Embracing Uncertainty: Trusting God in the 'Perhaps'

Trust in the Lord with all your heart artificial intelligence can do amazing things it can calculate and process all kinds of information but it can't trust doesn't trust this is a uniquely human capacity now we can make human beings through procreation Maybe someday God will enable us to make persons in other ways but this is a deeply personal capacity to be able to trust and it's a good thing to be able to trust uncertainty although it's really hard for us is Central to story because it's Central to relationships. [00:00:45]

There's something about trusting about the vulnerability of placing myself in my heart in my life and my desires and my hopes and my fears into the arms of a trustworthy person that's a good thing that fits personhood and part of our story is walking through this journey. [00:01:31]

Jimmy said if there was one word it would be the word perhaps I want to know God I want to trust in him with all my heart I want to believe that God will watch over me and care for my life but if I'm honest about it I also struggle with um doubts and questions and fears and things that have gone wrong and problems and hurts and so the word is perhaps. [00:02:18]

There's a difference between uh commitment that's something I'm able to choose to offer and then certainty and that I cannot and should not try to conjure up by an act of willpower often uh folks in certain rooms in the church Ur will get that idea no you can't even acknowledge uncertainty When you pray or you might not get what you're after you just have no no no no no no. [00:03:13]

Perhaps God Will Save Me perhaps not limitations I think it's 3: 29 talks about the need to repent and says let Fallen human beings fill their mouths with dust perhaps there is still hope perhaps there is still hope Jonathan in 1 Samuel I think is 146 says to his armor be when they're facing Philistines the great enemy let's go over to the other side perhaps the Lord will deliver us so we're going to risk our lives for that. [00:04:00]

Even Jesus in the garden this is part of his story where he prays to the father uh if there is another way let this cup pass from me perhaps there's another way to get this done perhaps there's another way for the world to be reconciled to you God perhaps Jesus himself is haunted by the great perhaps nevertheless I trust you with my whole heart not my will but yours be done. [00:06:07]

Perhaps they will listen perhaps they will turn from their evil ways even God it seems is kind of haunted by the great perhaps God of course is not limited and yet if the Incarnation teaches us anything it's that God limits himself and from the very beginning in creation God allows human beings you and I to have a kingdom we talk about that so much that we're invited to align our kingdom with with his kingdom. [00:07:07]

Perhaps today you will walk with God in a way that you haven't before perhaps today I will trust God listen for God seek to love love seek to give seek to help so the invitation today is make this word your word perhaps don't try to force yourself to to have more certainty than you actually do but as you walk through this dayto day perhaps God will be present perhaps God will be here perhaps God is listening perhaps God is strengthening perhaps God is encouraging perhaps God is present perhaps I can meet him you never know you never know that's part of what makes a story so wonderful. [00:07:49]

Faith Christian faith is not certainty about what it's uh commitment to who it's not certainty about what will happen sometimes people I remember somebody telling me they had a vision for what will happen to my family someday Perhaps Perhaps I don't know but there's a conviction about who wonderful example of that little word perhaps in the Book of Jonah that very strange story of the runaway prophet and one of the aspects of that book is pretty much everybody in that book pagans people living in Nineveh they really bad guys folks on the boat where Jonah's trying to run away they all have more faith than Jonah the prophet does. [00:10:34]

Live today in the great perhaps from one moment to the next perhaps God is here perhaps I can give perhaps I can be useful perhaps I can learn perhaps I can see beauty perhaps I can hear the sound of the birds and remember the one uh who observes them so carefully that not one of them can fall out of a nest he feeds them perhaps I can love perhaps I can grow perhaps I can be grateful live today in the great perhaps that's the story. [00:11:47]

The story was all night recently of a uh man who uh uh the beginning of the story is not happy his father passed away he's in I think the village of Sussex in England and uh he loved his dad very much so he and his family would bring flowers to his father's grave on a very regular basis his um other relatives to do the same thing so that he said his father's grave after a while started to look like the third place winner of the Chelsea flower show and after a while he felt kind of bad because there was a grave next to his father and it never got any flowers and so uh he began to bring flowers there when he would bring flowers to his dad's grave and he does this for a couple of years and then he thinks it'd be good to get to know a little bit more about the man in this grave to whom I'm bringing flowers and when he read about him online he was quite horrified to find out the reason that nobody brought that man flowers is that that man uh murdered his wife and her parents and then he felt terrible about bringing flowers to this guy so he decided uh as a kind of a makeup thing that he ought to bring flowers to the woman who had been killed and he did that on a fairly regular basis until one day when he was there and a woman approached him at that grave and said uh why are you bringing flowers to the grave of my aunt and my grandparents and then he had to tell her this rather odd story but she was quite sympathetic and quite kind and he says although this sounds really odd I ended up asking her out for a cup of coffee and she said yes and a long story short that's how he met his wife. [00:08:36]

Perhaps Perhaps this is the day we don't know well uh Faith Christian faith is not certainty about what it's uh commitment to who it's not certainty about what will happen sometimes people I remember somebody telling me they had a vision for what will happen to my family someday Perhaps Perhaps I don't know but there's a conviction about who wonderful example of that little word perhaps in the Book of Jonah that very strange story of the runaway prophet and one of the aspects of that book is pretty much everybody in that book pagans people living in Nineveh they really bad guys folks on the boat where Jonah's trying to run away they all have more faith than Jonah the prophet does. [00:10:34]