Having faith means to have complete trust or confidence. Where is your faith? Where do you place your complete trust or confidence? Is it in the Lord? Or is it in yourself? Do you trust in the Lord to provide for you, or is your trust in things or your bank account or your career? Trusting means to hold a firm belief in the reliability or truth or strength of a person or thing. In what or whom do you place your trust?
The lost place their trust in the things of this world because that’s all they know. I talked to a man one time who said to me, “What has God ever done for me? Everything I have I worked for. God hasn’t given me anything.” Let’s see, God’s given him life. God gave him good health. God gave him strength. God gave him opportunities. God gave him a good job. And those are the valuable intangibles that allowed him to work hard to acquire all the nice things that he owned. Where did he place his trust? In whom did he place his faith? In himself.
Jeremiah 17:5-6 say, “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.”
This man was cursed and didn’t even know it. I said to him, “And who gave you the strength and ability to work?” He was like a desert wasteland. He was too proud to admit that God had been good to him, so he gloried in his own strength and ability.
Jeremiah 9:23 says, “Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.”
There’s nothing wrong with the things he had, but he trusted in the arm of flesh, rather than the Lord. Jeremiah 17:7-8 say, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
Where’s your faith? In what or whom do you place your trust? Are you blessed or cursed?