Thank you for listening to this message from Life House Church.
It has been good to be in God's house to worship in song and word that's coming up here shortly.
And thank you again for being here to worship God together.
It's important that we come together. It's important that we come together and worship together.
And before I get started with my message, I want to extend an invitation to you next week following second gathering,
whether you come to first gathering or second gathering after second gathering, we're having to get together.
And we are going to honor and celebrate Pastor Andrew and Alicia and their daughters and their beautiful time here in ministry at Life House.
Their ministry time here is coming to a close at the end of this month, and they are going to be moving into the next phase of ministry.
Pastor Andrew has been appointed to a church right outside of Newville, PA, and he is going to be kind of relaunching that church has accepted that position.
So they'll be kind of closing out their ministry here and picking up there.
And so we want to take time celebrate them. You can bring a card, just a card of appreciation, whatever you want to do for them.
But we're going to get together, spend a little time with them that particular week, which is next week following what?
All right. Three of you were listening after second gathering.
We'll email you. All right. We'll get it out to you.
But this week, though, I want to start off this message kind of giving you some words or phrases that probably we should never take lightly.
These should never fall out of your mouth.
Just maybe without thought or without any kind of consideration whatsoever.
One of those phrases is I love you. Right.
One is I love you. You should think before you say that, because there's deep meaning behind that.
I love you. Another one is kind of the reciprocal of that is I hate you. Right.
How many of you think long and hard before you say that one?
I hate you. And, you know, actually, when my children were young, they're all grown now.
But when my children were young and they were growing up, we banned that from our house.
You could not say I hate you to one another.
You know, and they would come up with all kind of descriptive things if they're really mad at each other.
Like, I really just like everything about you right at this moment.
You know, they come up with these phrases, but you weren't allowed to say I hate you.
And if you did, you had to hug it out until you didn't. All right.
And how many know you didn't want to do that when you're disagreeing with somebody.
But that's another one that you should think hard about.
I promise about I promise. Right.
I promise. Think hard and long before you say that, because if you're going to promise to do it.
Right. And the one I really want to talk about today is I trust you.
All right. I trust you.
Turn to somebody tell him I trust you. I think. Go ahead. Tell that I trust you.
I think I'm going to be an out on it. Right.
I trust you. I think. All right.
And it's been a verse of scripture that we've been talking about all month long.
And it's Proverbs three, five and six.
And it's trust in the Lord with all your heart and not your own understanding in all your ways.
Acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.
This was our theme for VBS just a few weeks ago.
We had the children come in. They were learning this verse.
A lot of them can quote this verse now. Right.
They can they can they can spit it out.
You can question some of them. Pastor Hannah Walker came back.
She's a lifehouser. She came back and kicked off that first VBS Sunday.
And she preached all over this particular verse.
Proverbs three, five and six.
And today we kind of labeled today the back to school blessing.
It's time for our children to go back to school.
They're heading back. Teachers, administrators, teachers,
aides, personnel that work in schools are just about on the verge,
if not back already, going to school.
And this is back to school blessing Sunday.
And we want to take some time.
And I want to pull from this verse just a little bit more because we should trust in the Lord.
And it sounds eloquent. Right.
Sounds very spiritual.
It rolls right off a Christian's tongue to say we should trust in the Lord.
It makes for an awesome social media post.
It really does. And it's both inspirational and challenging at the same time.
But we have to trade into deeper waters when we start to unpack what the truth is
and what the meaning is to trust in the Lord with all our heart.
What does it mean to do that? It is not a surface thought.
It's not a surface idea. It's not something we should take lightly.
Matter of fact, it is weighty.
In fact, it is complex and it's complex.
It's complex because trust is a matter of the heart.
Trust is a matter of the heart.
And to understand trust, you got to understand your heart a little bit.
How many know our heart is complex? It's complex.
Your physical heart is complex.
And I'm not even going to try to spill out some medical information about our heart.
But our physical heart in our body is a complex muscle.
It carries the blood and the life to your limbs and to your brain and to all the different parts of your body.
And it is a complex mechanism.
And your spiritual heart is complex as well. It's complex.
There is depth in it.
And this is deeply important to understand when we talk about trust and we talk about a heart,
because there are a lot of people that are struggling with trust issues.
They got issues with trust.
So many have been burned in the past and don't trust people.
We have all kind of walls that are built up, right?
Because we don't trust other people.
Some of you jumped into silos, right?
You jump into a silo of distrust and you just stay there.
You keep everybody on the outside.
You yell something over the wall, right?
To everybody else.
There's distrust.
I'm convinced this is why people love their dogs so much.
I really am.
They distrust people so they're just in love with their dog because they can trust their dog, right?
And they carry this distrust for people.
And it spills right over to God.
They don't trust people.
And sometimes it spills right over to God.
Not trusting God is dangerous territory to occupy.
It's a place you don't really want to live.
Because it is in trusting God that opens the door for the power of God to be active in your life.
It's true.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for this day.
God, as we dive into your word and go further, Lord, we ask that you would just guide and direct, Lord, that you would minister.
And God, as we go through this idea, this complex idea of the heart and trust, God, I pray that you would guide us and Lord, write it on the walls of our heart.
Help us, Lord, to know your word and what it says, Lord, that we might be free and God, that we might truly trust in you with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.
And we just give you praise and glory.
And everybody said together, amen, amen.
Listen, trust can be a struggle because my heart is a lot like soup.
All right.
Your heart's a lot like soup.
Not any old soup, but like vegetable soup.
All right.
I don't know how many of you like vegetable soup.
If you like vegetable soup, raise your hand.
Right.
How many of you know you got to be like over 30 years old before you like vegetable soup?
I don't know what it is.
But when I was a kid, I hated vegetable soup.
My mom would make vegetable soup.
And I looked at that concoction and I'm like, what in the world did you put in there?
Are you trying to poison me?
Right.
There's five thousand different vegetables in there.
And then all of a sudden, I don't know what happens like age 30 or something.
You try it.
You're like, this is amazing.
Right.
This is awesome.
But our hearts a lot like veggie soup.
It's a concoction.
It's a mixture of a lot of different things that makes it complex.
There's all kind of things in your heart.
There's things like knowledge.
There's things like emotion.
There's things like perception.
There's things like intuition.
There's things like wisdom.
There's like things like experiences that you've had in life.
There's beliefs.
There's hopes.
There's dreams.
Right.
There's self will.
All this stuff goes into the soup in your heart.
It's kind of like vegetable soup on steroids in your heart.
It's a little bit of everything from your lives that makes up the heart soup that you have.
And it's what we and what you believe and what you trust in is an outflow of all those things that are concocted in your heart.
It really is.
It's why the word of God says that God looks at the heart and not just the exterior of who I am.
It's why God looks at your heart.
It's why God looks at my heart.
It's why he examines the inside because that's where you live and not just the exterior.
And if we go into God's word, we'll see where he says this.
Matter of fact, the prophet Samuel hears this very thing from God.
The prophet Samuel is in search of the next king of Israel, the second king of Israel,
because the first one has failed to follow God.
And God instructs Samuel to go to the house of Jesse.
Say Jesse.
All right. It's good to know what's going on in the story.
Right. And Jesse is a Bethlehemite.
He's from Bethlehem.
And God sends Samuel to go to his house.
And he says the next king is going to come from one of his sons.
Now, he's got a bunch of sons.
Matter of fact, he brings seven of them out.
Think of that.
Seven sons. You think your grocery bills big, right?
Seven sons.
He brings out before the prophet.
Jesse brings out before the prophet Samuel and he begins to parade them in front of them because Samuel is there to pick the next king of Israel.
He's there to anoint the next king.
He's there to hear from God.
Right.
So first Samuel 16 is where we're going.
First Samuel 16, verse six is where we're going to pick up.
If you got your Bibles, go there.
I'll give you just a second to flip there.
First Samuel 16, verse six.
And it says this.
So it was when they came that he would just talk about Samuel looked at Elab and said, Surely the Lord's anointed is before me.
Or before him.
Jesse parades his seven sons in front of Samuel.
And I don't know what Elab had.
I don't know what this son possessed.
But whatever it was, it impressed Samuel because we don't know if the Bible doesn't tell us.
But one thing that he was tall, I don't know if he was a good looking guy.
I don't know if he was fierce in his appearance.
I don't know if he was ripped.
Right.
And I thought, man, that guy looks like he'd be a king.
I don't know if this son came off as stately, maybe kind of royal in nature.
I don't know if he was really good at communication and seemed like he would be excellent, you know, in a position of king.
I'm not sure what it is that impresses Samuel other than then Elab is tall, is statured.
How many know that can be impressive if you're tall.
Right.
I don't know anything about that, but I've heard about it.
All right.
Whereas.
But whatever it is, this guy has it.
And and and the prophet, Samuel's looking at Elab and he's thinking, this is a no brainer.
This has got to be the one.
This has to be it.
But verse seven picks up and says this.
But the Lord said to Samuel, don't judge by his appearance or height.
But I've rejected him.
The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them.
People judged by outward appearance.
But the Lord looks at the what?
The heart.
The Lord looks at the heart.
People judged by the outside appearance.
But it's God who looks at the heart.
We judge people, but why by what we see on the outside, God looks at people through a whole different lens.
We judge people based on what we hear, what we see, what we smell.
Amen.
Come on.
And I mean by that emotional feelers.
I mean, we judge.
Right.
We get our emotional feelers out.
Well, maybe use your smell or two.
I don't know.
But, you know, we we get that out when we meet somebody and we start judging who they are.
We lean on our perception of who people are.
We kind of lean in on what we hear, what we're seeing, right.
What we're perceiving off of somebody, the emotions we're kind of experiencing around someone.
And we make judgment calls based on those exterior feelings.
No matter how limited those judgment, how limited that exposure is, we make a judgment call.
We don't see somebody else's heart.
We really don't.
Someone cuts us off in traffic and gives you a look like you cut them off, like it was your fault.
It could be Mother Teresa behind the wheel.
And you're throwing Christian cuss words at them.
You made a judgment.
Six seconds flat.
You're thinking, you stupid idiot.
You jerk face.
You literally start calling down curses on them.
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
You're saying stuff like that because they can't hear you, right.
We judge people on the outside.
But God has an ability that we don't possess.
God looks at the inside.
He looks at the heart.
He checks out your soup, amen.
Right past the facade, right.
Right past all the things that we put up, the things, the pictures that we paint for everybody else that's in front of us.
He looks beyond that and he actually goes into the interior of who you are.
All of it, the experiences, right.
The perceptions, all the things you have and all this is inside of you.
And it's in that place.
He knows who and what I trust in.
He looks straight into your heart.
He knows who and what you're trusting in.
And FYI, he's the only one that's qualified to do this.
I don't know if you know that or not, because he made you, because he designed you, because he made those corners and those recesses of your heart.
Those compartments in your heart.
He knows where that's at.
And he looks straight beyond the facade that we put up, straight beyond what we paint as we get in front of a family or friends or anyone else.
And he looks into those recesses.
He looks into those corners.
He looks into those compartments and he gets an accurate picture, right, an accurate picture of who you are and what you trust in.
He knows what's in your soup.
He knows what's in there.
So if I'm really going to understand what it is to trust in him, I need to hear from God.
And I got to be willing to go dig deep, take a deep dive with Jesus and see what's in my heart.
We don't like that.
Amen.
We don't.
I got to be completely honest about what I've allowed into my heart, what's hidden in them compartments of my heart, the things that have affected me, the ideas that I have,
the experiences that have shaped and formed what I trust in.
Right.
I've got to be willing to look inside and not just excuse and look on the outside, because if I'm trusting in the wrong things, can I tell you it's going to manifest in your life in all kind of ways?
It's going to spring out of you at a moment.
Notice.
All right.
It's kind of one of those reasons we do things and we're like, where did that come from?
You know, how many of you have done something?
You're like, that was not me.
Anybody do that?
You ever do something you say, well, that wasn't me.
Yes, it was.
Right.
You do something you're thinking, that wasn't me.
Right.
It's jacked up.
It's all wrong.
You know, it could be sinful.
And you're going, well, that wasn't me.
Where did that come from?
That came from your heart.
That came from something that you're trusting in in your heart, not from God.
Right.
Not what you trust in God, it came from your belief center.
It came from where you warehouse what you trust in, where you warehouse what you believe.
There is something that we trust in in our heart.
And understand this.
Whatever it is that you trust in in your heart will trump what you believe or even actually
what you're thinking at the moment every time.
What you believe in your heart will trump a passing thought.
It will even trump what you think you know you're supposed to do.
It's what you believe.
It's what you trust in.
It's some knowledge that you have.
Right.
It's some belief that you adopted somewhere way back when with an experience that you
had.
It's some information, some bad information that you trusted somewhere along the way.
It might be an experience, right, an emotional past experience of some kind that you had.
And you somehow you developed something that you trust in out of that.
And in a moment of pressure, right, the world likes to call it a trigger.
In the moment of pressure, in the moment that something flips that switch, the trust or
distrust comes right to the surface.
And you're like, that wasn't me.
I don't even believe I said that.
I don't believe I did that.
Right.
Then I do what I don't want to do instead of what I should do.
I know it's sin and I just plow through it anyway.
Something's messed up in my suit.
And I need to take a good look at what's in my heart.
What's deep in the recesses.
I got to go there with Jesus.
I got to allow Jesus to expose what's in there.
Right.
What I'm trusting in.
Sometimes, sometimes we beat ourselves up over doing the wrong thing.
We'll chastise ourselves.
We'll feel guilty about it.
We'll feel ashamed.
Right.
And we'll go ask God for forgiveness and we should.
That's exactly what we should do.
But we never stop and look inside.
We never go to what actually caused it.
What am I trusting in that's causing this in my heart?
What's bringing this cycle of sin that keeps coming back up in my life or this poor response
that I keep defaulting to.
Right.
In my life.
Am I trusting in God?
Do I trust God enough to look inside and see what's in my soup?
Amen.
God looks at the heart because He knows it's the trust center.
He knows it's the warehouse.
Right.
He knows it's the headquarters for everything that I trust in.
And it has everything to do with living like a prince of God in the kingdom of God or trying
to be king myself.
Right.
And crashing and burning every time.
It's true.
It's why God's word says this in Proverbs 423.
He says this in Proverbs 423.
He says, guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life.
Guard your heart.
Guard your heart for determines the course of your life.
Guard your trust warehouse.
Guard your trust headquarters.
Guard your trust center.
Be aware what's in the soup.
Watch over what goes into the warehouse.
Right.
And watch over what comes out of the warehouse because it will determine the course of your
life.
I should be a security guard of my heart.
Right.
I should get the uniform, the gun, and the badge.
Right.
And a set of cuffs while I'm at it.
You really should.
I should arrest anything that's trying to come in, get into my heart that shouldn't
be there.
And I should guard and arrest some things that come out of my heart.
I should take a look at that as well.
I don't know if you know how it works in the security guard.
I've never been a security guard, but just out of observation, right, if you see a security
guard, they have a couple different roles.
Right.
If it's maybe an office type of building and you go to the front door, there's a security
guard there and they'll check you in.
Right.
And they're making sure you got the right credentials to get in the building.
And if you don't, you're not going in.
Right.
They're trying to keep the people out that aren't supposed to be in.
They're trying to keep out people that would be thieves.
They're not authorized.
Right.
And for whatever reason, a security guard will meet you at the front door and say, you're
not coming in here unless you got the proper credentials.
And that's what we should do in our heart.
But also there's security guards who keep something in that's already in there.
Right.
If you go to a jail or a prison, they're not so worried about you getting in.
They're worried about you getting out.
Right.
If you're in the prison system, they're trying to keep what's in there from going out.
And I need to be the same way with my heart.
I need to be the same way with my trust center.
I got to I got to be the security guard.
I got to I got to be on duty.
Right.
I got to be careful what I let in there.
I need to monitor what's coming in and what's going out.
What am I saying?
Listen, how many know you got to be careful about what's coming into your heart.
It's kind of like food.
It's kind of like same thing.
How many know you are what you eat?
Right.
Yeah, I know.
All right.
You are what you eat.
It's the same thing in your heart.
You become what you let in there.
Right.
And I need to be equally diligent about what's coming out of my heart.
You know, what am I am I watching what's coming out?
I need to see you know what you need to do.
You need to check the ID at the door.
Everything that's coming in and everything that's going out.
You start checking the ID.
What does this belong in there?
Is this what should be in there?
Is this something that God has?
Is this righteous?
I need to check what's coming in and then I need to check what's coming out.
Right.
You need to stop that emotion right at the door and say, is this of God?
Right.
Let me check the ID on that because maybe you got something in your building.
Right.
Maybe you got something in your warehouse that shouldn't be in the warehouse.
We need to check it coming in and we need to check it coming out.
We spend more time worrying about where we're going to lunch.
Right.
What we're putting in our stomach.
Right.
Physical food that we're going to eat.
We'll get on our phones.
How many how many you check out the reviews on a new restaurant.
Right.
You want to see what everybody else got to say.
You get on there and you're reading through all those reviews.
You find out what the menu is.
You find out the hours.
You find out what part of town it's in.
You start you spend an hour.
You're going to eat for a half an hour.
You'll spend an hour and a half looking about looking up the restaurant.
Find out.
Right.
But we won't take 10 seconds to check the ID of what's going into our heart.
You're checking what's going to go in your mouth and come out the other end.
Two hours later.
Come on.
Four hours later.
But we don't check the ID of what's coming into our heart.
Young people are about ready to head back to school.
You need to check what's coming in your heart.
You need to check what's coming out.
You need to check the ID of what's happening.
Right.
We need to think twice about what's coming in and what's going out.
Right.
We get off the rails emotionally sometimes.
Right.
We'll explode.
You ever just explode over somebody say a little thing and man you blow up and you just spew all over everybody.
And later on you can do one or two things.
You can check the ID at the door and say where did that come from?
And you can start doing a deep dive like God you need to help me because this doesn't make any sense.
I went way overboard and what I got angry about.
You can do that or you can just excuse it.
Right.
You can just say well I just got angry.
Amen.
Come on.
Everybody gets angry once in a while.
Right.
Come on.
Everybody does it.
Everybody gets mad once in a while or you can start doing a deep dive and you start saying Lord what's in here that you know that's coming out that I need to check at the door.
You know what is it that I'm trusting in that exploded all at one time.
Jesus gave us Jesus gave some folks direction on this who were all caught up in what you take into your stomach and what you eat.
And he said that's that's not the issue here.
In Mark 714 he says that Jesus called to the crowd to come in here.
He said all of you listen he said and try to understand it's not what goes into your body right into your belly that defiles you.
You are defiled by what comes out of your heart.
It's the heart.
It's the soup.
Check the ID.
What's going in.
Check what's coming out.
Question the source.
Question where it came from.
Question how it got there.
It's true.
As I move towards closing and I said just towards closing.
We'll give you Proverbs 3 5 and 6 again.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths.
If we want to succeed in this heart soup thing.
If we want to make sure that my trust warehouse is storing the right things in the right compartments.
Right.
Verse 6 gives us the how to.
It really does.
How many DIYers do we have in your do it yourselfers.
How many do it yourselfers at things at home.
I didn't say in everything but just some things.
How many like to do it yourself.
You'll look it up on YouTube right and you'll think I can do that.
You talk to I got in trouble a couple of times doing that but you're a do it yourselfer.
And when you're do it yourself for you want to know how it works.
You want to know you don't want to hear the theory about it.
You got it.
You want some right.
You want some application.
How does this work.
Well this is how it works.
You want to know how you get the right things in your heart.
When you're checking the ID and you got to do do a deep dive and you got to start figuring out what's in there and what's coming in and what's going out.
This is it in verse 6 it says in all my in all my ways I acknowledge him.
All right.
In all my ways let me give you the new living translation of this verse.
Proverbs 3 5 and 6 it says trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Do not depend on your own understanding.
Some of the previous translation seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take.
The key to have my heart right with what's coming in and what's going out and what I trust in is seeking his will.
In everything at the door at the door at the place of ID the standard I use to check at the door right when you go in sometimes they authenticate your ID in some kind of way.
The way I check at the door of my heart what's coming out and what's going in and vice versa is that I need to check and see is this in the will of God.
I hold up my credentials right.
Whatever it is whatever is coming into my heart you hold that credential up next to what God's will is and you say is this God's will for my life.
Is this in God's plan for my life and if it isn't you reject it.
You don't let it in the door and with whatever is coming out you know you say is this in the plan of God is this in this God's is this in God's will.
And if it's not that's when you do the deep dive and you start saying hey why is this here.
What's going on.
How do I do this.
What what do I need to shake out of my life in the middle of this and you do this two ways.
There's only two ways to find out God's will one you go to the word of God.
This is why it's so important to be in a life group.
This is why it's so important for you to do your daily devotions.
This is why you need to be in God's word all the time because you the word of God reveals the will of God.
What translates into the plan of God in your life.
So you need the word of God right to find out the will of God which translates into the plan of God in your life.
You need the written word.
He gave you a handbook.
All right.
Every one of us he's given us a handbook.
It's we have access to that handbook.
But secondly is the Holy Spirit who he sent and what happens with the Holy Spirit in this to find out God's will.
You need to find out how God's word right which is God's will which is should be the plan of your life.
You need to find out how that all translates to you personally in the moment that you're in.
In the circumstance that you're in not my circumstance not his circumstance not somebody else's circumstance.
And you need the Holy Spirit to say hey this is how God's word applies to your circumstance in this moment because it might look a little bit different than the person next to you.
God's word never changes.
It's the same yesterday today and forever sin and sin righteousness is righteousness.
But how you begin to apply that in your life may look very different from the person beside you.
The application is going to be different for you because you've got different circles you're in.
You've got different ideas that were in your heart.
You grew up in a different place and it is the will of God is the will of God.
This is what you check at the door every single time.
It's so simple.
It's so profound.
Check what it is.
Because if you start doing this if we start doing this what goes into my heart is of God.
What I trust in is of God.
What I put my heart and soul into is of God and not of me or something from the outside that's going to mess me all up.
Check it at your heart.
This is how you get the soup right.
Say the soup.
This is how you get the soup right.
Students we're going to pray over you in just a minute.
You hear me in this.
Check at the door of your heart.
You're going to get a thousand ideas from a thousand different people thrown at you.
Check it at the door.
Find out what the will of God is for your life.
Because God's perfect will for my life houses his perfect plan for my life.
His perfect will houses God's perfect plan for my life.
And I don't know anybody that doesn't want to know God's perfect plan for their life.
It's true.
Jesus said it in the Lord's prayer right.
In this manner therefore pray our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It has to do with your heart as well.
I'm going to ask you to stand right now as Pastor Andrew makes his way.
Thank you for tuning in to this message from Life House Church.
We pray that you were impacted powerfully by this message.
If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with us as we love God, love people every day,
visit our website at www.lifehousecog.com