Jan 19, 2022
Are you happy? I spent most of my career angry. Can you say that you honestly enjoy your work and look forward to it?
Welcome back to the Follower of One podcast. I'm Mike Henry. Do you ever consider that happiness is a product of trust? I think I've said yesterday, that trust is my word of the year for 2022. And so in my study of trust, I came to Psalm 40 verses one through four.
We talked about verses one through three yesterday. Today I want to focus on verse four because I want to trust the Lord better. If we trust God, we can enjoy him. We can experience happiness. But if we don't trust him, we may have a problem.
Here's the verse: "Blessed is the man who makes the Lord has trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie."
That's from the English Standard Version. The Net Bible says "How blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord and does not seek help from the proud or from liars." This contrast is interesting because if we trust in the Lord, the opposite of that is seeking help from proud people or from liars.
I tend to try and get things done on my own. When I don't trust the Lord, I try and do it myself. Maybe I'm the proud in the liar that the Psalmist is talking about here.
Back to my original question. Are you as happy as you would like to be? For the 30, some odd years that I was angry and frustrated and struggling in my career, it's because I was trying to do everything in my own power. I wasn't trusting the Lord with the things that were happening, the things that were taking place in my job. I want to trust the Lord more so that he will help me. And I want to challenge us today with this verse. "Blessed is the person who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud to those who go astray after a lie."
We are blessed, if we can make the Lord our trust, our hope. If we fix our hope for the future on the Lord, we can enjoy the things that are happening. I want to do a better job of enjoying the things that happen to me today. How about you?
Let's focus on that today. Let's ask God to help strengthen our trust so that we can be more joyful with the people that we're around and the people that we interact with. Let's live differently. And let's live this joy to the extent that we trust the Lord and let's grow our trust in the Lord while we do it.
I want to challenge all of us today. Actively trust Jesus. Listen to what he says. Ask him for guidance and direction and advice. And if it gives you a crazy idea and it lines up with scripture and you can do it without messing up your job, try and do it. Try and make it happen. When we obey Jesus in the crazy ideas that he gives us, he gives us more.
We experience more of him. We experience more of his joy, when we listened to him. Today, don't let your work environment or your challenges or your struggles or your anxieties keep you from listening to Jesus. The more we can listen to him, the greater that we will experience him and his joy. And we will show up as joyful, happy people in our workplaces.
And that will prompt other people to ask, "Why are you doing this? Why do you live like this? Why are you different?"
Thank you for being a marketplace minister and thank you for actively trying to live your faith in the workplace and for listening to and sharing this podcast. I would like to encourage you in just a couple of weeks, we have a new Marketplace Mission Trip starting, and this is the new version of our Marketplace Mission Trip.
It's inside of our online community. Head over to https://community.followerofone.org and create a profile there, request access to that group and we will let you in. Then you can join the Marketplace Mission Trip that begins on January the 23rd.
Thank you very much for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for listening to this podcast and sharing it. I'm grateful for your service.