2 Tim 1:12 For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. 
	Last week, we spent much time within the Psalms, looking at the trust that is established in God through trials and tribulations as they are suffered on behalf of God’s manifestation of trustworthiness. There is a deep relationship that is produced as dark and dangerous conflicts and adversities are faced and overcome in Christ. We begin to develop a deepening sense of awe at the grace of God that is shed upon us as we are brought through these hard times scarred, yet always strengthened in our ever more complete reliance upon God as the very source of our salvation and protection. It shows forth the fellowship that is ours in Jesus Christ through His death and resurrection and glorification. That very pattern represents the fullness of the nature of God’s trustworthiness in every single situation of our lives on this earth. We can trust God, no matter what. Nah 1:1 The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble, And He knows those who take refuge in Him.
	As we come to the conclusion of our consideration of the passage before us, let us do so with several key aspects that are a part of our responsibility within this trust that is established in Christ. Too often, we may think that we have no other part in the living relationship that is ours in Christ, than to just sit back and let God do everything. It is true, that all has been accomplished and finished in Christ Jesus’ perfect work. Once we have responded to God’s love in Jesus Christ, in coming to Him as our very life, we are eternally secure in His saving Grace. But we are seeking a living relationship, a oneness of life, a singleness of heart unto the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our heart is for that relationship to become the course of our every hope and consideration and endeavor and walk on this earth. 
Salvation is the on-going process of our new life in Him. When we are saved, it is with the same commitment that is instituted in our wedding vows. We pledge ourselves unto God as His Alone. No other allegiance, no other source of life, no other desire of our heart than Jesus Christ, Our Husband and Lord. That relationship takes work, and effort, and sacrifice, and suffering, and struggle, and very hard dealings, in order to be ingrained completely and singly in Him. This places on us, as His bride, very great and noble responsibilities that can only be accomplished as we give ourselves utterly to Him. 
	One of the first duties of this living relationship of absolute trust in God is humbleness of heart. We cannot trust God if we are not humbly before Him in earnest prayer. We need to beseech Him to do that entire work that He must accomplish in order to establish our complete trust in Him. If we are haughty, if we are self-reliant, if we are thinking that we can handle, even some of the issues on our own, we will not find our trust completely in Him. We will trust ourselves, rather than Him, especially in minor matters. Prov 29:23-25, A man's pride will bring him low, But a humble spirit will obtain honor. He who is a partner with a thief hates his own life; He hears the oath but tells nothing. The fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the Lord will be exalted. We will find the Lord honoring our hearts after Him in all His fullness, when we do so with humbleness of being. We need to come to the Lord knowing that we have nothing in ourselves of any value other than Christ Jesus.
Please realize, many a man thinks, in his own heart, that he can do all the things necessary to make himself acceptable to God. There is many a thought and many a motive based on what we can do and what we can get. True humbleness of spirit and soul, however, knows that we are utterly helpless apart from God. True humbleness knows that without Him, we would surely perish in this world. One of God’s great desires, in our relationship with Him, is our complete reliance and trust on and in Him. That is something that we have to earnestly desire and to seek after Him to make the very fiber of our hearts and lives. Nothing but Christ, period!
	In a very thrilling passage, the Prophet Isaiah expounds two other responsibilities of our hearts before God. Isa 26:1-10 In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: "We have a strong city; He sets up walls and ramparts for security. "Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter, The one that remains faithful. "The steadfast of mind Thou wilt keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in Thee. "Trust in the Lord forever, For in God the Lord, we have an everlasting Rock. "For He has brought low those who dwell on high, the unassailable city; He lays it low, He lays it low to the ground, He casts it to the dust. "The foot will trample it, The feet of the afflicted, the steps of the helpless." The way of the righteous is smooth; O Upright One, make the path of the righteous level. Indeed, while following the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, We have waited for Thee eagerly; Thy name, even Thy memory, is the desire of our souls. At night my soul longs for Thee, Indeed, my spirit within me seeks Thee diligently; For when the earth experiences Thy judgments The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Though the wicked is shown favor, He does not learn righteousness; He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness, And does not perceive the majesty of the Lord. 
	Our next responsibility, as noted in this passage, is that we are to be faithful unto Him as He is faithful unto us. This is something that requires immense concentration and effort on our part. We must cling to the Lord, no matter what happens. We must defy all the taunts and the assaults of this age upon our steadfastness in Him. Never give up the hope that He is our life. Never allow our hearts to be distracted and to seek after another avenue of escape from the events and the battles raging around us. The Old Testament is filled with those kings of Israel and Judah who turned away from God’s guidance and Word, to human understanding and human wisdom in their efforts to overcome the invasions of the nations upon them. Whenever they fully trusted in the Lord, He brought them victory. Whenever they trusted in themselves or in the wisdom of humanity, they were crushed, defeated and enslaved. Hold forth the banner of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives and never waiver in our absolute dedication to His way in our hearts.
The second responsibility of this passage is ever much more difficult in an earthly sense. It goes against the very nature of our birth, as it should, since it is of the nature of God that we now partake. We must learn to wait on the Lord. It seems so simple, yet it is so difficult for us to just wait to see what the Lord will do. We want to see results and we want to see them now. We get tired of things never seeming to change and we get discouraged. We want something new in our lives and we constantly seek after the next best, exciting, and pleasing gimmick and route to wander. We get tired of that which is steady and true, day after day, month after month, and year after year. It gets old, fighting the same battles day in and day out. It is tiring and difficult counseling a person each time with the same message that God is in control and that we need to simply count on Him. Every time, it is the same encouragement that we need to hear and we just never seem to get it. We want to see something change now. We want some sign, some show that what we are struggling through is worth it. There are so many times we cry out to the Lord to please just do something so we can go on from here. 
But that is not the way we learn to trust Him. We learn that tremendous and incredible trust as things do not change right away, as things seem to be the same day after day and month after month. We learn to trust God as we pray for our husband, our wife, our children, our loved ones year after year and know that God will do something in His time. We learn that God is not bound by our lack of patience and our watching time crawl by. He is doing exactly what needs to be done with eternity in view, not just a limited view of today. Can we trust Him by waiting for Him to do what He knows need to be done in the timeframe of His Omniscience? 
As a most important aside at this point, we miss the Lord when we try to make things happen, when we lose patience, when we think that we have waited long enough for the Lord to do His work. We miss His glory when we give up and turn to our own ideas and our own ways. We will never come into the absolute gloriousness of our life in Christ, if we refuse to wait, even until the end of our days, for the Lord to prove Himself. It is as we faithfully and patiently wait on Him, that we find our trust and our hope and our faith and our joy and our peace being magnified beyond all our comprehension. As Jeremiah writes in Jer 17:5-8, Thus says the Lord, "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the Lord. "For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, A land of salt without inhabitant. "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord And whose trust is the Lord. "For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit. 
	Notice that our trust is rewarded in the nourishment that we receive from the very river of life. As trees, planted by God’s faithfulness at the river of life in Jesus Christ, our roots are extended into the very depths of the riverbed fed by living water. Consider the years, decades, and even centuries it takes for roots of trees to grow and to extend to the point that they can withstand the natural forces that are waged against them. They are not just planted and established. They need time to grow their roots deep into the sustaining and solidifying earth. Once those roots are so embedded, those trees can face the gales and the onslaughts of natural disasters. 
However, never let it be forgotten that it is also in those winds and forces of nature being unleashed against them, that they have their roots ever more deeply embedded into the firm and unyielding foundation of life. It is through the survival of the fires and the thunder and lightening storms and the windstorms and the myriad of other disasters and pressures and battling elements that this unshakeable stability takes place. It is to such an extent, that these trees, so anchored, can survive the harshest drought and heat and still produce fruit abundantly. That is the value and the outgrowth of waiting faithfully on the Lord.  
	The Lord, through Jeremiah, makes a very bold statement with respect to those who choose an avenue other than absolute trust in the Lord. He says …Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind… This is no small thing to God. This is not something that can be easily overlooked in our walk on this earth. Not only will we miss the fullness of God when we do not wait on Him to accomplish His very best in our lives, but we will be cursed. If we choose to go the way of man over the way of God, if we panic and we try to do things because we have lost all patience for the Lord to reveal Himself, we will not only lose the blessing of the Lord in our lives, but we will be cursed. This, in nowise, means that we will lose our salvation. Heaven forbid that we would think such a thing. But, we will lose the knowledge of the living presence of God in our lives. We will have shut ourselves away from the Lord and the desire to hear His voice of guidance and comfort. We will be seeking after other gods of this age to deal with the crises and we will flounder in helpless survival of the fittest without hope. We will not be able to continue in the joy and the peace and the rest of God, because we have closed our hearts to Him. If, however, we do return to Him and seek His forgiveness for our audacity and our efforts; if we repent from trying to make something happen, which only He can do, we will then find our peace and our rest and our comfort once more at his feet.
	The writer of Proverbs, in Prov 3:5+6, saw this in another manner and encourages us to not get caught up in any of the schemes of man, but to Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Realize that our understanding will never save us. It is only as we lean utterly and absolutely on His wisdom and His grace and His mercy and wait patiently for Christ to do the necessary work, that we will walk in His paths of righteousness. We will find that our feet are set on smooth paths of comfort and peace without strife and struggle and thorns and rocks and excrement. We will be lead forth in joy and in dancing before the Lord God Almighty. We will know what it means to trust Him completely and will come into that living relationship which far supersedes anything that we could ever imagine. The blessing of the Lord will make all the time and the trusting in Him far more than worthwhile. We will be brought into that place in Jesus Christ that has always been in the heart of God. It will be the richness and the splendor of the true, spiritual marriage as the perfect bride of Christ in whom God will take eternal delight. Encourage ourselves to never settle for anything less, corporately and individually, to the praise of His glory in His Beloved. So be it!
For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. Amen

This morning’s benediction is Song of Solomon 5:10-16 "My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, Outstanding among ten thousand. "His head is like gold, pure gold; His locks are like clusters of dates, And black as a raven. "His eyes are like doves, Beside streams of water, Bathed in milk, And reposed in their setting. "His cheeks are like a bed of balsam, Banks of sweet-scented herbs; His lips are lilies, Dripping with liquid myrrh. "His hands are rods of gold Set with beryl; His abdomen is carved ivory Inlaid with sapphires. "His legs are pillars of alabaster Set on pedestals of pure gold; His appearance is like Lebanon, Choice as the cedars. "His mouth is full of sweetness. And he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Amen.