In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of trust and commitment in our relationship with God. He shares personal stories and examples of how God has worked miracles when people fully trusted and committed to Him. The preacher encourages believers to have faith and not to doubt God's promises, reminding them that He is always at work and looking for faithful individuals through whom He can pour His power. He concludes by urging the congregation to commit their lives and their church to God for a spiritual awakening and an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Well, good morning. You know, we live in very strange days. Everybody wants to know what the Bible says in the Hebrew and the Greek, and nobody wants to do what it says in the English. I mean, it's a real problem. They meet a lot of people that are dead right about everything, and more dead than right, usually. Do you know the difference between a Canadian and an American? Okay, give an American and a Canadian $20,000 to invest. And the American says, man, I wonder what I can make with this. And the Canadian says, I wonder how much of this I'll lose. Canadians are very conservative. But when revival comes, they're alive. I want to read a few verses from Psalm 37, 5 and on. I'll read, I think, from verse 1. Fret not yourself 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 a green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good, so you will dwell in the land, and in truth you will be fed. Deny yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will do it. He'll bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret yourself because of Him who prospers in His way, because of a man who brings wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret yourself in any way to do evil. For evildoers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth. If you have a little while, and the wicked shall not be, yes, you will diligently consider their place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. My text, verse 5, Psalm 37, 5, it simply says, Commit your way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass. Some translations say, and He will do it. I want to talk today about committing and trusting. One pastor, after he learned this truth, told me this. He said, This has totally revolutionized my personal life, my family life, and the ministerial life. I sometimes ask people this question, Have you committed this problem to God? And they will say, Oh yes, I pray about it all the time. And then I say, Well, I didn't ask if you prayed about it all the time. I asked you if you ever committed it to God. And I discovered there's a lot of ignorance concerning this. So here's what I'd like to do. First of all, let's see how this word is used in the Bible. Back in Joseph's time, Joseph, remember, was sold as a slave to a man called Potiphar, whose name meant a fat bull. And he was the chief of the executioners. And Joseph had to work for him. He did such a good job, that we read that finally, as Joseph said, My master has committed unto me everything. And it says about Potiphar that he said, Well, you know, I don't even worry about a thing. I don't have to. This guy Joseph, this slave I bought, I've committed everything to him. Alright, that's one thought. Then Joseph wound up in jail, as you know, because he was accused of rape, which he was not guilty of, but in Genesis 39, 22, when he got in jail, the jailer made the same discovery that Potiphar had made, that he had a very unusual prisoner. So you know what he did? He committed the running of the jail to Joseph. He committed it, it says. And whatever happened in the jail, Joseph was the one that did it, because it had been completely committed to him. John 5, 22 says, The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son. And I presume that commitment from God the Father to Christ the Son happened in the days of eternity, long ago, and it will never be changed. The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son. Paul asks and answers a question in Romans chapter 3 about the Jew. What advantage then does the Jew have? What profit is there? A circumcision, much every way, but unto them were committed the oracles of God. God gave the writing of the Bible into the hands of this people, and in spite of their national vicissitudes and backsliding, and all that stuff, false kings, false prophets, in spite of all that, God got it done. He never changed the commitment. I mean, all the apostles were converted Jews. Acts 27, we have the story of Paul and some people. They're in a ship caught in a storm, and it got bad, and finally they were drifting into shallow water at one point, and so they decided they were going to have to, they had the anchors out, they were going to have to cut the ropes and just go. And so it says, depending on the translation you're reading, but it says that they cut the ropes and committed themselves to the sea. You know, that's a good picture of commitment. There was no way they could go back to the ropes. No way at all. It was finished the minute they cut the ropes. They were totally committed to the sea, into the hands of God, because Paul was there, of course, also. And then Paul talked about committing truth to faithful men. And if you give somebody some truth, there's no way you can take it from him. You'll notice in these particular places where the word commit is used, it has the intent of something that will never be changed. It's not committed for an hour or a day. It's committed till it's done, however long that period of time might be. Now, in Canada, in British Columbia, we have a river called the Fraser River. It's a wild mountain river. In one place it's called Hell's Gate, one of these great waterfalls. And Fraser, the man from whose name the river got its name, when he went down that river in birchbark canoes, here's what he said in his law book as they started off. When once we were cast on the bosom of that awful flood, there was no turning back. He knew they were totally committed. He had no idea what was in front of him. There were places where these 40-foot birchbark canoes had been taken out of the water and pulled up over cliffs and lowered down a 500-foot cliff, perhaps, back into the water again, but somehow they made it, birchbark or no. Committed. That's the picture, people, of commitment. Let me give you some contemporary examples. I came from a broken home. This never happened back in those days, but it happened to my parents. My mother took off. There were four boys. But mother, after a bit, she was in a car accident, and she realized she could have been killed, so she sought God. And she was saved. And one day Dad said, Your mother's coming home, but you don't have to listen to her religious talk. We didn't know what was happening. We were glad to see her because she was a great cook. We didn't care about the religion part. I mean, she could really cook. We were tired of Dad's, you know, cabbage soup and stuff. So she came home, and none of us were Christians, see. She didn't lay a heavy trip on us. She was a very wise fisherwoman. But many years later, after we were all Christians, here's what she said. I came home, and the first thing I did when I got home, I committed you four boys, and Dad, to Christ, for salvation. I committed you. And I put you in the hands of God. And I never doubted he would do it. But it was a long wait. You know what happened? It was fourteen years before any of us were saved. And we're saved in the order of our age, apart from our father. My youngest brother, Keith, he was in the Canadian Air Force at the time. And when he got married, he and his wife shook hands and promised each other they would never become Christians. But he didn't know that my mother had committed him to God for salvation. God had other plans than he had. And he wound up in the ministry. And some of you know him and have heard him and met him and heard him. The wonderful ministry God gave to him. And so, finally, all four of us boys found Christ and three of the four of us went into the ministry. And we didn't know what had happened to my dad. He moved out to Carmel, California and retired out there. And one day he came to visit us and one day he said, How come you never asked me to ask the blessing? And I said, Would you like to ask the blessing? And he said, Why wouldn't a Christian like to ask the blessing? This was Dad's Presbyterian way of telling us he was a Christian. And so, mother had a long wait, 14 years. Was it worth it? Of course it was worth it. But it may be long. It may be short. I remember one time at a little place called Birch Hill, Saskatchewan, a lady came to me after a service and she said, You know, I got five kids. The youngest is 22. None of them are saved. She said, I don't know where my husband and I feel. We took him to Sunday school and church and everything. None of them are saved. And my younger son, she said, he's an absolute demon. If you talk to him about God, he goes wild. She said, Where did we go wrong? I said, I don't know, but I want to ask you a question. Did you ever commit them to God for salvation? Oh, heaven, she said. We prayed for them a thousand times. I said, I didn't ask you if you prayed for them. I asked you if you committed them to God for salvation. Well, she said, What's that? So I explained it to her. Oh, no, she said, we never did that. So we knelt together and committed her family to God. Three weeks later, the youngest son phoned and said, Mom, I'm not feeling well. The doctor thinks I should take a month off from work. Can I come home? And she said, she told me, she said, I had to clamp my hand over my big mouth to keep from shouting Hallelujah because she knew God was up to something. So he came home and she said, he lay in the bed there and he couldn't eat much and he was so worn and sick and I wanted to rush in there and get him saved. But I remembered what you told me about commitment. So I just kept praising God. And one day she was walking past the room and he said, Mom, I'd like to be saved. And she roared in and prayed for him and he got saved, you know. That wasn't long, three, four weeks, you know. But she learned to commit. It's not just praying, it's putting problems and people in God's hand by faith. And then waiting to see what God will do. He has the power to do what we can't do. In Vancouver, Canada, an exciting thing happened. My brother Don had a pastor there and I had meetings with him years back. And a fellow came to me one night and he said, I've got an awful problem. Can you help me? What's the problem? All my family, including my wife, all my kids, they're red hot Jehovah Witnesses. I can't do anything with them. I can't even talk about God. They tell me I'm a servant of the devil. I don't know what to do. I said, why don't you commit them to God? Oh, listen, he said. If I had prayed once, I'd pray a thousand times for them. I said, I'm not talking about praying. I'm talking about did you ever commit them to God? Explain that to me. So I did. No, he said, I've never done that. So we knelt together and he committed his family to God. You know what happened? He went, listen, Peter, I'm not exaggerating. These stories are true. He walked in the house and one of his kids came running and said, Daddy, I'd like to be saved like you are. That wasn't even 24 hours, you know. You never know what God will do. When you give the problem to God, that's totally different, you know. God will work. He has the power. He knows what to do. And so we've had many, I remember one preacher friend of mine, he had a terrible problem. His wife didn't believe he should be in the ministry. So she kept yacking at him and she was always at him and bugging him. Well, he'd bring people to church, she'd chase them away, you know. She was just a hopeless case. I met her. She was as hard as a rock. And he used to phone me long distance sometimes and cry and come to see me and cry and write me a letter. And I kept telling him, Brother, why don't you commit her to God? But you know, when you're climbing a mountain, you can't see the mountain. It's just hard work, you know. But if you can stand back a few miles, you can see the grandeur and the beauty of the mountain. It's totally different. He was so close to the problem, he couldn't see God. And then I was preaching on this subject and God got him and he saw it. He could hardly wait to get home and commit his life to God. He put her in the hands of God and I was there when God finished with her, three weeks later. She came down the aisle, she was crying. It was spurting out of her eyes. She got to the front. She was wringing her hands and walking in circles. She didn't know what to do. They got some gals to run and they got her and dragged her off into a side room and she met head on with God, you know. That girl told us, she said, in the 11 years we've been married, I haven't listened to a single sermon he preached or anybody else preached in front of the church. I just shut my eyes. She was a fashion queen. She used to congratulate herself because she was the best dressed woman in the church and all that kind of stuff. Highly educated, she thought. Well, she was a school teacher and she was full of pride. She had professed to be saved. I doubt that she was. But when God was through with her that night, she was sweet and lovable. I remember, two years later, he told me, you know, she goes so well with me now. She's wonderfully changed by committing and trusting. Things we ought to commit. The Bible talks about this. Commit the keeping of your soul to Him. Don't try and keep yourself saved. Commit the keeping of your soul to Him. And in Psalm 66 it says, He holds our soul in life. And only God can do that. And then we're to commit our ways, Psalm 37 5 says. We're to commit our works, Proverbs 16 3 says. Commit your works unto the Lord and your thoughts will be established. So you feel you're not doing a good job at the secular job you have, or at the Christian work you're doing. Commit it to God. Ask God to take over. God will make it much better than it is when you give it to Him. So commit your works, whatever they are, to God. And what you think has been poor and maybe it has been poor will become great and good because God has it. It's really a case, dear people, of believing God. One of the things God said the most about Israel was this. How long will it be ere these people believe Me? How long will it be? They've seen all these mighty miracles and still they don't believe. And many of us, God would say the same thing. How long is it going to be before you really believe Me? Before you really trust Me with all your heart? And see Me as the living, powerful God of the universe, able to do anything. Able to save to the uttermost. Why don't you believe? We're so full of unbelief and people excuse that. They say, Oh, no, I don't think I have unbelief because I pray all the time and ask God to give me some faith, you know. Listen, you think God pours faith in a hole in your head? That's not how it happens. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. You've got to start studying the Bible because there are 7,487 promises in the Bible. They're full of promises and faith is believing the promise of God. When God came to Abraham and said, Hey man, you're 100 years old. It doesn't mean a thing. You and your wife are going to have a child of your own. Did he just shake his head in unbelief and walk away? No. Read Romans chapter 4. It didn't stagger, it says, at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And what about Sarah? It says about Sarah, she received strength to conceive seed when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised. That's the whole thing, you know. So, unbelief, in Hebrews chapter 3, it's called an evil heart of unbelief. It is an evil thing to not believe God. You have to see it that way and repent of this evil that fills the hearts many times, even of Christian believers. You know, in Isaiah 44, God said, It's a promise. I will pour water on him that is thirsty and floods on the dry ground. I will pour My Spirit on your seed, on your children, that is. And people say, Well, God's done that, but my kids haven't responded. Well, let's wait till the rest of them. What does it say there? And they shall spring up as among the grass, as well as by the watercourses. In other words, your kids will be saved. Don't let the devil have one of them. If he's got them, get them out. Commit them to God and trust God to save them. God will do it. Without faith, dear people, it's impossible to please God. Impossible. But with faith, faith, mighty faith, the promises, and looks to God alone, laughs at impossibilities and cries, It shall be done. And cries, It shall, It shall be done. And cries, It shall be done. Laughs at impossibilities and cries, It shall be done. Faith. Believing God. Believing God. You know, David, in those days when he was running from Saul in the wilderness, how did he handle it? Well, he committed the whole thing to God. He gave it to God. And then on two separate occasions, he had the opportunity to kill Saul with no harm to himself. But he didn't take advantage of the opportunity because he'd put the problem in God's hands. He was waiting for God's time. Isn't it amazing? Job said in 5.8 of that book, I would seek unto God and unto God would I commit my cause. Don't try to defend yourself. That's God's business. There's so many references in Isaiah, Jeremiah, other parts of the Bible, where they were committing causes to God. They weren't attempting to do it themselves. Even Solomon, at the dedication of the temple, he committed the nation and himself as a matter should require. He committed this to God. We need to learn how to do this because, dear people, it brings the power of God into the picture. Other things. Hezekiah. He gets a threatening letter from an enemy king. He takes the letter. He goes into the temple of God. He spreads the letter out and in effect he was saying, Hey God, read this. Well, you know what? God read the letter when the guy was writing it. Right? And you know what happened as a consequence? That night, 185,000 of the enemy soldiers, including all the top brass, it says, not in those words, but... They died in the night. And the head, this guy, Sennacherib, he was so astonished, he went sneaking home because he defied God. And Isaiah, the prophet, and Hezekiah, they committed all of this to God. And when he got home, he went into the house of his God who was called Nisrach. I suppose he was going to ask Nisrach what happened back there in Israel. And while he was worshipping his God, his two sons, Adramelech and Sharizer, they came in and murdered their dad in front of his God, Nisrach. But this thing of being committed to God, he didn't know that. He had no idea of a living God who responds to the faith of his people standing on the promises of God. Jeremiah, Jeremiah 11, 20, Unto thee, he said, I have revealed my cause. Everybody in the nation was cursing him. His life hung in danger day after day after day. They never got him. He accomplished what God had him there for. Nothing can happen to that servant of God who has a work given to him by God. That work will be finished before Satan can do anything. Commit your way, whatever it is, those problems. Commit those unsaved relatives. Commit unto God. Put them in God's hands. It's a fearful thing, you know it says, to fall into the hands of the living God. Commitment now must be followed by trust. Commit your way to the Lord. And then it says, Trust also in Him. I always join that with Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean to your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path. Now, commit, then trust. So people say, well, do you stop praying? No, you don't stop praying. You start praising. You've given a promise to God. You don't have to give it to Him a second time or a third. And I often hear people say, Oh, I've committed this a hundred times. I mean, you've wasted 99 times, you know. You don't commit and commit and recommit and recommit. You do it once. Listen, has God a dumbbell of some kind? He's going to forget that you gave it to Him two years ago, so you better remind? No, no, no. I'll give you an example from the Bible that might help. And I'll have to do a little imagining, if you don't mind. One of the kings, King Rehoboam, Solomon's son, didn't do a very good job. And Shyshach, an Egyptian pharaoh, came in and took the country over. And one of the things he did, there were 300 golden shields hanging in the guardhouse, four pounds of gold in every shield. And he naturally took all of this home. But the shields were necessary for the king's protection, because when he walked from his house to the temple of God, or wherever he went, 300 soldiers came. Each one took a shield, walked around him to shield him from spears or arrows. So the king had to have shields. He had no gold left, so he made brazen shields. And it says he committed them to the captain of the guard. Now his name we do not know. I'm going to call him Dumbo. And we'll suppose something like this happened. The king commits the shields to this guy, Dumbo, and he says, Now, remember, my life depends on your faithfulness. And Dumbo says, King, nobody has a key to the guardhouse but me. I'll guard those shields with my life. And the king says, Ma, that makes me feel a little better. Thank you very much. And they part. And the king goes to his office and Dumbo's down there by the guardhouse. And the king has, he kind of rethinks his commitment, you know. He phones Dumbo. He says, Dumbo, would you mind checking the shields just to make sure they're all there. So he runs off and he opens the guardhouse. They're all there. He runs back and says, King, they're all there. Just count them. Thank you, he said. That makes me feel better. And he hangs up. Then he phones again a little while later, half an hour later. Dumbo, he said, it's not that I doubt you or anything, but he said, I just have an uneasy feeling. Would you mind counting the shields? And by this time, Dumbo, you know, he's getting kind of, what's wrong with this guy, you know. So he doesn't bother counting. There's no point because nobody's been there since he was there. So he comes back and says, Well, king, I counted and there's 300. Don't you trust me? And the king says, Dumbo, it's not that at all. I just have this, I have this, I have this godly concern for the shields, you know. That's the problem. This is what we do here. We make a Dumbo out of God by constantly checking up on him and doubting him and wondering, is he doing anything? Just because you can't see what God is doing, don't assume he isn't doing anything. You know, Job talked about God working on his right hand, his left hand behind him, in front of him. And he said, I can't see any of it, you know. But he knew God was working because God was God. He's always at work, dear people. And he's waiting for us to quit all this crying and not to quit crying if it's from a burdened heart, but I mean, this thing of just, we don't trust him. We don't believe anything is going to happen and we keep, we cry because we're full of unbelief sometimes, you know. Commit. I found this the most wonderful thing in the Bible since I got saved. When I learned how to commit and trust. And things we've seen God do, impossible things. My wife and I were going to India and just before we left, they contacted us and said, could you send us several thousand dollars because these pastors that are coming to the conference, none of them can afford a bus ride or a train ride and we need money just to get them to the conference. So, we didn't have three thousand dollars, but we said sure. And so we prayed about it and just waited. We had three weeks before we took off. We didn't tell anybody or ask anybody, we just asked God. And people listen, there's an old saying, can I share it with you? If God knows what the need is, who else needs to know? I don't know whether you got that or not. Anyway, you know what happened? A week or so later, I got a check in the mail from Alberta, Canada. A check for three thousand dollars. And it came from a man who a year or so before, I had to rebuke from, because he was doing some things that I knew were not biblical and I rounded him up and he didn't like it. I never thought I'd ever get a nickel from a guy like that. He didn't know our need, God knew our need and God tapped him on the shoulder and told him what to do and he did it. Because I committed this to God, you know. It's wonderful to get to that place where you can trust God. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And remember, don't lean to your own understanding. Don't try and figure out what God is doing or how He's doing it. Just commit it and trust Him. So I say, once you've committed, begin praising God. Every time you think about the problem, you praise God because He's got it. He's working at it. He'll do it in His own way. And we can give you many other examples such as we've given you here today of people who committed and trusted and saw the power of God. If I became a pastor again, the first thing I'd do the first day I got there would be this. I would commit this church to God for an awakening and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I might have to wait a while, but I know it would come. We don't understand today how days pass, how people prayed for revival. I was reading a while ago in one of Edwin Orr's books, and here was a Baptist church. It was back in the early 1800s in your country. I forget where. And they appointed three prayer meetings a day praying for people to be lost, that were lost, to be saved, and praying for a mighty revival. How long did they wait? Three prayer meetings a day for two years. And a mighty revival came and hundreds of people were saved. It was a glorious awakening. But they cried to God and trusted God. Today, I get to a church and they've been perhaps known for a year I'd be coming, and I ask the pastor, what did you do by way of prayer preparation? And I get answers like this, well, Brother McLeod, we had three extra prayer meetings, you know. And the whole year they'd had three extra prayer meetings. And they're expecting revival. Do they think I carry this in my pocket? I don't. I'm like anybody else. Saved by the grace of God, of yesterday and no nothing, the Bible says. Less than nothing and vanity. Small dust of the balance. That's man at his best state, the Bible says, is altogether vanity. Surely men of high degree are a lie and men of low degree are nothing. The Bible speaks in terms like this. And we have to know how small and little we are at the same time how glorious and great our God is. Just waiting to find people with a heart filled with faith, believing the promises of God. We have to get this straight, I think, that you can't believe God for something He hasn't promised to do. And so with over 7,000 promises in the Bible, sure, not all of them are for us today. But I think we can cut it in half and still wind up with 2,000 promises. Isn't that enough to get you by? 2,000 promises from God? Well, it should be enough, but it isn't. We keep on doubting and doubting and weeping and crying about stuff you know, not committing it to God, not really getting God in the picture. Then we wonder why He doesn't work. Commit your way unto God. Trust also in Him and He will do it. He'll do it. But trust in the Lord, that part, with all your heart. With all your heart. And do not lean to your own understanding. Don't try to figure out what God is doing. An evil heart of unbelief. Do you have it? I mean, many Christians are like this, you know. They just can't believe God. The problem is so big. What can God do with this? We just give up on it, you know. God doesn't have any problems. How could He? I mean, He created this universe. We were talking about this the other day, you know. We're taking a rocket ride at the speed of light, which is some millions of miles an hour. And so, you pass the moon in two seconds and you pass the sun in eight minutes and you get out of the local solar system the same day. But before you get to the nearest star at that speed, it'll be close to three years. And then, if you're crossing the local, the Milky Way constellation on which our local solar system is a small part, it will take you a hundred thousand years at the speed of light to cross the Milky Way. And it's only one of many thousands of constellations, some of whom are a hundred times larger than the Milky Way. And the God who created them is the God who has given us these promises in the Bible and we can't believe Him? What in the world has happened to us? What kind of a mind do we have that we can't really believe God? He's waiting. The Bible says He's looking for people whose hearts are right towards Him through whom He can pour His power. He's looking for Christians then who'll be a channel for the power of God. He's finding it hard because it says, the eyes of the Lord run through and through throughout the whole world looking for someone through whom He can pour His power. But it has to be a faith-filled person who knows how to commit and how to trust. I don't know. But God may have said to your heart this morning, I've done my best. I'm not a great preacher. I'm a poor little guy. I never got any training from the ministry. God called me to preach and a year later I was offered a church. I didn't know a thing about it, but I took on a church. They were hard up, you know, and so that's how it started. And He's been so good. People, listen. One of the things, you know, I'm so glad when I started off, I didn't have a car, I didn't have a bike, I didn't have anything, and I found a gal as crazy as I was and we got married. And here we were, you know. We had a fantastic time because we started timing right away. And then we agreed, no matter how bad the need was, we'd never let anybody know. Because, as I said earlier today, if God knows, who else needs to know? And we saw, again and again and again, God step in and do things that just made us marvel. It says in the Bible, you know, Hearken, my beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich of faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to those that love Him. Why are poor people rich in faith? They have to be in order to survive. It's not bad. I look back and thank God I started off poor because I learned how to trust and believe God for anything and for everything. He's waiting, I say, for people through whom He can pour His grace and power. Would you be one of those? You can be. It's up to you. It's not up to Him. He's waiting and He's looking. And no matter your age, the Bible says, they shall still bring forth fruit in their old age. You can be a hundred years old and still serve God, be a channel for His grace. Why don't we have just a moment or two of silent prayer. Maybe you need to talk to God and ask Him to forgive you for your unbelief.