In this sermon, the preacher shares his personal experience of needing a large sum of money within a short period of time. He talks about feeling anxious and panicky, but also emphasizes the importance of trusting in God and not being anxious about anything. The preacher encourages the congregation to pray and bring their needs to God with thanksgiving, and promises that when they do, they will experience the peace of God. He also highlights the significance of faith in pleasing God and urges the listeners to trust in God's past faithfulness as they face current challenges.

Those who know your name trust in you, for you Lord have never forsaken those who seek you. Those who know your name trust in you. Who trusts in God? The people who know his name. Now you might say, that's odd. I know his name, God or Lord, Jesus, whatever. But name in the Bible stands for character, the person, who it is. When we pray in the name of Jesus, we're not just saying Jesus like it's some magic phrase, but we're standing behind who Jesus is, what he's done, son of the living God. So what the Bible's saying here is those who know who you are, who know your name, will put their trust in you. Something provoked me this week to be thinking about it and I'll just leave it as a homily with you, so we can close by just putting our trust in the Lord. And it came to my attention that the main thing, if you look from Genesis to Revelation in the Bible, the main thing that God wants from every one of us, if you want to put it in one sentence, put your trust in God. If you had to say it in one sentence. Because until you have your trust in God, you won't receive his commands as being important. Faith comes first. In fact, without faith it's impossible to please God. So the main thing God asks is don't analyze me and I'm not going to explain myself in a hundred different places, just trust me. It's easy to study about God, it's harder to trust in God. So God doesn't say to us, analyze me, talk about me. No, the main thing God says is trust in me. Have faith in God. Now everything in life is based on faith, even by people who say they're not people of faith, they're full of faith. You can't live without having faith. When you get in your car and drive, you have faith that people are going to obey that red light because you're going through on the green sign. When you go to a restaurant and order food, you have to have faith that they didn't poison it and that it's not bad food, spoiled food. Am I right or wrong? They say the markets get shaky, stock markets get shaky when? When there's a lack of trust in the economy. The minute things are shaky, am I right brother? Then everybody starts to go sideways because there's no trust in the economy. This Ebola scare, ISIS, whatever, it says the markets are rocking and rolling last week. Why? Because people lost their trust. If you go to school, you have to trust the teacher. You don't prove what she's saying is true, you just trust her that what she says is true. When she draws a K and says that's a K, you can't prove it's a K, you're in kindergarten. You just trust that she's telling the truth. When she says 2 and 2 are 4, you can't prove that with some deep mathematical theory. You just, yeah, everything is trust. Every human relationship is built on trust. And when you lose trust in a person, as someone has well said, you have hell on earth. In fact, as a great man of God said, the reason hell is so horrible is there's no faith in hell. There's no trust. Everything is built on faith. If I lean against this thing, I have faith that it will hold me. As a Christian, when you read God's word, it won't mean anything until you have faith that the one who's speaking to you is going to give you the truth. Everything in the world is built on faith, even by people who would get in an elevator without having faith. Better yet, who would get on the subway and be riding and just counting that the guy, whatever he's called, the guy that sits in there, and that the conductor, thank you, that the conductor is doing what he's supposed to doing and that there's someone watching the system and stopping the trains so that nobody will crash into each other. To get up into an airplane, you don't have faith that that pilot knows what he's doing and that the airline has put enough fuel in there. Well, of course, you can't do anything without faith. So it's not surprising that the first thing God asks for, for all of us, is not to sing, is not to study, is not to try anything, not to try to be good. The first thing God asks for all of us is trust me, have faith in me. Now, when you have faith in God and you have faith in his word, you're really having faith in a person. To try to separate God from his word and make this Bible like a magic book where you just repeat the verse and it comes true, that's the thought behind Christian science, but Christianity isn't like that. This is the word of God. When you trust the Bible, you're trusting the person who gave us the Bible. How many are happy? God stands behind every promise in his word. The promises don't work, God works. He works through promises, but you don't put your trust in the promise, really. You can say it that way, but it's the person behind the promise. That's why when some people tell you one thing and they make a promise, you go, I don't know. And then another person you know well, when they tell you my friend Don Stafford is here with his wife Cheryl, if he's telling me something, I'm going to be there tomorrow and I'm going to meet you and take you out for breakfast. I'm not going to be standing on that corner waiting for nothing. He's going to come. Why? Because I know him. I can trust him that when he gives his word, he's going to fulfill it. Now, in closing, because of this principle, this is where the devil attacks us. First of all, he will try to destroy your faith because he understands what God delights in, because he understands that the just shall live by faith, that by trusting God, his power works in us. We are in right standing with God because we put our trust in Christ. We get answers to prayer because we not just don't pray, but we believe. Jesus said, when you pray, believe. Otherwise, you're just throwing up prayers and hoping maybe they'll work. I believe that God heard our prayers tonight. How many believe in all the countries that we have lifted up to God, including America and wherever God led you, for the states and places you pray? How many believe God has heard us today? Put your hands together. Yes, and something's going to happen in Trinidad. Something is going to happen in Jamaica. Something is going to happen that they won't even understand that somebody was in Brooklyn praying and now God is going to work. Now, one last thing before I close on this. I've been stumbling over this thought again that Jesus never was amazed at anything except faith. Jesus never said, hey, this disciple Matthew, who used to be a tax collector, this guy is good with numbers and with money. He is one smart guy. Never said that. He never saw anyone who he said, what a righteous person. Jesus wouldn't say that about anyone because he knows that we're all frail and faulty. But when he saw this Roman soldier who came to him and said, look, my servant is sick at home, or my daughter, I can't remember which, and would you come and pray because I know when you pray everything will be right. And Jesus went, okay, I'll go with you. He went, oh no, you don't have to go. Just say it right now. Just say be made well. Because you see, I'm an officer and when I tell soldiers to come, they come. And when I say go and deploy somewhere, they go and deploy. And I can discern who you are. You're not an ordinary person. So just speak the word and my servant will be healed. And Jesus said, how great is your faith? And he said to the disciples, would you look, this is not even a Jew. This is not a child of Abraham. This is a Roman soldier. How great is his faith? And one last thought, in his own hometown, when he went to Nazareth, he became, he grew up in Nazareth. He was a carpenter's son. Probably wasn't carpentry himself. And now he's gotten baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. He's out ministering. And within the first year, he returns to Nazareth to his own hometown. But the people are like, who's this? He's famous. We know who he is. His sisters and brothers live here. This ain't no big thing. We know this guy. And the Bible says, Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. And he could do not many miracles there. He couldn't do what he had done other places. Imagine because of their unbelief. How essential is faith that in one case, Jesus himself, the son of God says, well, I don't believe that. Look at that faith. And he said, in some cases to people, your faith has made you well. And yet in his own hometown, he was tied up. He was handcuffed. That's right. They cuffed Jesus, spiritually speaking. They cuffed him. He could not do many things. Pastor, Symbola, he's the son of God. He can do what he wants. Nope, not in Nazareth. Unbelief is so powerful. Faith is so powerful that in a way, we determine what God's going to do for us. Although he's sovereign, I recognize that, in many other ways, we determine great faith, great blessings. Little faith, little trickles. No faith, and he could hardly do anything. And it says he marveled at their unbelief. It's the only two places I can find, not exactly, but two main places where he marveled at faith and he marveled at unbelief. He never marveled at poverty or he never marveled at riches. He never was impressed by somebody's limo or how they lived, but faith. So as Caleb comes back and plays, he's going to give us his second verse before we close, if he will be faithful to the end. I want to tell you that in situations in life, you have to draw a line. Listen to a person who's had to draw some lines in his life. At one point, when you pray, you must draw a line and say, and now I will believe. So we were praying here from 12 to 1. The people gathered and I was tied up with some things and I came down here and I read some verses from Psalm 85 and then we prayed about God helping us, about God restoring our strength, about God bringing us home if we wandered and strayed. So we prayed, we called on God, and then I was leaving. A woman came to me and said, would you pray for me? I said, what for? Well, you see, I have this situation. I said, well, ma'am, what did we just pray? How many times you want to repeat the prayer? At some point, you got to pray and then say, that's it. God's going to do it. I'm going to trust him now, right? Come on. Can we say amen to that? Otherwise, you're, did I pray enough? I got to pray again. No, he heard you. He heard you. Pray through. Keep praying until you know he heard you. But there are times when the Spirit just says, and now leave it alone and see what God will do. So many times, repeated prayers is not a sign of faith. It's a sign of lack of faith. Because there comes a point where you got to say, it's done. It is done. I put my trust in God. Look at all the times in the Bible that we see prayers just two sentences long, and they spoke it, and then they said, that's it. Now I'm going to trust God. So do you have something tonight before we leave that you're carrying and you haven't given it to the Lord? The only way you give it to the Lord now, will you trust him with it? If you want to carry it, he will let you. But it won't work out well. First of all, you won't solve it. You won't see what God can do, and it'll weigh you down. Trust me. Trust me. I was saying to someone that I trust recently, opening my heart and saying, when I look back on my life, all the battles that God has forced me to face and fight, especially representing this church, let's say just in the realm of finances. Oh, the battles. Oh, the battles. You need $741,000 in four days, or they're going to walk off the job. Now, where am I going to get that money? And God was saying to me all the time, trust me. Trust me. Trust me. But what am I going to do? Did you ever get panicky and get hyper? Oh, come on. Say amen. Don't lie. Like me. And God is saying to us, be anxious for nothing, but end everything by prayer and supplication. With thanksgiving, tell God what you need, and when you give it to him, the peace of God, which passes all understanding. I've had some of the biggest mountains to face, and then when I give it to God, I sleep like a baby. And sometimes when I'm not walking in faith, a little mosquito could go by and keep me up all night long. Do you understand what I'm talking about? A little silly little thing. And God is saying to us, didn't I help you in the past? My last word to you. Look at me, everyone. Didn't I help you in the past? God is saying to us, wait a minute. Didn't I help you in the past in a way worse situation? Why are you worried now? Why are you worried now? Look at me in the balcony. Why are you worried? Didn't God help you in the past? Come on. How many have a testimony that he helped you in the past, right? So if you're here today, it's human. Caleb's gone through it. I've gone through it. Caleb's worried. I've worried. Sometimes it just overwhelms us. But the word tonight is, listen, here's the main thing God says to all of us. Genesis through Revelation, have faith in God. Trust me. Trust me. Just close your eyes real quick. Anybody here not going to call you forward, but maybe you just want to stand and say, tonight that word was for me. I am saying this prayer tonight. I might remind God about it in the future, but I'm not going to be agitated anymore. I am going to trust God with my mass and he will turn my mass into a blessing. I trust him to do that. I realize now I've been fretting more than I've been trusting. I've been worrying instead of resting, but I'm going to trust him because that's the main thing he wants from me. And that's what gives him more joy than anything else. When I trust him, not when I try to be more like Jesus and all those things, just trust him. When we trust him, he begins to work, to stand where you are. If you have a situation, you say, I want to give it to God. I've been worried, been fussing, past simple. You read my mail, but I'm going to give it to God tonight. And now God, in the name of your son, Jesus, we give you our burdens. If we haven't already, we give you our burdens, our problems, our worries, our fears, and everything else. And we conquer them all by faith in God, faith in Jesus. Don't let your hearts be troubled. You told the disciples over and over again, fear not. I will never leave you nor forsake you. We're trusting in your faithfulness. Give us rest and peace. Help us to sleep like babies tonight, rejoicing in you. Every one of us, we pray in Christ's name. Everyone said. Amen.