Trust the Lord to Not Abandon You.

Psalm 37:3-6,39-40
3 Trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4 Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the LORD;
trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
39 The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD;
he is their stronghold in time of trouble.
40 The LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.

For the next few days I'll be talking about how you know if you're assured salvation; in other words, how certain are you that you have God's forgiveness and love for the rest of your life? The first step I believe in the assurance process involves trust. As a child, you have to trust your parents that they will raise you in a safe and protective shelter and that they will give you the necessities like food, water, and clothes in order to survive each day.

In the same way, you certainly have to trust the Lord. You have to trust that he will wrap his arms around you with his love and grace for the rest of your life. This Psalm asks that you do a little more too. You also have to be righteous and "delight yourself into the Lord and commit your way to the Lord." So it comes with some work. It's not just you tell God that you trust him and that's it. You have to acknowledge him day after day and make the right decisions as he would do. If you do this, you will grow to be prosperous.

I promise you (and certainly God promises you too) that life is filled with huge obstacles and times of stress. To make this fact better, if you're righteous God WILL NOT leave you. He will throw blessings into your life in the middle of chaos. He will also give you everything you need to survive. I read somewhere that "Generosity can never make anyone go bankrupt."

So I tell you, you are saved if you follow the righteous path. Trust the lord. Remember that he is our "stronghold" whenever life just isn't easy.

Tomorrow we'll talk about this assurance of salvation provided you are faithful.

Over the weekend I heard a song for the first time called "God Of This City" by Chris Tomlin. The whole trust factor is associated in this song because we believe "greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city." That's what you have to look forward to if you've yet to be saved by Christ or if you are unsure what salvation is all about. You will be forever changed if you accept Christ and do righteous things in his name!

P.S. If you have trouble with the video stopping and starting, keep the video paused, and let it "buffer" (load) as it's called for a while. You will see the red bar along the bottom advance (speed depends on your Internet connection). Wait until that bar gets pretty far along (I'd say more than halfway) before you play the video and it shouldn't pause.