Speaker 0 00:00:06 Greetings. Welcome to all you life travelers out there. It's great to be with you again today. Welcome to thinking it through. My name is Craig Jarvis, and I'll be your host on this podcast. Put out by village church East. This podcast is on a variety of topics twice a week. That capture our attention and our ever changing culture. Well, listen, they say it takes an average of 66 days to develop a habit since this is officially the second month of thinking it through. We're halfway there. It's my privilege to spend a few minutes with you each week, thinking it through. And today I want to do something just a little bit different. I want to talk about trust more specifically, how to overcome when you feel like you've let someone down who has trusted you. I want to tell you about a story that happened to me many years ago when I was a youth pastor,
Speaker 1 00:00:53 As he had passed for a number of years, and I'd began to make a practice, to give a measure of trust to our kids in our youth group, so that they could learn the value of responsibility. For instance, if we went on a trip, several kids were given responsibilities on that trip. One would be responsible for unloading the vans, another responsible for packing everyone's luggage onboard, another responsible for passing out and organizing daily itineraries. You get it so on and so on. And then came the big summer trip to Florida. This trip would be a little more different, a little more significant, a midst doing missions work and providing some hands-on exposure to ministry. This trip I wanted to try and really tap into our core kids and develop some real leadership potential. I wanted to do this by giving them these ones who had shown leadership already a little bit more heavier measure of trust.
Speaker 1 00:01:40 So I chose one youth to pass out the finances for the day. For the most part, the sponsors took care of the finances and what the kids brought for the different, uh, listed expenditures expenditures on the trip. However, I decided that we would offer a little higher level of trust for our kids by bringing them into the planning process and even bringing them into the daily distribution of funds. They would help figure out what we needed for everyday and then distribute the money. So each kid could pay for their pre-planned planned activity. Everything works smoothly until the final day, we decided to hit Ponderosa for a quick, but first the tile lunch, you remember Ponderosa when it served like food, it was particularly busy that day. So each person we relied upon heavily to fulfill their own responsibilities. Some things that they had already fallen short of what they should have been.
Speaker 1 00:02:31 So the group seemed a little more chaotic than usual. Finally, we sat down in Ponderosa for lunch and it turned out surprisingly well. Buffets always work out that way. We had several tables jammed together. So our two van loads of kids could all fellowship together. We finished lunch, paid the bill and set out for the trip home about an hour into the trip. I noticed some commotion in the back of the van. All the youth had moved to the back of the van and it was actually surprisingly quiet, even though they were all huddled together within a few minutes, the young girl who in charge of the daily distribution of funds made her way up to the front of the van with a very concerned look on her face. She sat down in the seat immediately behind me and with a disturbingly shaky voice asked me if I had the money bag.
Speaker 1 00:03:19 She had been assigned that day. I thought she was joking. So I made some off the cuff comment about what would happen to a person. If that bag would ever get left behind with, with tears in her eyes. She simply said, I think I left the money bag at Ponderosa. That bag had almost $400 in it. Immediately. We stopped the van. I made a phone call to the Ponderosa to see if anyone had turned in a bag containing $400, right? Needless to stay the staff that the boat at the Ponderosa had not seen it, but they promised that if they saw it, it was turned in. They'd call us. Well, it's been 18 years and I'm still waiting for that phone call. This is a great illustration of trust and what we feel like when we dropped the bag. From that point on this girl, we'll call her Jen, that wasn't her name, but this girl never looked at me without that failure coming into her mind.
Speaker 1 00:04:14 I told her that we all make mistakes. It was only money. It was not worth carrying around on her back as a reminder of her mistakes, I tried to make her feel better over the, over the time that she had left in the youth group, because she's one of our seniors. But all she could think about was how she had let the group down. I kicked myself countless times for setting that poor girl up for failure like that, chalk it up to my youth, but it was a bad move on my part to be honest, leaving behind that money bag was a mistake. That's probably more actually my fault. I shouldn't have given her that much responsibility and I should have tempered what she was responsible for over time. But this girl let's call her. Jen could only think about that for the months to come and how she had damaged the group's trust in her as believers were entrusted with things from God's own hand, everything we have has been given to us by God so that we can use it for his purposes.
Speaker 1 00:05:05 He's the owner. We just distribute the contents of the bag. He entrust to us, but sometimes we drop the bag. Sometimes we falter. Sometimes we look at how we're really using God's blessings and gifts and feel like we come up way short of what his expectations of us should be. We feel inadequate or even worse like failures. And often it's. At those times, God reminds us something about himself. He reminds us that he never gets tired of giving us second chances. Third chances, even 50th, and a hundred chances. And when we do drop the bag, he sure goes out of his way to remind us that he is still good to us because we had to shorten our drive time to get home. Now that we were out of cash on the way home, we ended up driving through the night we were out of money, but by the time the sun came up, we had two vans full of hungry teenagers.
Speaker 1 00:05:58 So we decided we had to stop and feed them, regardless of the fact that I'd have to put everything on my personal credit card. We decided to make the most of it. We saw burger King. I thought that would be cheap. And they were serving breakfast. So we pulled in and we unloaded. As soon as we walked in the door, a very strange thing happened. They closed the door behind us. I'd locked us in. It was creepy, curious, but creepy. The manager who was the one that locked the door, turned around and announced to us, the power had just gone down in the building. And because it was breakfast rush hour, they just cooked a whole bunch of food that needed to be eaten right away. And since the cash register, weren't working, everything was cooked and everything was free. Hands full of teenagers, eight, like it was Thanksgiving day.
Speaker 1 00:06:46 And then we got back into the van. We talked in amazement at how God's grace always provides for us, even when we don't plan for it. Even when we mess up, even when we drop the bags of trust he has given to us, and this is how God works. He always has. And he always will. There's a character in the Bible who dropped the bag of trust. Big time. He was given that more than he deserved by God from the beginning of his life and ended up disappointing God and everyone around him, that man's name was Samson. Before Samson was born. He was given a huge bag of trust by God. An angel came to Samson's parents and told them that this child that would be born to them would be very special. He would have to keep a vowed and never cut his hair and everything, buddy, through viewing those uncut locks, they would see his dedication to God.
Speaker 1 00:07:39 He would be blessed by huge gifts by God. And you know that he was, he would use his strength is incredible. Samson's strength, superhuman strength to rescue the Jewish people from their enemies, the Philistines, but Samson was anything but a gift to his people. Samson was selfish, braggadocious, uncouth, ungrateful, demanding, vengeful, hateful, lustful, angry, and overall a big disappointment to just about everybody. He was driven by his passions, his rage, and rarely had one godly thought in his huge head. His own selfish actions got actually got his in-laws killed and their homes burned to the ground. Go ahead. You can read about them. If you want to. In judges 13 to 16, the only time he did anything good at all was well when he felt like he was being wrong by those, around him, even his own people, those who he was supposed to to say from their enemies, didn't like him.
Speaker 1 00:08:34 In fact, when they could trade him to their enemies for their own freedom, they did. They tried to bind Samson and pass him off to buy their own freedom. They gave up Samson like he was rotting garbage. And to be honest, he kind of was at the end of his life chain to supporting pillars in a pagan, he killed more of Israel's enemies than he had ever had in his life. He'd been betrayed by a woman. He loved you remember Delilah. And he captured, he was captured by the enemy because of her betrayal. They cut his hair, his symbol of strength, and they ripped out his eyes. Even then his anger was to get personal vengeance against his enemies for using a woman to entrap him. Even then he didn't think of the Lord. Samson squandered, his huge bag of trust given to him by God like few others.
Speaker 1 00:09:28 And yet when you get to the book of Hebrews in the new Testament written literally thousands of years apps after Samson lived, God speaks of Samson in a way you would simply not expect Liz. He's listed with Gideon and Samuel and Jephthah and David, as men of God used, it says in Hebrews 1133 used by God, because it was through their faith. They conquered kingdoms, enforced justice obtained promises stopped the mouths of lions quenched. The power of the fire escaped the edge of the sword. Hebrews says they were made strong out of weakness. They became mighty in war and they put foreign armies to flight. Wait, how is it that Samson ending up to be a failure brag done by God. So many years afterwards? Well, you need to know. That's just how God works. You may feel like you've squandered blessings and trust like few others before you.
Speaker 1 00:10:25 But when it comes to God, you simply cannot fall that far out of his grace, where he can not use you for something you never fall off his radar. He never throws the towel in on you or Samsung and went wrong. Is that he missed the key moment to acknowledge it was God. All along Samsung could have taken the moment at the end of his life to acknowledge what he always knew. He certainly could have remembered the pleas of his parents to be a good steward of God's blessings. He could have realized how much he had spent on his own fame and how little he had given for God's fame, much more for himself than for God. Those God moments that I'm sure Samson had are precious they're opportunities. And yet even they were ignored by this individual. They are pieces of what are included in our bags of trust that he gives to us.
Speaker 1 00:11:12 And the question is, what will we do with him for a group of teenagers and they're well-intentioned, but misdirected leaders. We took time after that burger King episode, to crawl back into two vans and realize God's grace, as what follows us, what keeps us. And in this case, what feeds us, we stopped. And we thank God for providing. When we let others down who have trusted us, there are certain steps that are essential. Every psychologist will tell you if you've lost the trust someone has had in you, they'll tell you to get it back. It begins with acknowledging the failures you've encountered, especially if those failures were on your part, acknowledging that fault goes a long way to building trust. Again, to apologize. Sincerely is the next step you can do better. You can do this better. When you let yourself see things through the eyes of the other person, ask yourself, how did my actions come across to them?
Speaker 1 00:12:07 What did my word sound like to you? When I said them doing this exercise will make it much easier to apologize because it will be your attempt to remove yourself from seeing the situation through only one vantage point. And then the last step is very important as well. And there's the other steps, but th these three are essential admitting that you've made them mistake admitting you've dropped the bag of trust. Okay. Apologizing, sincerely. And then, then the, the other, the one that is you've got to give time for trust to be regained can often be the hardest part because you know, you were sincere in the apology. You know, you've reflected on what you've done. You know that you're sorry, but the person who needs to trust you again can only become more confident in you. As they see patterns of trust. Re-emerge in your life.
Speaker 1 00:12:54 Words could be cheap. Most people will believe actions way before words, as the Bible reminds us, don't get weary in well-doing for in the end, you will reap a harvest if you do not faint. So don't give up, let time heal. Those wounds. Ultimately, trust is one of the most difficult parts of our lives to re-establish with those who we have disappointed. And sometimes that difficult process will begin to wear on us and try and convince us. It's just not worth the effort. We may think we have changed, but nobody is ever going to believe it. We might begin to believe the lie that our failures are greater than God's power to change others view of us. We will never get trusted again, but when your moment of clarity comes, don't squash it. I don't think how life has been hard and come up with a million excuses.
Speaker 1 00:13:44 Why you've let others down and give yourself permission to feel comfortable knowing you've let God down. Don't get stuck. Staying a victim will eventually lead to misallocated permission. Walk the walk, build the trust back, do the work. And in the end, you will reap a harvest. If you do not faint to remind you, God's forgiveness is new every morning. If you have messed up, join the club, God has forgiveness waiting in the wings, ready for you. For the asking with him, you will always get a fresh start. And by the way, what God forgives, he forgets someday. He will ask us what kind of stewards we've been with. The things that he has given to us in Sunday, we'll have to answer. God has entrusted each one of us with his own hand gifts, mentee be used for his glory. I hope that you've excelled more and more using the, the things in your bag in a way that would build trust between you and God, the way that God would use those things himself.
Speaker 1 00:14:46 And I hope that that's been your case with other people as well. But if you haven't, if you, the bag of trust, I challenge you to find out what God can do with people like you. And like me. Remember Samson. If God can use him, surely he can use you and I more than we ever thought possible. Remember someone at three 10, the Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve. Thank God he doesn't or repay us according to our iniquities. Thank God he does it for as high as the heavens are above the earth. So great is his love for those who fear him? Well, that brings us to the end of our podcast. And as always, if you've liked this podcast, you can experience a room full of folks, just like you, who are struggling, just like you to rebuild trust with those around them. People I know
Speaker 0 00:15:33 Who have dropped the bag more times than they can care to count and PayPal. I worship with every Sunday and a place called village church East. I know they know I do the same thing dropping those bags constantly. So I thank God and they do too. We're not alone in this. If you want to join us and check us out, feel free to visit our
[email protected] village, church, east.org. You can read about me there, your host right there on that website, or join us in person. I share. We'd love to meet you until then know that God loves you like crazy and there's no bag you could ever drop to make him love you less. I'll see you next time.
