Transformation: Trusting When Times are Tough Psalm 25: 1-2 Psalm 40:4 John 14:1

As part of the Adult Membership Curriculum we watch and discuss a five part video over several weeks about what it means to be United Methodist. We look at the history, beliefs, and specific traditions of the church and talk about how they apply to our local church. I always am struck by the new things I pick up on every time I watch the video. As I was preparing for this particular sermon the voice of an iron worker comes to mind - as he tells the story of how his faith life is like that of the iron. Not that it is immovable, but instead that God sends refining, hot fire, through the Holy Scriptures, into his life to heat up the iron to the point where it is pliable and burns away imperfections, making him bend to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

We are now in our third week of our sermon series on what it means to be transformed in Christ’s likeness this Lenten season. I want you to take a moment to think back on your own life - what are the moments that transformed you the most? What are the moments that changed your life and your faith the most? For some it is happy moments. Weddings take two families and blend them into one. I’ve shared before that what brought my parents looking for a permeant church home was my birth - they wanted to find a church that would love them and love their child. Life changing, wonderful moments can be triggers for transformation.

But moments of struggle can also be moments for transformation. Illness. Death of a loved one. Being in a new place. My first year of college I spent at a large college in a strange city. It was my first choice of a place to be -but I still struggled. I felt alone in my faith, and for the first time I had to find a church that fit me apart from my family. But out of that time of loneliness came a blessing in Bellfield Presbyterian Church - located across the street from my dorm, where I spent time at large group worship, Sunday services, and in a small group that nurtured me. I still look back on the year I spent at that church before transferring to a different college in another state as one of the best in faith formation - one of the times I felt closest to God, even in the midst of the struggle.

However, I know that these moments that can draw people to God, whether they are times of struggle or times of celebration can also be times when people abandon the faith - especially when times are tough. Especially when you are new to the faith. Or when your faith has a shaky foundation. 

One year for confirmation class, we spent time exploring Jesus’s parable about the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. When the storms came, the house upon the sand was washed away and destroyed, but the house on the rock stood firm. We were trying to get the confirmands to think about what the foundations of their life were. It was hard to get many of them to fathom that anything bad could ever happen to them, that they would face storms in life, but we wanted them to deeply discover what was the foundation of their life, because we as pastors knew that those times of trial would come.

Brothers and sisters, I think we know that trials come in our own life as well. Like those confirmands, we need to think about what the foundation of our life is before the storms hit. Sometimes we don’t know exactly what foundation we have until the storm rolls in. We may think we have a solid relationship with God, but then when the storm comes we fall away from the faith because we held to the belief that if we loved God that nothing bad would ever happen to us. Other times, we’re not so sure what our foundation is, but when there are times of trial, we find ourselves clinging fast to what we learned about God so long ago. 

If anyone knew about times of trial, it was David, King of Israel, who composed many psalms, or poems set to music, prior to and after becoming King. If you look above some of the psalms they will tell you what type they are - what the mood is. Have you ever noticed how many psalms of distress or lament there are? Times when David was struggling. Times when he was fleeing for his life. Yet in the midst of those times of trial he still turned to God - still asked God to be his help. David trusted God and that trust was the foundation of his faith life. For in the words from this morning’s psalms, “My God, I have trusted you.” and “Blessed is the man who makes Yahweh his trust, and does’t respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.”

Trust - what do we really place our trust in? In relationships? In money? In our own health or ability? We live in a world today that has taken trust and has twisted it around. We live in a time when there is a lot of distrust - we don’t trust anyone or anything outside of ourselves and where we find pithy sayings like “I only trust myself” and “The only person who will never let you down is you.” But we also live in a world of misplaced trust - where we look to people based off of their status and wealth and deem them to be trustworthy before examining their character and actions. 

Part of the reason we get so twisted about trust is because we don’t trust God - not with our whole hearts. Scripture tells us time and again that God is the only one who will endure, the only one who will never forsake us - yet God is sometimes the last one we turn to, especially during times of trial. It is not until we have exhausted all other means and our own power during times of struggle that we turn to God as a last result - that is not trust, brothers and sisters. 

Trust is a foundational characteristic of love. If we love, we trust. Love trusts. Do we love God? Do we trust God? And not just knee-jerk saying that we trust because we think that is the right thing to say in church, but do we really trust God and if so how is that seen in our lives?

I have done more funerals then I care to count at times, but I can tell you that my favorite funerals are celebrations of people’s lives who loved and trusted the Lord. People who knew what the foundation of their faith was. People who turned to the Lord, even in the midst of awful circumstances and praised God in the midst of the storm. Spiritual author Brennan Manning states, “The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is thankfulness.” Have you ever met those folks who just praised God even when everyone else didn’t? Do you know people who are truly thankful in all circumstances? Who are thankful even in difficult times? 

I think those folks have taken to heart the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.” Here’s the thing - things may not always go well. There are going to be troubling times in our lives - times when the storms roll in, but those storms also can reveal to us the very character of God - that God is trustworthy and true. How is your trust in God this morning, brothers and sisters? What is the foundation of your life built upon? Amen.