency when you’re standing on the 12th floor of a 12-story building is, “We’ve got to get out of here!” But that’s not what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to get in a doorway. For whatever reason, apparently, doorways can survive, and at least nothing’s falling on your head during the shaking. But I will say, the first thing is, “How do we get out of this place?”

That earthquake was 47 seconds of violent back-and-forth shaking, and 47 seconds in that condition seems like an eternity. It’s like, “What do we do?” Again, there were four men my size trying to fit into a regular-sized door frame, and it just didn’t seem like this was the best thing to do. But in all reality, the best thing was to stay put in the place you’re supposed to be. When the foundations are crumbling, stay put in the place you’re supposed to be.

That’s what David, again, would realize and say. But the question is asked, “What can the righteous do?” Now, we’re not given the inflection in that verse, but it sounds like a statement of implied defeat. “What can we do?” It’s kind of like the story of the loaves and fishes. Andrew comes to Jesus and says, “Well, we’ve got these loaves and fishes, but what good is that?” There’s almost a sense of, “We can’t do anything. What can the righteous do? We can’t do anything.”

You might feel that way in regard to the political climate. You might feel that way in regard to a business deal. You might even feel that way in regard to family and marriage. “What can I do?” The sound of that is just throwing our hands up and taking the advice of these anonymous advisers—“Let’s just run.” It’s easy to feel that way, isn’t it? It’s easy to get to that place.

Regardless of our—you know, I mentioned the natural man and the carnal man, controlled by the flesh, just like the natural man. But the spiritual man has the mind of Christ. That’s what Paul wrote to the Corinthians—the spiritual man has the mind, in other words, the thinking process, of Christ. So that’s why, when we’re going through these foundation-crumbling, arrow-falling times in our life, Satan’s going to attack the mind. He’s going to cause us to think, “You can’t do anything. You can’t fix this. Just run. Just get out of this situation.” That’s why we’re warned by Paul when it says, “Put on the spiritual armor—protect the head, protect the mind, protect the thoughts.” Paul also wrote to the Romans, “Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by what? The renewing of your mind.” Come to the place of proper biblical thinking.

Again, that’s not our natural tendency. The natural tendency is, “Run! Get out of here! Escape this problem, this situation.” But Paul warns, and the Lord teaches us, renew the mind. Get right thoughts. Get our messed-up minds recorrected and controlled by the Spirit instead of the flesh.

There’s another version of Scripture that, instead of saying “What can the righteous do?” it literally says, “What is the righteous one doing?” I like that. When the foundations are being destroyed, when the arrows are falling on us, what is the Lord doing in this situation? That needs to become, men, our first thought. What is God doing? What is He teaching me? What’s His purpose behind this situation? To step back from the falling arrows, to step away from the crumbling foundation, and say, instead of, “God, what are you doing?”—“God, what are You doing?”

There are two ways to ask “why.” “Why me? Why this? Why now?” And “Why? What’s the purpose?” Knowing Pat, I know that right now, he’s saying, “Okay, Lord, what’s the deal?” He’s not running; he’s not trying to escape this. You can’t escape the situation, so you learn from it. What are You trying to teach me?

That has got to be the question that we ask: “What is the righteous one doing?” Because bottom line, it’s challenging us—where is your trust? What are you putting your trust in?

So, let’s go to the word trust. “Trust in the Lord”—actually, he says, “In the Lord I put my trust.” That’s kind of the big idea of Psalms—over and over and over again in Psalms, you read trust. But get this: the big idea—trust is far more than intellectual assent. Real faith trusts in what it believes.

Now again, belief today, in our Christian culture, has kind of become, “Yeah, I agree with that.” That’s where a lot of people would say, “Okay, Jesus Christ is Lord. Yeah, I agree with that. Jesus Christ died for my sins. Yeah, I agree with that.” It’s almost like we, as man, have to put our stamp of approval on God’s truth, and so we do. “Yeah, I’ll go along with that,” until it’s something like obedience—“You’ve got to do what God has said.” “I’m not so sure that’s actually what Scripture says”—that’s the argument that’s given today.

So, here we see in this Psalm, and literally all through Scripture, real faith trusts in what it believes.

You guys have all heard the story of the guy pushing the wheelbarrow across a guide wire, a high wire across Niagara Falls. He pushes the wheelbarrow all the way across, then he turns around and pushes the wheelbarrow all the way back. The crowd gives thunderous applause—“Look what this guy can do!” And he says, “Now, you’ve seen that I can push the wheelbarrow. Do you believe that I could push the wheelbarrow with somebody in it?” “Oh yeah, you’ve shown you can do this!” “Who’s willing to get in the wheelbarrow?” You see, that’s where real trust comes in—getting in the wheelbarrow.

That’s where I come to the place of knowing I don’t just believe this. You know, giving intellectual assent—I believe this. So, when we talk about prayer, when we talk about trust, when we talk about faith, when we talk about the Lord being on His throne, it’s about actually getting in the wheelbarrow.

Or, as a Sunday school teacher, teaching a bunch of grade-school boys once, he described a chair, and he said, “You know, the chair is obviously built well and sturdy, so to believe is to throw your weight on it.” That’s literally the translation of believe—to throw your weight on. He was a rather large man, so he demonstrated by throwing his weight on the chair, and the chair collapsed underneath him because he was kind of big. And he got up and said, “I’ve actually taught you two lessons today: Number one, that faith, trust, belief, is to throw your weight on it. But number two, you better make sure that what you’re throwing your weight on can hold your weight.” That’s genuine trust. That’s where we come to the place of knowing that not only can I throw my weight on it, but it will hold me.

So, our big idea today is real faith trusts in what it believes. Get in the wheelbarrow.

I grew up—my grandparents raised me after my dad had died. I moved out to the farm and grew up on this farm that was right next door to a crop duster. Every day, several times a day, that plane would take off. My grandpa would say every time that plane would go up above the field

, “You know, that’s impossible.” He’d watch that plane take off and fly and say, “That’s impossible. That thing weighs way too much. There’s no way it can do it.” And then, he finally came, obviously from seeing—basing his future expectations off of his past experiences—he finally came to the belief, “Yeah, planes can fly.” We lived where there was one of the radars that some of the major airlines flew way up high, and he’d look at that, and he was almost like a dog watching something up in the air. It was like, “Yeah, I don’t know how that works.” He just would shake his head.

He believed that planes could fly, but he wasn’t about to get in one. He was 83 years old before he ever set foot on a plane. He died at the age of 88. So he came to the place of intellectual assent—he had to come to the place where he said, “I’m either going to drive out to Idaho from Kansas, or I’m going to fly.” And he got on a plane. The entire time, he gripped the armrests as though he could hold the plane up by doing that. He was believing, but he still wasn’t trusting.

Again, guys, that’s what it’s so easy for us to do in times of difficulty—arrows flying, foundations crumbling. “Yeah, I believe this.” But that doesn’t mean I can actually trust this.

So, let’s go to what trust really is. There are three different Hebrew words that are used here in Psalm 11.

1. To take refuge—this means we come to this place where I can rest here. In Hebrews, it talks about the “rest of God,” and that word rest—I heard it translated or illustrated this way: You ever been holding a baby that is just crying, crying, crying, and you can’t get it to settle down, and then all of a sudden, it’ll just go sigh and it rests? Maybe it even goes to sleep. That’s what this word refuge literally is. I come to the place in Christ, in God, in my relationship, where I can just go sigh—the rest of God.

Men, are you there? Have you hit that place to know that God is your refuge? The place where you can have that—as Corrie Ten Boom called it—the hiding place? What is your refuge? Is it your home? Is it your work? Is it your relationships? Is it your job? What’s your refuge?

2. To lean on—this is Psalm 9:10: “They that know your name, your character, your authority, will put their trust in you.” And that’s literally where we just rest in the Lord, lean on Him. Somebody said that faith is like a crutch. Yeah, who among us is not limping?

Remember the story—it’s Olympic time—of the 1992 Olympics? A British sprinter named Derek Redmond, as he took off from the starting line, pulled his hamstring. But he wasn’t going to quit. Even though the race was lost, and he wasn’t going to win, he wasn’t going to quit. He could barely even walk, but then what happened? Out of the stands comes his dad. His dad puts his arm around him and helps him, walks with him—you know, because they can’t run now—walks with him and helps him cross the finish line. That’s literally what this word is: to lean on. To know, “I can’t finish this race, but God, my Savior, holds me, hugs me, and helps me cross the finish line.”

3. To roll upon—Psalm 22. While dying on the cross, it says Jesus trusted on the Lord, not in, but on. There was just this rolling of the burden, rolling of the pressure, rolling of the death onto the Lord.

I heard about a lady that was carrying her basket from market, and it was loaded. A guy in a horse and buggy comes along, and he says, “Jump in, I’ll give you a ride to your place.” So she gets in the buggy, and she’s still holding the basket full of goods. He says, “Put it down, I don’t want to put that much weight on the horse!” And we do the exact same thing. We’re carrying this burden that God says, “Roll it on me.” But we say, “Oh no, I’ll just carry it myself. I trust you, I believe in you, I pray to you, but I’m going to still work this out myself.” And we carry it, thinking we’re actually doing the Lord a favor.

So here’s the critical third point, closing point: What are you trusting? The psalmist wrote in Psalm 20:7, “Some trust in chariots, some in horses”—in other words, the standard helps. Some trust in luck. Some trust in politicians—no, none of us trust in politicians! Some trust in other people. But we, again, need to come to the place of absolute rolling upon the Lord.

So, these things—not trust, but the objects of our trust—are we making sure they are trustworthy and true?

So, we get three things here. Four things, actually. David describes what he trusts or who he trusts.

1. The Lord who intercedes—“The Lord is in His holy temple.” He ever lives to make intercession for us. I’ve got a man that, even on this trip, he calls me every day, and he intercedes for me. The word literally means “stands in the gap.” The gap from my problems to my solution, my difficulties, my arrows, my crumbling foundations, to my hope. The Lord intercedes—He stands in the gap for me, so that I can literally walk from those to this and experience not just hope, but rest.
2. The Lord who reigns—David facing—or I’m sorry, Daniel facing Nebuchadnezzar, to interpret the dream, said this: “There is a God in heaven.” We need to come to that place if we’re going to have trust in the difficulties: There is a God in heaven—the authority, the ruling one on the throne.
3. The Lord who watches—His eyes are ever on us. It’s like if you’ve ever watched your grandchildren, or even back when you were watching your children. You take your eyes off of them for one second, and they’re gone. And the Lord watches us—He never lets us out of His sight.
4. The Lord who evaluates—His eyelids, like a coach studying a player, evaluate what’s going on. How can we overcome this problem?
5. The upright shall behold His face—that word means to literally experience His good favor. There’s a story of the prophet. The people said, “Go to the Lord and stroke His face and ask how much longer do we have to fast?” And that meant “go seek His good favor, go to the Lord and find out.” So here he says, “The upright shall behold His good favor.”

I had a friend loan me a car not too long ago—brand new car, you know, that he had spent several tens of thousands of dollars on it. I have never been a better driver than when I drove that car. I trusted in every mirror, I trusted in the handling of the car, I trusted in the mechanics of the car, but I was extremely careful because this had been vested to me. And I didn’t trust the other drivers—I trusted in what was given to me.

Guys, we’ve been given great wealth, great favor, great privilege, great promises. Are you trusting in them? Are you resting in that? Are you rolling that burden on? Do you know it’s the Lord who is on the throne, or are you letting other things take His place?

Let’s make sure that today, regardless of what arrows are flying or foundations are crumbling, we trust in the Lord. Amen?

Let’s pray.

Father, again, we thank You that You’ve given us this assurance through a man like us, who is experiencing tremendous trial and difficulty and problems. We know that our good friend, our teacher, is experiencing that today. We pray, thanking You, knowing that he is trusting in You today and every day. We just lift him up, and we intercede for him. But Lord, there are men in this room who need that same assurance and trust and rest, belief, and rolling upon You. So, speak to us in the discussion time, maybe on the drive to work or wherever we’re headed. Speak to us to know You are on Your throne. You are the Holy God, and we can rest and trust in You. May we take that step of faith and obedience today, for Your honor and Your glory. In Your authority, we pray it. Amen.

All right, you’ve got some discussion questions sitting around your table, and we’ll give you the rest of the time for that. All right.