I Have Decided To Place My Trust in God Alone | Pastor Adam Peterson

Before we jump into the message, let me welcome our online family who made the decision to be with us online today. Come on, we're grateful for you. Many of you in Jacksonville, many of you outside of the city, we're so grateful for you leaning in today. And then come on, do me a favor, church family, help me welcome all the men and women in the correctional facilities. Come on, you made the decision today to be with us as well, and we're so grateful for you. Here's the message today. I have decided to place my trust in God alone. How many of you know that's a good decision? Now, let me explain this very quickly. I know in a room this size, I know potentially maybe even watching online today, or maybe you catch this message at a later time, that maybe there's somebody in here today who has never placed their trust in God. You're here today, and if we were honest, and you were just maybe having coffee with me, you might say, man, I'm searching for something in my life right now. I don't believe in God, I don't have a relationship with God, but I am searching. We are so glad you're here. We created our church for people like you,

and this is a safe place for you to come and search for that thing that you're looking for in your life. Just know this, every time you show up to our church, we're gonna keep telling you the same answer, that the thing you're searching for, the real thing that can only fulfill you and give you that longing and purpose in your life is Jesus. We believe it's him, that he is, and half of our church believes it's him, the other half, they're not clapping for that because they're like, I don't know, we'll see. You have to get to a point in your life, all of us do, where you realize you're a sinner in need of a savior, and Jesus is a better savior than you are a sinner, and the Bible will tell us that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved, and that's you putting your trust in God to be your savior, in Jesus to be the savior of your life, the Lord of your life, to not just save you of your sins and forgive you here on earth, but to seal your eternity with him in heaven forevermore, and if that's you in this place, you watching online, we're so glad you're here. For the majority of you, I know you've put your faith in Jesus, I know you trust in God, and I pray that today's message encourages you as well. Let's get started in this verse out of Luke, chapter 23, verse 46. It says, then Jesus shouted, and if you're wondering what does that mean, he shouted, it means he shouted,

and the context for this verse is that Jesus is on the cross dying for our sin. Why did he have to die for our sin? So that we could have a relationship with God. Our sin separated us from God, Jesus died for our sins, so that we could be forgiven and made new with God. Come on, somebody. And if I'm Jesus, and I'm gonna shout something from the cross, I'm probably gonna shout, this is all y'all's fault. I'm not gonna shout necessarily the things that he shouted, but this is what he said. Father, God, I entrust my spirit into your hands, and with those words, he breathed his last. The last words of Jesus are, God, I trust you. The last words of Jesus are, God, in the midst of my greatest pain, and agony, and torture, and hurt, and heartache, I still choose to trust you. I'm about to die, and I trust you with my life. And so with that being said, I wonder if, show of hands, participatory this morning, how many of you would say, raise your hand, that you know that God is trustworthy? Come on, show of hands. Let's go, I love it. Now, let's have a little bit of fun, you ready? How many of you would say, show of hands, that you still struggle to trust God at times? Isn't that interesting? I said, raise your hand if you know God's trustworthy,

and you were like, yeah! Raise your hand if you struggle to trust him. Right? We wrestle with this tension of going, I know he's trustworthy, because his word says he is. I know he's trustworthy, because I've seen how he's worked in my life. I know without a doubt he's trustworthy, yet I still wrestle with trusting him from time to time. Why is that? I wrote down three reasons for my own life why I struggle to trust God. Probably could have given you 10. I went with the top three. Maybe you'll relate to some of these this morning. The first one is simply this. I actually tend to just trust myself from time to time. Now, I know God's trustworthy, and I appreciate you being God. But I, you know, like, I'm pretty confident in myself too. I went to the school of hard knocks, man. I know how to get things done. I'm a pretty smart person. I can figure things out. But here's the reality that we all have to come around from time to time. This is the book of wisdom, Proverbs. It says those who trust in their own insight are foolish. How many of you have ever trusted in your own insight? You're foolish.

And if you're like, what are you doing? Pastor, you calling me foolish? No, I'm not calling you foolish. God is. Because the reality is this, that from time to time, we do not know what's best for our lives even though we think we do. And if we trust in our own insight, come on, listen to me, hear me very clearly, we're gonna lead ourselves down a path that we don't need to go down. And the Bible would say that's foolish for you to rely on your own insight. Now, how many of you have ever asked for advice from somebody else from time to time? And raise your hand if you, and I don't mean to offend any women in the house, but raise your hand if you've ever asked for driving directions somewhere, okay? Now, we live in an age where you got your phone and you can just pull out your GPS and you can type in where you need to go. But before we had that, before we had MapQuest where you could print out your directions, before we had the internet, you had to, like, if you were going somewhere you'd never been, you had to ask somebody else that's been there, how do I get to this place? I know I need to go northwest, but what roads do I need to take?

I can remember being a kid. Come on, this is gonna age me a little bit, all my older people. Anybody remember being a kid in the backseat of your car and your dad's driving the car, your mom's driving the car, and they got this huge map that's pulled out blocking the entire windshield? And you're like, is this safe right now? There's no way you can see what's in front of you. But you ever had to ask advice and maybe, have you ever asked advice of somebody for driving directions and you ask them and they don't just give you, like, the long way, they give you the exact wrong way? Like, you need to go that way and they sent you this way? How many of you would say, I'm probably never gonna ask them for advice for driving directions? You ever ask somebody for movie advice? Oh, I wanna watch a movie, what's a good movie on Netflix? What's a good movie on Hulu? And they give you, like, a suggestion, and you go to somebody's social media, you read the comments and somebody was like, this movie's great, and you watch it and you go, that's the worst movie I've ever seen? You're probably never gonna go to that person for movie advice again? If I ask you, man, what's one of your favorite restaurants that you like to go eat at in the city, in Jacksonville, and you send me to a vegan restaurant,

I'm never even gonna talk to you again, let alone ask you for dinner advice. Can I share something with you? Listen to me very clearly. People give bad advice all the time, but no one has ever given you more bad advice than you. You are your worst wisdom. Psalms 118 says it like this, it is better to take refuge in the Lord, and we're gonna come back to that word refuge later on in the message, than to trust in people. So we know that sometimes we can't trust in people, but guess who's included in that people? You are. You are not trustworthy from time to time because you don't know what's best for your life. I love the internet. I saw this on the internet, it was a quote, it said, trust myself? I'm the one who got me into this mess. Come on, how many of you ever gotten yourself into mess? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you're like, oh no, no, I know what's best for my life, and you forget about the mess that you've made of your life and the mess you brought other people into. Come on, and the world would look on and go, no, believe in yourself, trust yourself. You're like, why? I'm not trustworthy.

I give myself bad advice all the time. This is why the Bible would tell us this. Again, the book of wisdom, Proverbs, would say trust in the Lord. Like if you're gonna put your hope somewhere, you're gonna put your confidence somewhere, you're gonna put your trust somewhere, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Meaning, in your mind, you're gonna think, this makes sense to me, therefore, I'm gonna do this. And God's like, no, just because it makes sense to you doesn't mean that's what's right. Can I get up in your business for just a little bit? Can I like really offend you for just a second? All right. This is why some of you don't give financially in our church, Red. Because in your mind, it doesn't make sense. Why would I give some of my money? Because if I give that, then I won't have it for myself. Or you're looking at your bills, and you're like, but this, this, this, if I give here, I won't be able to stop and get my coffees. If I give here, then I won't be able to do. this and in your mind that's what makes sense and that's what's keeping you from taking that step of faith but what you need to do is get to a place where you go it doesn't have to make sense to me god's told me to do it therefore i'm not going to lean on my own understanding i'm going to trust in the lord i'm going to take a step of faith and then i'm going to learn that god is my provider one of the names of god jehovah jireh the lord will provide meaning cover to

cover in this book we read about god as being a provider but some of you you don't know him to be that because you've never trusted him to be that another name of god is that he is jehovah shalom he is god my peace and some of you you're not trusting god to be your peace because you're too busy trying to figure it out over here on your own and god is inviting you to trust in him think about peter in the boat with the other disciples the storms going on do you know the story and jesus just comes walking on the water no big deal and you're not clapping because you're not impressed right you're like i walk on water all the time but peter looks at jesus walking on the water and his understanding would have been like oh well he's jesus that's why he's able to do that but peter went past his understanding and said you're walking on water it looks awesome can i do the very thing that you're doing went past his own understanding and in that moment he got to experience a miracle he got out of the boat and he walked on the water towards jesus doesn't make any sense right but by trusting god he got to experience the miracle there is a trust that the lord wants to lead us into but we've got to stop relying on ourselves or anybody else and we've got to start putting our trust in the lord raise your hand if you know god is trustworthy let's go the second thought this morning is this sometimes i think we don't trust god because we have the wrong view of god we're not seeing god for who he truly is so here's just a very short list if you believe these when i hit them please give me an amen how many believe god is good all right you didn't all amen that one so then i have to preach a sermon on the goodness of god later on how many of you believe god is loving all right that was better how many of you believe god is strong how many believe god is faithful when you know god to be this and you see him as this this is an easy god to put my trust in but when i don't see him as this why would i place my trust in a god who's not good why would i place my trust in a god who isn't loving this is the outside world today a lot of people don't want to put their trust in god because they don't even believe he exists they got the way wrong view of him some people don't want to put their trust and follow after god because they think he's cruel and he's just out to get them they have the wrong view of god which is keeping them from trusting in him psalm 62 says this oh my people trust in him at all times that means we can trust in god when everything's good and we can trust in god when things aren't good we can trust in god when everything's right and we can trust in god when things aren't bad because when things are bad here's the good news when things are bad god's still good and so because he is good even in my bad moments even in my bad days even in my darkest

storms that i'm walking through his goodness is with me his goodness is following his faithfulness is for me therefore i can trust in him so oh my people trust in him at all times pour out your heart to him for god is our refuge and that word refuge just means he is our protector he is our safe place that when the storms are raging in life it doesn't mean that by going to god all of that goes away it just means this that i can find safety in him that when when i don't have peace in the things of the world i can have peace in god and i can be reminded that i'm gonna make it through anything that i'm walking through because my god is gonna give me the strength my god is gonna be faithful he's not walking out on me he's not abandoning me he is gonna be with me every step of the way i hope that this is a safe place for you i hope that rise church is a refuge that when you come here on a sunday morning and i would say one more time online family if you can get in the house we want you in the house we want this to be a refuge that you show up here and you go man i can't wait to get to church because everybody i work with They're mean, they're nasty, they're ugly, but the people at this church, man, they love me, they welcome me in, they make me feel like I'm a part of a family. This is a protective place. God's presence is here, but God's refuge, man, it's with you tomorrow, it's with you when you lay your head down tonight. Some of y'all are losing sleep over something in your life, and you're forgetting that God is a refuge that can actually give you peace in the midst of your storm. Psalms nine says it like this, those who know your name, trust in you. You can't put your trust in a God you don't know. You can't put your trust in a God that you don't walk with, okay? If you're here today and you need some dating advice,

don't go to a complete stranger, you don't know them. You don't know what they're gonna say. Go to somebody you respect, go to somebody you know, go to somebody you look up to. Those who know your name, man, they trust in you. For you, Lord, you have never forsaken those who seek you. You've never walked out on us for a moment. You've never abandoned us. Come on, you're good, amen. How many of you love movies? Raise your hand if you love movies. One of my favorite movies as a kid, still love it as an adult, I'm not even ashamed to say this. The original, not the remake, the original, Aladdin. Come on, somebody. The remake was good, but the original's the original, you know what I'm saying? And so the original Aladdin, the cartoon, now I can get down with that movie. And there's this scene where the, and if you've never seen it, I mean, it's been out since the 90s, so you should've seen it by now. But Aladdin reaches his hand out to Jasmine. And when he does, he's on this flying carpet. How many of you wanted a flying carpet when you were a kid? Like, that would be fun, right? And so he reaches his hand out, because she's not sure if she wants to get on, Aladdin's like, it's cool, it's cool, it's cool,

you know, get on, come on. What's up, girl, come on. And he looks at her and he goes, do you trust me? And she gets on the flying carpet, and you know how it goes. I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering, fun. I don't know all the words. A whole new, okay, so. So they start flying, you know, like perfect date night, flying on a magic carpet and everything, and you know, they fall in love, and all the things, right? Ready? If she didn't trust him, she would have missed out on that experience. God is reaching his hand out to you, and he is asking you, do you trust me? And if you do, you will get to step into the peace, the joy, the hope, the assurance, the confidence of who he is. But if you don't, you will miss out on the blessings that he wants to do in your life. And here's the good news. His way is better. His way is always better. Therefore, what do we need to do? We just need to make room in our hearts to say, God, I'm gonna get out of the way.

I'm gonna open up your word. I'm gonna remind myself of who you are. I'm gonna have the right view of you. Therefore, I can trust you. Last one, and this is one that really kind of pops up from time to time for me of why I don't trust God, is I have what I call spiritual amnesia, meaning I forget who God has been to me. I forget. And I've been following Jesus for 25 years. He's done some amazing things in my life, but I have a tendency to forget from time to time. Raise your hand if you grew up Baptist like me. You grew up Baptist. Come on, let's go. Love you, glad you're here. We sang hymns growing up Baptist. And one song that we sang in the church that I grew up in is a song that I literally, like the chorus will pop into my head out of nowhere, and I'll just start singing. It's one of those songs, and maybe you have one of those songs, and I don't know if it's Jesus-based or not, but just a song that you just find yourself singing over and over. For a lot of you, it's gonna be Aladdin today, okay? But one of the songs we sang was called Tis So Sweet. And this song was written in 1882. A lot of the people in this section over here

knew the guy that wrote it. They grew up with it. I'm just, I'm teasing, I'm teasing. 1882. And so the language is a little bit different. So you're like, what does it mean, tis so sweet? It's just a way of saying things. But the chorus, this is what I find myself singing a lot. I just sing these words. Just that they're in my heart. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I've proved him, o'er and o'er. And if you're here and you're like, what is an o'er and an o'er? All right. It's over and over. But the way these guys wrote it in 1882 was poetic rhythm. They didn't realize in 2026 some Yahoo like me was gonna look on and go, what is or and or? Why wouldn't you have just put over and over, but the poetic rhythm didn't work? So I've proved him over and over. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust him more. So it's this confession, hey Jesus, I trust you. And I trust you because I've proved your faithfulness. Better way of saying it is that you've proved your faithfulness. You have proved your faithfulness to me or and or.

You have proved your faithfulness to me over and over and over and over. Follow the breadcrumbs of your life. You know what you're gonna find? The faithfulness and trustworthiness of God in your life. Even when you weren't faithful to him, he was faithful to you. Our church is 13 years old. You know what we've seen? The faithfulness of God. The trustworthiness of God. In your life and in my life, God has been nothing but trustworthy. And then he goes on to say, oh Jesus, Jesus, my precious Jesus, would you give me the grace that I need to continue to trust you even more? So I trust you now. Give me grace to trust you then. Spiritual amnesia is when we forget what God has done for us but when we remember who he's been in our past, it'll give us faith for our present and our future. Psalm 71 verse five. Oh Lord, you alone are my hope. Isn't that a great confession tonight? Can we just rally around that? Can maybe just as we walk out of this place today, we just let God know, hey God, I've actually been putting my hope in some other things but you alone are my hope. My bank account's not my hope.

My marriage isn't my hope. My kids are not my hope. My jobs, this world is definitely not my hope. You alone are my hope. I've trusted you, oh Lord, and I love how the psalmist says this, from childhood. From childhood. Now that's probably not the majority of us. Took me about 17 years before I started putting my trust in God. Some of you have been only trusting God for two weeks, two months, two years. Some of you maybe have been trusting God since your childhood. Here's what I wanna tell you. God has been faithful to you your entire life so where maybe you have not been trusting him, he has been pursuing you with his faithfulness and he has been trustworthy your entire life. Pastor Jay, come up, we're gonna close things out. How many of you know trust has to be earned? Raise your hand if somebody's ever broken trust in your life, okay? Don't raise your hand if they're sitting by you right now. Don't look at them, just look right at me, look right at me. Hey listen, from time to time, sometimes the people closest to us do break our trust and so trust has to be earned. It's this relational equity that we have to put into things

from time to time. Some of you, you stood at an altar with somebody and you made vows, you made promises and maybe you both broke those vows, maybe one of you did. Some of you, you had some friendships. I mean close friendships and you found out your friends have been talking behind your back to other friends, gossiping about you. Some of you were a part of a church and trust was broken because people you thought loved you and cared about you, they didn't and they were gossiping about you. Here's what I wanna tell you. If that's you in any way and you've lost trust from people, I'm so sorry. People will always fail you. Maybe some of you are even in a relationship right now where you're learning to regrow your trust. Praise God for that. Keep fighting, keep working at it. People are guilty. They're guilty of not coming through on their promises. They're guilty of letting us down from time to time. And I just felt as I was preparing this message, I needed to tell you, God's guilty too. He's guilty of being faithful, 100%. See, we love to blame God for all the bad things. Could we just start blaming God for the good things? Could we just be like, I don't know, just for me,

like God, this is your fault. This is your fault you've given me an amazing church. Thanks a lot. Thanks for my awesome three kids. Thanks for giving me purpose. This is your fault. Like, could we literally just start giving the blame to God for the good things that are in our life? And can we put God on trial and find him guilty of being faithful and good and merciful and gracious and trustworthy in our lives? Because that's who he is. And can we just try to today remember, just even if it's one thing, remember who he's been. God, if you were good then, then you're gonna be good now. If you brought me through that then, you'll bring me through this now. Back to the psalm. Some trust in chariots and some trust in horses. Raise your hand if you're trusting in horses right now. Okay, a couple of y'all. Here's what this verse means. If two armies were going to battle, going to war, and one of the armies had 100 chariots and horses and the other one had 50 chariots and horses, odds would say that the army with the 100 would beat the one with the 50. So their hope would be in the amount of chariots and horses that they have.

So some put their trust in that stuff, in the things of this world. But not us. Because we're called to be different. We trust in the name of the Lord, our God. I said we trust in the name of the Lord, our God. I'm not gonna trust in what I see, because what I see will fail me from time to time. I'm gonna trust in what I know to be true, even when I can't see it. That's faith. Raise your hand if you know God is trustworthy. Amen. And we're gonna do something different at Rise Church than we typically would do on a Sunday, but it's gonna be good. If you're walking through something right now, and you would say, I know God's trustworthy, but what I'm walking through right now is difficult and I'm wrestling with trusting Him. And I just want to put my faith and my hope in Him. Would you just raise your hand right now, just to say, I'm walking through something difficult. Come on, yeah, yeah, keep your hand up, just keep it up. Keep it up, come on, there we go. Yeah, yeah, you're not alone. I love when we do the hands thing, because it also lets you know you're not the only one going through something right now. And we don't need to have a competition

of who's walking through the hardest moments in life. But here's what we're gonna do. If somebody's hand up is beside you right now, all I want you to do is put a hand on their shoulder. Okay, and if your whole row is raising your hand, then all of you just touch each other's shoulders. Once somebody touches your shoulder, put your hand down. And we're not gonna move forward until somebody's hand is down. So, come on, we got a hand up right here. Come on, somebody put a hand on that shoulder right there. Right here, if you need to move, you can move. Over here, thank you, Becca. Come on, any other, I got one hand. We're good, everybody's good? All right. This is the family of God, you ready? Right now, you're raising your hand saying you need prayer. But if we did this same sermon six months from now, odds are your hand would be down and the person's hand who wasn't up would be up and you would be praying for them. That's how the church functions best. We are here for one another. So we're gonna pray a bold prayer of faith that God would give them courage and confidence to keep believing, to keep trusting, to keep seeking and that God would work in their lives. Thank you, Jesus, that we can call upon your name and we can proclaim that you're greater

than anything that we're walking through. It doesn't mean that what we're walking through isn't easy. It doesn't mean that it's not difficult, God. It means it might be the hardest, darkest days of our lives but you are with us. And God, we need to be reminded of that from time to time and so thank you that we're a part of a church today who is for each other, who loves each other, who cares enough to intercede and pray for each other. And we're asking you, God, grow our faith. Remind us that you are trustworthy. When the devil tries to lie to us, to tell us we can't trust you, that you've abandoned us, God, we cling to your word. It says, my God would never leave me. He will never forsake me. He is always good. He is for me. We choose today. We decide to put. in the one who is trustworthy. Amen, amen, amen, come on.