29 Sermon Illustrations on Trusting God

"You cannot change the past, but you ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future." "Why worry when you can pray?" "Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due." The story is told of the ship that was trapped in a severe storm at sea. All were preparing to abandon ship, all except one young lady who was playing with her dolls. When asked if she were not afraid, she calmly replied, "No, because my father is the captain." When the storms of life seem to trap us, let us learn to keep our eyes upon the sparrow and to say, "I am not afraid because the Captain is my Father!"

It was a dark and stormy night when a lady was on a boat crossing Lake Michigan. The lightning, thunder, and rain made her very nervous. She saw jagged rocks jutting above the surface of the lake. In fear, she asked the captain, "Do you know where all the rocks are out there in the lake?" "No," the captain replied, "I don't, but I do know where it's safe." As you "sail" through life, you are going to see lots of "rocks" out there. Some you will know how to avoid, others will come upon you as a surprise. The important thing to know is "where it's safe." Jesus knows the safe way; follow Him.

The eagle is one of the largest and most powerful birds in the world. Some eagles weigh as much as 12 or 13 pounds and have a wingspan of about seven feet. The nests of eagles are called eyries. They are built mainly of sticks and are often lined with fresh green leaves while they are being used. Once a year, the female lays one or two eggs, and they are carefully tended, sometimes even by the male eagle, until they hatch, in about 40 days. Both parents then guard the nest and take food to the young. At about 11 or 12 weeks, a curious thing happens. If the eaglets have not ventured forth on their own, the parent eagle "stirs" or rocks the nest, tipping the eaglets out! The young eaglets flap about in panic, still novices at this flying business. The parent eagle hovers watchfully, waiting for the critical moment. With wings spread wide, the eagle then swoops down underneath those babies and delivers them back to the security of the eyrie. Ours is a God of powerful gentleness. Ours is a God whose timing is perfect. Like the parent eagle, He is sensitive to our needs. He knows when the nest has become too comfortable and needs a little stirring. He, too, watches carefully, and, as with spread wings, catches us up, bringing us to Himself. But He wants us to learn from our fluttering and flopping. He wants us to leave behind our panic and to learn to wait on Him. Then, with our eyes on our parent eagle, we will begin to know what it means to soar on eagle's wings!

Try this simple experiment. Collect 365 little sticks, toothpicks, if you wish. Tie them together. Now try to break the bundle with your hands. No matter how strong you are, it will be a tough job. Make a smaller bundle, say 30, and it is still too difficult to break. But take just one at a time and, no matter how weak you are, you'll be able to break each one. You're exactly the same person who tried to handle all the sticks together, but this time you changed your way of solving the problem, and it became much easier. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34). A Lesson From Suffering A bird had no interest in learning the song its master wanted to teach it while its cage was full of light. Its master covered the cage to darken it. He then whistled the same song over and over until the bird learned it by heart. When it could repeat it note for note, the owner uncovered the cage and the bird sang it beautifully. This is an illustration of the way God sometimes deals with us. He darkens the cage of our lives in order to teach us some divine song.

A lady one day, in her husband's absence from home, lost both her children by cholera; but she laid them out with a mother's tenderness, and spread a sheet over them, and waited at the door for her husband's return. "A person lent me some jewels," she said when she met him; "and he now wishes to receive them again. What shall I do?"—"Return them, by all means," said her husband. Then she led the way, and silently uncovered to him the forms of his dear children.

Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret, as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord; but, even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened. They take God's ticket to heaven, and then put their baggage on their shoulders, and tramp, tramp the whole way there afoot. Beecher.

A lad stood on the roof of a very high building; when his foot slipped, and he fell. In falling, he caught by a rope, and hung suspended in mid-air, where he could sustain himself but a short time. At this moment, a powerful man rushed out of the house, and, standing beneath him with extended arms, called out, "Let go of the rope! I will receive you."—"I can't do it."—"Let go of the rope, and I promise you shall escape unharmed." The boy hesitated for a moment, and then, quitting his hold, dropped easily and safely into the arms of his deliverer.

Every bulle has its billet. — Bowes. — All providences to a gracious heart are but so many fulfilment of promises. — Beadle. — All God's providences are but his touch of the strings of the great instrument of the world. — Charnock. — A crust of God's carving is better than a banquet of our own providing. — Beadle. — The chariot of God's providence runneth not upon broken wheels. — Rutherford.

Melanethon, when he used sometimes to be too anxious and troubled, would chide away his fears by saying, "Let Philip cease to rule the world."

— Bowes

If you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave: they will never rise again when you have committed them to him. If you roll your burden anywhere else, it will roll back again, like the stone of Sisyphus. Spurgeon.

A year last November, says a missionary agent, I preached a missionary sermon in the town of —, and took a subscription. A physician subscribed and paid $5. A gentleman standing by told me that the $5 was all he had, or was worth: that he had lost his property and paid up his debts and moved into town to commence practice, with no other resources than that five dollar bill. He and his wife were obliged to board out, as he was not able to keep house.

I resolved at once that I would keep watch of that man, and see what the Lord would do with him.

About a year after this interview, I visited the place again, and put up with this physician. I found him keeping house in good style. In conversation with him, I brought up the duty of Christian benevolence, and spoke of God's faithfulness to fulfil his promises to the liberal.

He told me he knew a physician who, the last year, gave away the last five dollars he had in the world, resolving to trust the Lord for the future. During the next summer, while the cholera raged in the country, by a series of events guided, as he believed, by the providence of God, most of the practice was thrown into the hands of this physician, and he had taken more than $2,500.

I told him I knew him to be the man referred to, and that I had been keeping watch to see what the Lord would do with him.

Oh, sir, if we would, all of us, only trust in the Lord, and more abundantly give of our substance to aid in spreading the gospel, and throw open our eyes to read the providence, as well as word of God, we might not only speedily supply the whole world with Bibles, but our hearts would overflow with constant gratitude in view of the evident interpositions of Providence in our behalf.

KEEPER AND HER CUSTOMERS—Mrs. Sarah Thorp, of Buckingham, (Engl.) was left a widow with four small children, and with nothing to support herself and them but the profits of small chandler's shop, an annuity of ten pounds per annum, left to poor widows, and making a little lace. While in this state, a Mr. Cooper came to the church, and sounded an alarm to formal professors, moralists, and the profane. Mrs. Thorp soon became convinced of the impropriety of keeping her shop open on the Lord's day, and determined at all events to shut it up, and told her customers, in the week preceding, of her intention, and begged of them to come for what they wanted on the Saturday. At first they took very little notice of it, but went on Sunday as usual; but Mrs. Thorp shut herself in a back room, and paid no attention to the door. The ensuing week they came again, and were very much displeased, saying they must have victuals on Sunday as well as on the other days; and if they could not be served by her they would go where they could. She said she should be sorry to lose their custom, but she had served on the Lord's day too long. Many of her customers left her, and, for a time, she was much straitened in her circumstances; but this did not continue: the Lord blessed her business with increase, so that in a little time she took the house adjoining to her own, keeping the shop for her increasing stock, as before this she had lived in the shop. Finding her business still increase, she was enabled to send to London for goods, which she had hitherto taken from a superior shop in the town. After this, she went to the gentleman of whom she had received her annuity, and told him the Lord had so blessed her in her circumstances, that she had now no need of it, and begged he would confer it on some one who was in greater necessity. The Lord still continued to bless her; she at length bought the house and shop, and lived comfortably in them the remainder of her days.

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“What did I do with that memorandum?” said a distinguished-looking man, speaking half to himself but with his eyes on the clerk, who stood waiting for his order in a large city grocery. “What I’ve done with that memorandum this time I really can not imagine. But you just wait a minute.”

He began searching his pockets. From each of them came scraps of paper, big and little, old letters with pencil notes on them, envelops similarly decorated, two or three small note-books, a theater program, and a number of pieces evidently torn from the margin of a newspaper and covered with writing. He examined the scraps one after another and restored each bunch to its separate pocket. The clerk waited, and a customer farther along the counter eyed the display with curiosity.

“Gone,” said the gentleman, with an air of finality. “I’ll have to trust to memory.”

The clerk nodded.

“Six eggs?” he said, with an interrogative inflection.

“Right,” said the gentleman.

The clerk wrote it down. “A pound of butter?” he continued.

“A pound of butter,” agreed the gentleman.

“Bread?”

“Three loaves.”

“Coffee?”

The gentleman hesitated. “No,” he said, with decision. “Coffee enough on hand to last the rest of the week.” He smiled contentedly, watched the clerk write a name and address at the top of the order, and then went out of the shop whistling.

“How did you know what he wanted?” asked the other customer of the clerk.

“He lives just around the corner in an apartment, and he and his wife get their own breakfasts. Always the same things--never any change--but he always has to have it written down.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“His name is Bertini, I think. He’s a kind of professor. I believe he has a kind of memory system he teaches to people who can’t remember things.”

The other customer smiled, but the clerk was quite serious. He had no sense of humor.--_The Youth’s Companion._

Some years ago, I read about a speedboat driver who had recently survived a racing accident. He said that he had been at near-top speeds when his boat veered slightly and hit a wave at a dangerous angle. The combined force of his speed and the size and angle of the wave sent the boat spinning crazily into the air. He was thrown from his seat and propelled deeply into the water – so deep, in fact, that he had no idea which direction the surface was. He had to remain calm and wait for the buoyancy of his life vest to begin pulling him up. Once he discovered which way was up, he could swim for the surface.

Sometimes we find ourselves surrounded by confusing options, too deeply immersed in our problems to know “which way is up.” When this happens, we too can remain calm, waiting for God’s gentle tug to pull us in the proper direction. Our “life vest” may be other Christians, Scripture, or some other leading from the Holy Spirit, but the key is recognizing our dependency upon God and trusting him.

In a little church on the Italian mountains I saw, amongst many absurd daubings, one picture which struck me. There was a ploughman who had turned aside at a certain hour to pray. The rustic artist drew him on his knees before the opened heavens; and lest there should be any waste of time occasioned by this, an angel was going on ploughing for him. I like the idea. I do not think an angel ever did go on with a man's ploughing while he was praying, but I think that the same result often does come to pass, and that when we give our hearts to God, and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things are added unto us.