this week. And not only do I want us to sing it tomorrow night, but I'm going to ask whoever's the song leader to let me lead it. I'll tell you what it is now so you can practice up all the night and all day tomorrow. It's and can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior's blood. He for me who caused such pain. Charles Wesley, number thirty. Don't turn to it now now because I want you to listen to me. But number thirty-seven. And that's One of the songs that I learned in England happens to be our brother Billy Graham's favorite hymn. It's really a great hymn. One of the greatest hymns ever written. I wonder how many of us have stopped to thank God today for the hymns of the church. You ever try to think of how it would be if you didn't have the hymns that assist you in worshiping and praising the living God? Just think if what if we didn't have amazing grace and near the cross and what a friend we have in Jesus and saved by grace and then can it be and like a river glorious and just go on and on and on and on. What if we had none of those hints? Well, it'd be much more difficult than it is to relate how we feel about our Lord, then it is. So if you haven't already thanked God for the hymns of the church, when you get home tonight, thank Him. Thank Him for the people that He's given, that He's been able to speak through to write these hymns. We had the joy of having John Peterson in our home last September in Columbia. John Peterson has written over fifteen hundred gospel songs and hymns. In fact, about eight of them are in this book. Very, very fine hymns about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there's something I didn't make clear in my message today. My chain of thought got sidetracked by something that I said. I didn't get back to one of the main points of emphasis in my message, and I'd like to take two minutes and clear that up right now. We were speaking about Christian stewardship or giving. We were comparing the tithes in the Old Testament with giving as God hath prospered us regularly, proportionately as He has prospered us in the church age or in the day of grace in which we live. And what I meant to say, but didn't get around to saying it not directly, I might have inferred this. What I meant to say was that I firmly believe that for the believer in this age, that a tithe should be the absolute minimum that we would give back to God, because after all it belongs to Him. But that actually we have not given anything, really. in one sense until we've given more than the tithe. And of course the Lord made it very clear and very simple and very plain in several occasions in the New Testament. When he spoke of the widow's wife, for example, he said she has given all that she had. And she gave much more than some rich man who would give thousands of dollars because she gave all she had. There are some people that I'm sure that they would be very, very stingy and little if they didn't give thirty and forty percent of what comes into them. It should be something that is really a matter of prayer. And I know, and I'm aware of the fact that there are many, many godly saints that really make this a matter of prayer. I never, and I didn't intend to take this time, but just let me throw this in here. I was in Long Island once. I'm not going to call the lady's name, but She was a lady that God had blessed financially. She was a widow lady and she was up in years. And after I'd visited in a home once or twice, she said she was aware of the fact that I knew a number of the people in various evangelical interdenominational ministries such as Child Evangelism and Youth for Christ and CBMC and Christian Women's Club and the American Board of Missions to the Jews and and faith mission boards and so forth. And she said, Brother Few, I get so many letters from so many organizations, and I don't know who they are, and I don't know who's behind them, and I don't know whether they're good or whether they're bad. Brother Few, would you mind reading through some of my mail and put a little check on them if you know some of the people that are on the board of trustees and the board council of reference and so forth and so on, I certainly would appreciate it. And you know, for three hours, I got into a kind of a library there and she brought me a basket full of letters and envelopes, some of which she'd never had time to open. And I went through them and there were a number of very, very fine ministries in there that she knew nothing about. Ministries that were directed by such people as my friend Bob Cook of Youth for Christ and Nat King's College and other places like that and Columbia Bible College and Dallas Seminary and Moody Bible Institute, Emmaus Bible School and Liturgy of Crusades and right on down the list. And I just put a check by the ones that I knew were sound and evangelical. And the dear Saint of God appreciated so much. She wrote me a letter on handwriting later to thank me for just taking the time to go through her mail. Because she said, Brother, few, as you know, everything I have is the Lord's. And I want to use it as a wise steward of the Lord's funds. This is a real blessing to me. I've never had a lot of money to give like that. But here was the lady that... She probably could have given a million dollars if she wanted to. I'm sure she invested it wisely. I'm glad to say that by the time she went home, some of her friends told me, not her children, but some of her friends told me she'd given just about all of it back to the Lord. Another thing I meant to say today, I'm sure that you're all aware of it. But I was made aware of this, and I've been reminded of it many times since. When we built our house in Columbia, South Carolina, we got a letter of intent from the man who owned the lot that we were going to build a house on. He said, well, I've got to get one or two things straightened out before we get the deed and everything, and I had the letter of intent that he would sell us the lot. And the house was actually half built before we had the deed. And so finally I met Mr. Guy Tarant down at the bank and we went over to this other bank and so forth and drew up the papers and we signed the papers. And he said, you know, isn't it stupid, Shockless, says, we're just so busy, busy, busy making money. He said, you know so-and-so that died last week? Yes. He was a very, very wealthy man, big business man. You know how much money he left? I said, no, sir. He said he left it all. You know that's the way it is. If you don't give it to the Lord and to the Lord's work, before you go to be with him, you leave it all. There's not any pockets in shrouds. And you don't take any money with you. You leave it all. So if any of you have any of the Lord's money, you just ask the Lord to lead you as to where you should invest it for his glory while you're here. Now, I'm not going to ask you how many of you read the thirty-seven Psalms. But if you didn't, I hope you'll read it tonight or tomorrow. Now, if I were from England, I'd say, Sam, but I'm not. I'm from north central Georgia, so I say, Psalm. I was with Bob Stevens' dear father, no grandfather, in Toronto just a few days before he went to be with the Lord. And the Lord led me to read this Psalm to him. And he was a very, very sick man, very, very feeble, about ninety-odd years of age. He was laying on a little cot on what we call the sun deck, a sun porch, the back of the house. And when I finished reading this thirty-seventh Psalm, he said, Brother, if you, if I had asked you to read my favorite Psalm, that would have been it. So every time I think of this wonderful Psalm, I think of dear Brother Stevens up in Toronto. This was probably been in nineteen hundred and forty-seven, I believe, or maybe forty-eight. More than likely it was forty-seven when I was up for the Innovosity Missionary Convention. Do you have any problems? Any of you? Oh, you do? Oh. You mean most of you have problems? Hmm? Oh, that's unusual. You mean they kind of get on your mind? You know, you think about them sometime? You spend time thinking about them? Trying to figure them out? Hmm. Very unusual. Never spoke to a group of people that had problems like that, Rose. We laugh about it, but you know, I was thinking as I was walking up from the lake a while ago, do you read about a man by the name of Abraham? Do you know he had problems? You think he had problems? How do you like to be in Jacob's shoes? Man by the name of David. He had a few. Moses, Solomon, Elijah. He had a problem with discouragement. You mean a great man like Elijah? Oh, yes. He said, Lord, I'm the only one here. And there's a whole couple of them that hadn't bowed the knee to bail. And you know, Elijah thought he was all alone. took his eyes off of Jehovah. Everywhere I go, people have problems. One of the fastest growing businesses in America today is a Christian bookstore business. You know why? Because God's people have all kinds of problems, and He's leading people to read, to write a lot of books, and most of them are help me books. Help me. Help me do this. Help me do this. Help me have a happy marriage. Help me have a better home. Help me teach my children. Help me do this. Help me do this. People are grabbing and scratching and searching and reaching for answers. Well, some of the books are very helpful. And the ones that are most helpful are the ones that stick the closest to what they've gotten out of this book right here. Right here. Threat not thyself because of evildoers. Neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green earth. Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be said. Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noon day. in the Lord, and wait patiently for him. Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass." Now I've been working on this message for eight years, and I'm still working on it. Because you see, As long as the Lord is still teaching you things on a certain subject or a certain passage, you're still working on it. In fact, I still have my rough notes here. Now, these are not the same rough notes I had eight years ago, but I haven't gotten it down to where I want to get to my typewriter and put kind of my finished notes on this message because God is still teaching me things about many of the truths that we have, even in these first six or seven or eight verses. of the thirty-seventh Psalm. I am indebted to my dear friend and brother Howard Hendricks of Dallas Seminary for a little of a skeleton outline and two of the illustrations that I've used tonight. Brother Hendricks has reminded us that the day and the age in which we live has been called by a lot of people the aspirin age. Or you could maybe better say the pill age. Because of all the problems that the people are having today, they take a pill to wake up and they take a pill to go to bed. They take a pill to do this and a pill to do that. I was at a brother's house the other night and I think he told me he took seven different kinds and he said it's so hard to take them at different times. I just put all of them in my head at one time, take a swallow water and away we go. And he's finished for the day. Well, that's pretty good if they all don't fight against each other or anything. That's fine. But we laugh about it, but millions, actually billions and billions and billions of dollars are spent by the pharmaceutical company and by the companies and the people that buy them in pills. All kinds of pills. Problems, problems, problems. Now let me tell you something. The way I handle my problems and the way you handle your problems says a lot. about your relationship to Jesus Christ. And one of the basic reasons why those who are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus Christ use other methods of trying to escape their problems is because they don't have anyone to really turn to. when they come face to face with a reality of some of their problems. Now here are the three things that I got from my friend Howard Hendricks. He says that there are three attitudes that you can take. And we'll find out, well, of course you know, you'll know when I read them to you which attitude you take. Now, one of the attitudes that, and Christians do this, does it... Christians do this also, by the way. One of them is the ignoring attitude. You know, I'll just ignore it. You know, oh, well, it'll go away. You know, what you kind of do like an ostrich. You put your head in the sand and you say, well, I just won't think about it. You know, you put off facing up the reality. I heard a lady say one day, I forgot where it was, but I was impressed with it. And her husband, it was one of these households where the wife pays all the bills. She apparently brought the paycheck home and gave it to her, you know, and she had the checkbook and she wrote all the checks and paid all the bills. And I suppose I must have been eating dinner there or something, and he brought all of the bills that had come in and handed them to her. She said, I don't want to see them. Don't give them to me. Well, you think I'm going to pay the bills? Oh, no. Just don't bring it up now. Don't mention it now. Another way to deal with problems, and even some Christians are guilty of this, is to run away out of here. I think I told you, well, maybe I didn't. This was in Marietta the other day. I was speaking on another subject, but I told you about a family in Illinois that ran away from a preacher because he was getting under their skin. He was getting next to them. He was their pastor. And they were getting deeply under conviction about their lack of dedication and consecration to the Lord. And they said, oh, let's move away. As long as they stay here, the people are going to expect us to come to this church. So they moved to California. And they didn't want to get involved in a church in California right away. They wanted to get settled down. And they waited about six months before they went to church. They said, well, we'll go now. We've been here six months. They went to the nearest churches up on the corner from where they lived. And who do you suppose was a Vist and Evangelist in the pulpit that day? Well, certainly you've already guessed it. The pastor they moved to California to get away from in Illinois. Well, they told the Lord, Lord, we're going to give up. You chased us all the way out here. We'll just give in to you. But a lot of people try to run away from their problems. But you see, friend of mine, as a rule, when you try to get away from your problems by moving somewhere else, When you get there, the problem is right there because you took it with you. These kind of Christians, they read, first Corinthians, ten, thirteen, and they get about halfway and they stop. There is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able. But will with the temptation also make a way to escape, and they stop right there. The rest of it is very, very, very important. Because the rest of it says about the temptation that ye may be able to bear it. Now, tomorrow morning I'm going to mention in my message something about what trials and difficulties can do in a Christian's life to make them a much better Christian than they were. before they had the trials. Let's don't get into that. That's tomorrow morning. All right. Now, the third attitude that my friend Howard Hendricks says Christians sometimes can take with a problem is it's what he calls the Grand Barrett attitude. Oh, well, we'll make the best of it. Buckle up, get tight. We're going to we're going to weather the storm all right. He calls this evangelical fatalism. But none of these are legitimate roots for a Christian as to how he should deal with problems that come into his life. I'd like to say that I've mentioned this verse several times this week since last Sunday morning, the verse which God and I chose as our last verse even before we were married. I think it is very helpful to get a life verse. And when you come across a certain type of a problem, sometimes just go right back to that verse and read it and realize that it's true and that you should try to practice what it says. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path. Now, in dealing with a problem, if you have a problem, Well, let's say in athletic competitions, and you've been losing some games, what do you try to do? You try to find out what is it that's gone wrong. Now, in your Christian life, perhaps in your emotions, in your spiritual life, in your habits, in your practices, Suppose there's been a breakdown there somewhere and you have a problem. If you were to go to a council, I'm going to save you some money, by the way. If you were to go to a council, it might cost you, you know, sixty, seventy-five, eighty dollars an hour. You can save some money. One of the first things you need to do to get help is to state what your problem is. I know some Christians have a problem. You want me to tell you what it is? That problem is they are never, N-E-V-E-R, never on time to a meeting. Now, because she don't have those here, of course, but I've been in assemblies where certain families about ten or twelve minutes after you had started remembering the Lord, you'd hear a little commotion. And you'd hear one, two, three, four, five, six people sit down. And sure enough, yeah, that's them. Now they have a problem. And I can tell you what the problem is. Be free. I'm going to tell you for free what that problem is. They have no intention of getting their own time. Because if they did... Very simple. You wouldn't even have to go to a grammar school. Okay, if you've been leaving at nine, ten every Sunday and you get there ten minutes late, well, what do you start doing to get there on time? You start ten minutes earlier. Isn't that? That's real hard mathematics, isn't it? Oh, that's terrible. But even with me flunking math at the University of Georgia, I can tell you that's the way you do it. You start earlier. What's your problem? Well, I don't really intend to get to the meeting on time because if I did, I would start earlier. Because what they ought to do instead of starting at nine, they should start at five of nine and get to at least five minutes before it starts so they can be seated and in their place. And many times in the problems that you and I have in our lives, what we need to do is sit down and be realistic and say, all right, I have a problem. What is it? How can I deal with it? Most of the time, you don't need to talk to anybody about it except the Lord. Define your problem and then do something about it by God's grace and God's help. All right, we've got four commands, four divine commands. Verse three, trust in who? Princes, bank accounts, stewards' foundation bonds, TNT stocks, Gus Mutual? I was visiting a friend a few months ago. And his stockbroker calls him at ten o'clock every morning, Monday through Friday, ten o'clock. Oh, just a minute. That so-and-so called him by his first name. Yeah, hello, how are you? What's good? Oh, oh, it's going up. You think that's going to be good? You do? Well, listen, go ahead and get me a thousand shares of that. Okay, thank you. Goodbye. And he just... And if you go with him on a trip somewhere, you see him, the first time he gets the paper. You know what he looks at? I've got a friend that's in the business, and he'll be at the workers' conference. Where are you going, John? I've got to go get a newspaper. See what so-and-so did? No. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not the kind of trust I'm talking about. Trust in... Now, before you trust in anyone or anything, it's always very, very sound logic to find out whether or not the one or the thing you're trusting in is worthy of your trust. I heard a tape this afternoon by my friend Wilbur Nelson from Morning Chapel of the Air in California. He called up a missionary. It's a message he gave at Times Week Conference just a few weeks ago in Chicago. A missionary who had been on the field for many, many years, and he was going through the alphabet and trying to learn all of the words so that he could translate the Bible into the language of the people that he was serving. And he had walked all day long to see a missionary friend who was kind of discouraged and needed some fellowship. He had walked all day long, and finally he got to the missionary friend's house. I brought sun down. He was so tired, he could hardly put one foot above the other, beyond the other. And the friend said, come on in, brother. We've got dinner waiting for you. He said, if you don't mind, brother, I'm so tired. I'm just going to have to rest a few minutes before I eat. And there was a big easy chair over on the side of the porch there on the veranda. And he said he went over there, and he put all of his weight into the chair. And he jumped up and he said, Oh my, I have the word I've been looking for all these years. And now I can go ahead with my translation. I needed a word for trust. And that's what it is. You put all your weight and your confidence in it. He said, Just a moment ago, I threw back through all of my weight in that chair. And that's what having trust and confidence and faith and the living God is. You just put all your weight in Him. All your confidence. All your trust. You wouldn't go out to a nineteen hundred nineteen thirty-six airplane that had bailed wire on it and one of the ties was flat and you hadn't started it for about ten years. You wouldn't go out to an old vintage airplane like that and get in it and drive a fly away. No. You'd have to have confidence in it. God knows why we sometimes fail and one of the main reasons is is because we don't haven't really learned the secret of really truly putting our trust in Him. The moment we begin to worry, we fail to trust in the Lord. Worry is a disease that drains the soul of reality. a soul sucker that will drain the very power which faith itself will release. You're not trusting when you're worried. And one of the great sins of God's people today is that a lot of the Lord's people spend a lot of needless time worrying when they could commit their way unto the Lord and know that the Lord will bring it to pass. You might have heard me give this illustration before. In nineteen, well not, well, I don't have to give you the year, but during World War II, when I was a pastor of a Southern Methodist church in Memphis, Tennessee, there was a lady there who lived in Mississippi, but who was a member of the church and came up whenever she could to the church. A very, very godly woman. She really knew the Lord. And she had a son in what they called the U.S. Air Corps then. It's now the U.S. Air Force. And this son was a B-Twenty-four pilot in Europe. And one day she got a telegram. And telegram said, Your son, Captain Lancelot, Minor, has been shot down over Romania. We do not know his circumstances, so forth and so on. When we know more about his circumstances, we will let you know. And for about five weeks, She did not know whether he was dead or alive. After five weeks, she received word from the U.S. Air Force that he was a prisoner of war of the Germans. And after about, I suppose, four or five more months, the war was over and he came home. But this is Ms. Miley's testimony. She said, Brother Hughes, During all of my adult life, I've made it the habit of my life as a Christian to take a little rest every day. And then, of course, I get my regular sleep at night. She said all the time that Lanslot was overseas, all the time that I didn't know whether he was dead or alive, all the time that I knew he was a prisoner of war in a German war prisoner war camp I never miss getting one minute's sleep she said I knew that wherever the last lot was the Lord could take care of it if he was a prisoner of war he could take care of it if he was dead he was in heaven because he knew the Lord and I learned a lot from that woman because there's very, very few people that could have the kind of faith that that dear lady had. Now, beloved Christian, isn't it hard to understand how you and I can trust the Lord with our souls' salvation for all eternity, and be it completely at ease about eternity, about life with Him after death? But yet we can't trust him for twenty-four hours right down here on this earth. It's not really honoring to the Lord, is it? You notice that he does say, trust in the Lord and do good. Now there is a happy medium there that we can all come about, come to. We can just, we don't say, well, we're trusting the Lord, like the farmer says, well, we're trusting the Lord, and the cotton will be planted, and it'll be fertilized, and it'll be worked and so forth, and all like, no, it doesn't work like that. We trust in the Lord, and then we go out and do our part. It's like these two men that went a boat, and they were both Christians. One of them was a big, stout man. One of them was a kind of a small man. And they were good ways from shore, and a pretty bad storm was coming up. And the little man said, Well, Henry, what should we do? Should we pray, or should we roar? He said, Let's mix them. He said, You pray, and I'll roar. And the Christian life is like that. Now, don't misunderstand me. We should trust in the Lord. But he expects us to do our part in some of these things. All right. We've got to hurry on. Verse four. Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Now one of the problems here is, is we sometimes get our priorities mixed up, and our ideals mixed up, and our values mixed up, because we do not really seek earnestly to find out what delights the Lord. And you see, we should come to the place in our Christian life where we learn to do what delights the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember reading years ago, before I met Brother Willie, something that really impressed me about George Mueller. And when I was in Bristol, England, Brother Willie arranged to take me to the Mueller orphanage. And one of the highlights of my life right now is the day we visited that orphanage. Because we went into the room where that great man of God used to kneel and pray and believe God every morning for the supplies they'd need for that orphanage throughout the day. George Mueller said, It is my first duty to God and to myself every day to make my soul merry and happy in the Lord. When I read that, I was reminded of Proverbs, which goes like this. A joyful heart is a good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Now, let me ask you a question. How did I go about making my soul merry and happy in the Lord? Well, I think most of us know how, and I wouldn't belabor the point here, but I would spend time with the Lord in His Word and in meditation and in singing of hymns. By the way, don't take these hymns books away, but you need a hymn book at home. And I find it very, very helpful to use a hymn book in my private devotions. And I like to sometimes take a hymn book without the music. And I just read through some of these worship hymns. in my devotions in the morning, and I find it very, very helpful in making my soul happy in the Lord. Devotional books are very helpful at times, but I wouldn't use them too much as a crutch. I use them some days, sometimes I don't. I like to vary. Have variety in your Christian life. Spend some time meditating upon the Word. Spend some time in praise. Spend some time in delighting in the Lord. Put your eyes on His greatness, on His words, on His power, on His resources, on His love, and then remember that He loves you and think of what He's done for you and what He is going to do for you on the basis of Romans eight and thirty-two. Augustine said this, and I like this, I quote, Do anything you want so long as you want God's will. I like that. Do anything you want, so long as you want, God's will. If you take a note, you can take down Romans twelve, one and two, and I suggest that you read that in one of the good modern translations, because the second part says that we might have an overhauling of the mind. In other words, our attitudes will be transformed to that which the Lord would like our attitudes to be transformed to. We need to learn to pray that our delights will be delights of our God and of our Father. Verse five, we're to trust, we're to delight, and we're to commit our way unto the Lord. Now if you have a Schofield Bible, you've probably noticed in the margin there where it says that that means rolling your way upon the Lord. It means making a deposit. of your problems, making a deposit of your worries, making a deposit of your anxieties upon the Lord. There used to be an old hymn in a hymn book that we had in the Methodist Church that I grew up in in Georgia many years ago. I remember one Wednesday night, people were giving out their favorite hymns, you know. I remember a girl that moved from the mountain country. Now, the girl in the mountain country of Georgia, moving down to the central part of the state where we live, would be almost like somebody moving from North Jersey to South Jersey. Do you know what I mean? And she had a decided accent. And she said, I want you to think that's going to be like, take your burdens up that to the Lord and leave them up there. And we kind of laughed. But you know, I've never forgotten that. Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them up there. That's good. I like this. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Roll thy burden upon the Lord. Now, I want to tell you one of our great sins. Here's one of our great sins as believers today. We come to the Lord, we give them all, we tell them about our burdens and our problems. At least we go through the motion of giving them to them. See? But we don't really do it. We go home and we take them with us. We get on our knees to pray and we've still gotten them. And don't you think that the Lord can remember? One of the things that you will learn from great men is the sweet confidence that they have in prayer and that it doesn't take a long prayer to get through to the Lord. When I gave my testimony two mornings ago, I told you about having met Dr. Howard A. Kelly in Baltimore. Fourteen-oh-six Utah place. Next time I go to Baltimore, I'd like to go back to that area that he was still standing. I'd like to see it. It was the area that had the white steps. I know that. And I spent about two or three hours with this dear man of God. When I got ready to leave, he picked up the phone and said, this is Howard Kelly. Will your son a taxi to my residence to go to the Bell Eye Station? Thank you. I talked to myself, man, the city this size, he just picked up the phone and said, this is Howard Kelly. When I talked to the cab driver, I knew why. Every one of them knew him. He said, Brother, for you, let's pray. Now, Father, we thank you for bringing this young man here today, and we pray that you put your hand upon him and use him and supply his need and lead him wherever he goes. In Jesus' name, amen. And I could tell that I'd been in the presence of a man that even though he might pray shortly, he knew who he was talking to and he knew that he'd gotten through to the one that he was talking with. If you tell the Lord something once, remember he remembers. Just remember who you're talking to. But one of the problems, one of the great problems that we have in America, in the world tonight, in Christian circles, is anxiety and worry and concern. And if they could take this Psalm and put it to heart and put it to practice, think of the millions and millions of dollars that Christians would save. My dear brother in Christ, who I love in the Lord, one of my great regrets is I don't get to spend more time with a brother, Dan Smith. Have you ever had him here? We'll keep on trying. The one from Emmaus. Troll. Brother Dan Smith spends hours, hours every week counseling people. He told about a young man that he canceled who was apprehensive and fearful about everything. In fact, he took him out to dinner one night, Dan and his wife and the young man and his wife. And when they got out of the car, he locked his car door. But this young man was so concerned and so fearful and so anxious that somebody would steal his car. Of course, in Chicago, you know, you have to be careful like that. Now, any of you people from Chicago, don't get upset because you know it's true. All right. Five times, five times while they were eating, the young man got up and went to the parking lot to check his car to see if it was still there. But by God's grace, through counseling and through prayer and through learning to trust in the Lord, Brother Dan, when he told me this, said the young man is fine. God has delivered him. God has taught him what it means to trust in the Lord. The final step in this four steps. Trust, commit, delight, and the last but not least, rest. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently. for him. One of the problems that many of us have as Christians is we haven't learned to rest. And Lord, that's the reason I haven't finished this message yet, because the Lord is still having to teach me so much about this. By nature, I'm very much like Peter, impetuous, fast, Don't want to go slow. You want to go ahead. And sometimes people like that have a bad habit of kind of rationalizing with the Lord, you know, trying to give the Lord a little inside information, you know. You laugh, but if you turn to the, don't do it now, but when you get home or when you have time, turn to the ninth chapter of Acts and around the tenth verse and you'll find a very, very good example of what I'm talking about. Remember the name of Ananias. The Lord knew what he was doing when he told Ananias to go do so-and-so for Paul, you know, and greet Paul and fellowship with him. And Ananias must have figured the Lord didn't know what he's talking about because Ananias told the Lord all about Saul. Or Saul. Well, of course, the Lord knew all about it. But I'm very glad to say that the Lord spoke to him again and told him to go. And he went. And he was obedient. And God blessed him for it. But many times when God tells us to do something, maybe it is to wait. We try to rationalize with the Lord and say, now, Lord, don't you think we ought to do it this way? You sure you want us to do it this way, Lord? I found out a long time ago, and as I mentioned several times the day before yesterday, or rather yesterday morning, as for God, His way is to wait. Perfect. God knows what the solution is, regardless of what your problem is. Your problem could be emotional, could be spiritual, could be physical, could be financial, could be any number of things. Beloved, I want to tell you, the Lord knows all about it already. He doesn't need you to come and tell Him about it, but He does need you to come and say, Lord, this is more than I can handle. I don't know which way to go. I don't know what decision to make. But I know that you're more concerned about this problem than I could ever be. I just want you to know that I'm committing it into your hands. And then let me tell you something. thank him that he is going to solve it. He's going to answer that prayer, and he's going to do what is best for you because he knows far better than you do what is best for you. And remember, beloved, many times when you and I come to God with our well-laid plans, they're not necessarily in the will of the Lord. God knows what we need. much better than we do ourselves. And just you remember that he's not going to withhold anything that is good from those who walk uprightly. And I base that upon the Word of God. Now, for the last closing five minutes, let's be real practical and ask ourselves this question. How do I go about increasing my faith and my trust in God so as to enable me to fully follow the admonitions of Psalm thirty-seven and many other teachings in the Word of God? All right, number one, remember with whom you are dealing. You're dealing with the living God. He has never broken a promise and you'll not do it now. Remember Romans, eight, thirty-two. He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Number two, make a study of the attributes of God. A very good book, by the way, to do this is A.W. Toadie's book, The Knowledge of the Holy. Number three, study the promises of God. as outlined in His Word. And if you don't have a Thompson Bible, get one. And you'll find them all listed for you, write down all of them. Or any good reference Bible. Study the promises of God that God has made to His people. And then appropriate those promises. Learn to believe them. By the way, sometimes when you're praying, about something, take those promises to the Lord and tell the Lord that you're basing your request on the fact that He's promised to do thus and so. When you read these promises, thank God that they are yours. Number four. Study the lives of the great men and women of God. Now, you will notice that I've mentioned these people a number of times this week, and if you have not read the lives of some, I hate to say it, but some of the publishers are not republished in some of these books of these old men of God. But if you can find the books about the lives of men like John Wesley and John Huss and George Mueller and Jonathan Goforth and Adnan Aram Judson and James Hutton and others, read them. and realize that what God did for them, if it's His will, and according to His will for you, He'll do for you. Then ask God to give you the kind of faith that these men and these women have. Reach the promises in the word and then claim them. Remember these key words, fret not, trust in the Lord, delight in the Lord, commit your way unto the Lord, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. And I'd like to give you a little advice in closing. Unless you are willing to pay the price, you'd better not ask God to make you patient. Let me tell you what happened to me a few weeks ago. I was reading this psalm and meditating upon it and thinking about the opportunity I'd have here, and I felt then that the Lord would have me to give it down here. And so I said, Lord, would you teach me to be patient? Would you want to know what happened that day? I can't tell you all that happened that day. It'd take too long. Now, you know, I'm one of these people that I don't like to get in the long line at the bank. You know what I'm going to say, don't you? Okay, so I got in a short one. And I think that girl there had a payroll for the largest business in Richland County. And then I went the short way. You know, I was going somewhere and I went the short way. That's the way you know to have the railroad cross. Do you know how many cars that train had? Two hundred and twenty-three. So you be careful when you ask the Lord to make you patient. Unless you're willing to pay the price, you better just hold it off a little while. Especially if you got to get somewhere in a hurry, don't dare ask him, Lord, start working on me today. Make me patient. Because he can start right away. If I'm not mistaken, the same day was the day that I went out and I was in a hurry to go to a meeting and I had a flat tie. I had to go borrow your car to get to a meeting that's going to. But I'll tell you what, if you really mean business with the Lord, and if you really want to do His will, and you really want Him to teach you things, you see where I would have fretted and complained, the Lord just seemed to come and whisper to me sharply, I took you at your word. And you know what I was able to do? I was able to thank him. My wife's sitting back there, probably smiling, not laughing, because she knows how much the Lord's had to work on me about this very, very thing. But I think she'll even admit that he's gradually beginning to get a little toe edge in there somewhere in my life. Because by nature I've always been fast and in a hurry. And so I was praying about this because I like to practice what I preach. And so the Lord just decided he'd just start grinding away and get a few more rough edges off on that little patience bit before I got down here. And I'm glad to say that I love the Lord more because Let's learn to fret not and trust and delight and commit and to rest in the Lord. Father, thank you for speaking to us tonight. Thank you for your word. It's so very practical. And we pray that you would meet the need of every heart tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.