Okay, beginning of a new week. I’m trusting that you’re doing really well today. So here’s a question for you, right in your face, as we Australians would say, are you ready? Here we go. Question: Are you a blessing or are you a burden? And while you’re pondering that one don’t forget to stick with me because at the end of the program I’m going to tell you about a special gift that I’d just love to send you.

Last week we were chatting about this very thing, whether you and I are a blessing or a burden to the people around us and how we each can become more and more of a blessing because none of us wants to be a burden. So we’re going to continue with that theme again this week, it’s a big subject. Why? Let’s face it, opportunities are bound in life for us to be either a blessing or a burden.

Every time we interact with someone – our spouse, our children, friends, family, work colleagues, the boss, our subordinates, the person who serves us at the check out of a supermarket, whoever it is – each time we interact with someone we can be either a blessing to them or a burden in their lives.

And I have to tell you it’s actually much, much easier to be a burden. See being a burden doesn’t take much effort at all. Relying on other people to do things for you, things that you could really do for yourself is the easiest thing of all. Doing them yourself is much harder; it takes effort, it takes initiative.

Being short with someone, not giving them the time of day, not interacting with them, not showing any interest in them. I mean come on, let’s face it, that’s much easier than engaging with someone, finding out their problems and helping them. Yup, opportunities are bound to be either a blessing or a burden and it’s much, much easier to be a burden.

And yet, I don’t know, the older we get the more opportunity we have to look back on the life we’ve lived thus far, the more we wish that we’d have been more of a blessing than a burden and the more we want to leave a positive mark in the lives of the people around us. Maybe it’s something about maturity, maybe its something about the realisation that there’s less and less of our lives left to live, less time to be a blessing.

Whatever it is, even though sometimes we get lazy about this, we all do, in our heart of hearts most of us yearn to be a blessing in this world. That’s why we’re talking about this stuff because it’s important; I mean it’s really important, would you agree?

So let’s kick the week off with a really practical way that we can be a blessing. It’s by being a shock absorber in the middle of a conflict. See conflict is something that most of us have to deal with on a regular basis, in fact probably on a daily basis.

When imperfect people rub up against one another in a home or a work place or a shop or wherever it is, when imperfect people bump into one another then from time to time you can be pretty certain that sparks are going to fly. It happens in a marriage as the husband’s habits start to annoy his wife and the wife’s little foibles and weaknesses start to drive the husband around the twist.

It happens in just about every relationship because we’re all imperfect and we all have the capacity to annoy one another. I know I do. So let me ask you this, the last time you were in the middle of such a conflict, big or small, it doesn’t matter, how did you react? At that flash point, at the point where there’s a potential for this thing to escalate or to go away how did you react?

Here’s how most of us react most of the time. Someone says something or does something that we find annoying so we punch straight back, why did you do that? Why did you say that? How could you think that, you’re an idiot? Isn’t that what we do? We may not say it but we certainly think it.

Or when someone throws accusations in our face we ratchet up our response, we escalate the conflict, we come out boxing and defending ourselves and it may not be with words it maybe with stony silence, it maybe with an angry look or maybe with negative body language.

See this is how arguments start, that’s how relationships are ruined, this is how marriages start to fall apart, this is how murders happen, and it’s how wars begin. At some point it was nothing much but then we had to escalate the conflict. Look at it from that perspective and we can start to see how absolutely crazy this step of escalation is. We do it out of pride or whatever but we do it and bang, it’s on for young and old, we’re off and racing folks and it’s not much fun.

So I’m going to share with you right now the secret of how you can be a blessing right at that point of ignition, are you ready? The secret lies buried in a Book that was written about three thousand years ago by a very wise old king called Solomon, the king of Israel. He wrote down this secret as a Proverb, chapter 15 and verse 1, here it is:

“A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

See at that flash point of the conflict our most natural response is the second half of that Proverb, it’s to give a harsh word which will absolutely 100% of the time stir up anger. See that’s the anatomy of the escalation. Until that angry response there was no argument there was only the potential of an argument but we have to open our big mouths, we have to give a harsh response and that’s what causes the argument.

The alternative is the first part of the Proverb; it’s the soft answer, why? Because almost always the soft answer turns away wrath, it averts the conflict. At this point you might be thinking, ‘but hang on, I don’t want to be a victim, I don’t want to be someone else’s doormat where people walk all over me, that’s crazy’. But that’s not what I’m talking about, that’s not what the Proverb says.

Actually it takes a very secure person, a mature person, a wise person to give a soft answer that turns away someone else’s wrath. First we have to have our own anger under control and second we need the wisdom to know that if there is an issue that needs dealing with then we’re much more likely to deal with it effectively and get the response and the result we’re looking for in an environment free from argument than we are in a situation of anger and conflict that we ourselves have stirred up.

And whilst your adversary may never have appreciated what an incredible blessing you were by giving a soft answer to turn away their wrath instead of a harsh word to stir up their anger, hey you’ll know. You’ll know what an incredible blessing you’ve been in that place by avoiding a conflict that really, come on, never had to happen.

See all too often you and I are driven by what we think we’re entitled to. I’m entitled to some respect, I’m entitled of this and that and the other, how dare they talk to me like that, how dare they walk away from me, I’m going to fix them. Isn’t that the self-talk that runs through our head at the flash point of a conflict? I’m entitled, I am. Oh okay, maybe you are but there’s a whole bunch more that we’re entitled to.

See you and I have both rebelled against God at some point in our life; in fact it’s something we manage to do over and over again. What we deserve for that is Gods punishment, really we do, so why doesn’t God’s anger and wrath fall upon us every day of the week?

Well here’s why, because He doesn’t deal with us according to our sins nor does He repay us according to our iniquities. Psalm 103, verse 10.

In fact He does the very thing that we’ve been talking about, God holds back His punishment, He shows us mercy, He withholds the one thing that we deserve out of love for us and when we take that same mercy that God shows us, the mercy that had Jesus brutally punished on that cross two thousand years ago instead of you and me for what we deserve and we apply that mercy to a conflict situation.

A situation where someone has, as far as we’re concerned, sinned against us then we are being a blessing to them the way Jesus is a blessing to us. Does that blow you away? Do you see the power of a soft answer? It’s absolutely awesome.

You and I can be such a blessing with a soft answer instead of an angry word. Flashpoint – gone. Argument – gone … Peace. Now that’s what I call a blessing.

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There’s a great line in J R Tolkien’s book and now movie ‘The Fellowship Of The Ring’. The wise old Gandalf says, ‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us’. And one of the things we can decide is whether or not we’re going to use that time to be a blessing or a burden?

I love stories, good stories. Great story-tellers make us think and Tolkien is one of the best. Just that one line,

‘All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us’

is an absolute beauty because if the truth be known most people simply never decide. They just live life day by day; they let it all drift by. It’s a day-by-day proposition for most of us, just get through the stuff we need to get through and then drop exhausted on the couch by the end of the day.

But the people who have real impact in this world, the people who are the real blessings in other people’s lives are the ones who at some point make a conscious decision about what they are going to do with the rest of the time that they have left.

And one of the things that each one of us can decide is to be more of a blessing than we are a burden. Can I ask you quietly but plainly, have you made that decision with your life yet? One of the ways that we can be an incredible blessing is to be an encouragement to other people.

Here’s the exciting thing about encouragement, it’s something that costs us nothing, it’s incredibly easy to do and yet because we live in a world that’s so harsh and unforgiving and performance driven, when we do encourage someone they value it so highly.

A word of encouragement can be like gold at the right time, here’s why. Have you ever had one of those days? You know the sort that I’m talking about, those days when nothing seems to go right and nobody seems to appreciate you and you’ve been trying so hard, working so hard but it feels like no one’s for you and everyone is against you. Huh, of course you have, we all have.

So put yourself back in the middle of one of those days and now imagine that you get a phone call from a friend to thank you for something you did and not only do they thank you but they tell you what an amazing impact that seemingly small act of yours has had on them and how much they appreciate you. In other words this friend just called to encourage you.

On a scale of zero to ten how much do you value that encouragement? It’s right up there right? It’s a ten out of ten at least because when we’re having one of those days, encouragement is the most incredible antidote to the blues. It doesn’t matter how strong or mature or independent or together we may think we are we all need encouragement from time to time.

There’s another great story-teller whom I really love, A A Milne who wrote the ‘Winnie The Pooh’ books about some fictional characters who lived in a young boy’s imagination. Have a listen to this short excerpt

“One day Pooh Bear is going for a walk in the hundred acre wood and it’s about 11.30 in the morning. It’s a fine time to go calling just before lunch. So Pooh sets out across the stream stepping on the stones and he gets right in the middle of the stream and he sits down on a warm stone and thinks about just where would be the best place of all to make a call.”

“He says to himself, ‘I think I’ll go see Tigger’. No he dismisses that, then he says, ‘Owl’. No Owl uses big words and hard to understand words. At last he brightens up, ‘I know, I think I’ll go see Rabbit, I like Rabbit. Rabbit uses encouraging words like, ‘how about lunch’, and ‘help yourself Pooh’. Yeah I think I’ll go see Rabbit.”

To be honest if I was going to be stranded on a desert island and I could choose a companion to be stranded with me I wouldn’t choose some great leader or a teacher or a athlete or a university professor necessarily, I’d choose someone who’s an encourager.

A few thousand years ago a wise old king, a guy called Solomon wrote down a whole bunch of proverbs, one of them says this:

“Pleasant words, encouraging words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”

You can find that in Proverbs chapter 16, verse 24.

It’s true isn’t it? Encouragement is like food for the soul. In an instant an encouraging word from someone else can turn our whole day around. An encouraging word can soothe the pain and wipe away the tears. That’s why encouragement is so valuable and that’s exactly what this Proverb means.

See these days we can get sweet things just about anywhere at anytime, not so good for us but sweetness is very common. Sugar is everywhere, it’s in drinks and desserts and lollies and cakes and sauces, it’s almost in every processed food we can buy.

But three thousand years ago when this was written sweetness was extremely rare, sugar wasn’t being mass-produced, that only started happening early in the 20th century. The only way you could taste something sweet was to be near a fruit tree for those very few weeks in the year when it dropped its fruit or to fight off the bees to get some of their honey and of course that has it’s own challenges.

So when Solomon compares encouragement to a honeycomb what he’s saying is that it’s extremely rare and very precious and that still holds true today. How often does someone encourage you? For most of us the answer is very rarely.

Imagine if we changed that. Imagine if each of the seven billion plus people on the planet encouraged one other person just once a day, that would be two and a half trillion encouragements a year. Would that make the world a different place? You bet it would.

Encouragement heals the soul, encouragement helps people overcome their misconceptions about themselves, just a bit of encouragement could eradicate low self-esteem in a person’s life. We may not be able to change the world but we can change our little part of it. You can decide how to spend the time given to you and one of the things that we can each decide to do is to encourage just one person every day.

A quick phone call, maybe a card in the mail, perhaps just a cuddle or a kind word or a kind look, you and I can change the way people feel about themselves simply by being an encouragement. Just let that sink in for a moment. What a mighty, mighty impact we can have on one another with this simple inexpensive yet exquisitely valuable thing, a word of encouragement.

Wow! And that’s exactly what the Apostle Paul wrote a thousand or so years on from Solomon’s Proverb, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29:

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is useful for building up as there is need so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

What a great measure for deciding the things we should say and the things we shouldn’t say. That the only words that pass our lips are those that are useful for building people up, so that our words give grace to those who hear them. What a mind-blowingly powerful concept, our words can and indeed should build other people up. That’s what parents are meant to do for their children, to give them a solid foundation of confidence as they become adults.

That’s something we should all do for one another, to give out grace to those who need it. Grace by definition is something we don’t deserve so our decision isn’t whether or not a person deserves encouragement but whether they need encouragement and we can give it freely by grace. Again back to Solomon’s Book of Proverbs, chapter 12, verse 25:

“Anxiety weighs down the human heart but a good word cheers it up.”

You and I have the power to build up, to lighten the load, to cheer someone up deep down in their hearts, the power to change their day, the power to transform their lives through simple inexpensive valuable words of encouragement.

Are you a blessing or a burden? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves at the moment on the program, well here’s one way that you can be the most amazing blessing, be an encourager.

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We can choose either to be a blessing or a burden to other people and sometimes the difference between those two is the difference between maturity and immaturity, having a servant’s heart or not. We’ll get into that in a moment but I just want to remind you to stay tuned until the end of today’s program where I’ll be telling you how you can receive a very special gift that I’d just love to send you.

So let’s continue our journey discovering how you and I can be more of a blessing than we are a burden in the lives of people around us. It’s awesome to be a blessing, it’s awesome to see the impact of good that we can have in people’s lives.

The problem is that sometimes we just don’t think of the little things we can do. Sometimes we don’t know what we can do nor do we realise the impact that just the smallest blessing can have in someone else’s life and sometimes we’re more of a burden than a blessing because of our lack of maturity.

And it’s that last one that we’re going to check out right now because it’s really important. None of us like to think of ourselves as being immature but the reality is that we all have some growing up to do somewhere in our make up. We all have room to learn and to grow and to develop into more mature, effective, loving, helpful people, right? I know I certainly do and so today I want to explore just one area of immaturity and it’s in the area of serving others.

And what I mean by that is doing the practical things that we can do to help them to make their lives better and learning to serve others is something that, well some of us aren’t so good at.

I remember when I was young growing up in my parents house, there was just Mum and Dad, my sister and me. Now Cori, my sister, is two year older than me so she was my big sister and she was a pretty good big sister too, but you know what it’s like in a family, brother and sister they’re always competing against one another. You compete for attention, you compete for food, I mean you had to make sure you got the bigger slice of cake, just the tiniest bit bigger than the other one. Not necessarily because you like the cake or you need it or you want to eat it but you just don’t want your big sister to get more than you.

Do you remember those silly childhood games? It doesn’t matter how much our parents tried to divide things equally we always managed to find something to compete about and one of the areas I distinctly remember competing is making sure I didn’t do more of the chores than Cori did. Heaven forbid that I should spend thirty seconds more helping with the washing up after dinner than she did, that would be completely unthinkable.

And so as children we make it our life’s objective to do as little around the house as we possibly can but our parents role is to teach us to grow up and become more responsible and to do things around the house not because we’re told to or forced to or threatened with punishment if we don’t do it but because we see that the bin in the kitchen is full and we just go and empty it because it needs emptying.

That’s why giving children chores around the house that they have to do no matter whether they feel like it or not, they have time to do it, no matter whether they’re tired or not, no matter whether they’re feeling a bit off colour today or not, is such an incredibly important thing to do.

See most parents, at least in the western world, are struggling to get their children to tidy up the mess in their bedroom but what I’m talking about here goes way beyond that, its about helping them to grow up and become effective adults by serving other people.

If I see an adult, young or old, who’s trying to do the least they can possibly get away with then I look at that and say, ‘there is a sure sign of immaturity’. That person in a practical sense is being more of a burden than a blessing, they’re taking more than they’re giving but lets flip that over the other way, if I see an adult who sees something that needs doing and just goes and does it because it needs doing and because it’s going to lighten someone else’s load then that is a sure and certain mark of maturity.

Children by their very nature are mostly takers but as we transition from childhood to adulthood we’re meant to become mostly givers rather than takers, mostly a blessing rather than a burden. The immature person is the one who’s worried more about what they’re entitled to than they are about what they can achieve by serving someone else.

An interesting quote that I come back to again and again is something that Jesus said to some men who were arguing way back then about which one of them would be the greatest. And Jesus said:

“Whoever wishes to become great among you must become your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.” (Mark chapter 10, verses 43 and 44).

Now my parents worked so hard to serve me, something I didn’t really appreciate until I had children of my own. They are great in my heart because they served me. My wife Jacqui is the same, she does so much for me, she is truly great in my heart. My mentor and dear friend Graham who served me and took me from immaturity to maturity is a great man in my sight and it will be the same in your life, in your heart.

Serving people is a sign of maturity and a path to greatness. The people who served you the most are the greatest ones in your life and it’s an awesome way in which you and I can be a blessing. See if we sit around expecting others to serve us not only are we putting our immaturity on display for everyone to see and see it they do, but we’re being a burden.

And yet when we quickly do things that are so easy to do to lighten someone else’s load then we’re being the most incredible blessing. It’s a huge blessing when you’re tired at the end of the day and you come home expecting to have to do this or to do that only to discover that your daughter did it before she headed out for work that morning.

I mean it’s a huge blessing at work when you’re faced with some really difficult task and you have someone pull along side you and offer to help you. We all know that having experienced blessing from other people but remember the mark of maturity is being more of a giver than a taker, more of a servant than one who wants to be served, that’s how we can bless others in such practical ways.

All we need to do is open our eyes to the need. There’s no shortage of need out there I have to tell you. Anybody that you know there are some things that you can do for them that’s going to lighten their load. It will vary from person to person, it will be different, some of it will require a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice, other tasks will be much easier but there is a lot of need out there and you and I can make an incredible difference by helping people.

And that’s exactly what Jesus did. Let’s go back to that thing that Jesus said about being a servant and read it in the context of the surrounding verses, it all then becomes clear.

“See Jesus called to them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognise as their rulers lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them but it is not so among you. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all for the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark chapter 10, verses 42 to 45).

See He puts this whole servanthood thing into context. There He is the Son of God who came not to be served on hand and foot but to serve and not just to wait on tables, not just to stand up and preach amazing sermons, not just to wash His disciples feet all of which He did but to be beaten and nailed to a cross and to die for you and me. No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for a friend.

That’s the sort of service Jesus is teaching those disciples about and that’s the sort of service that He’s teaching us about through His Words. The sort of service that costs us something, the sort of service that’s inconvenient, the sort of service that’s unfair, the sort of service that really hurts some days. It’s that sort of service that displays our maturity and delivers most blessings to those who are served.

Let me ask you again; are you a blessing or a burden?

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It’s awesome to be with you again today. Now I have a question for you to kick off our time together: when you do something for someone do you expect them to say ‘thank you’? Do you want them to say thank you? And when they don’t how does that make you feel?

Thank you. Two very short simple words, they cost nothing to say and yet how often do you do something for someone and they simply don’t say thank you? We’re going to check this out from a few different angles today, the whole ‘thank you’ thing.

Let’s start with the pure self-interest. When someone does something for us particularly when they didn’t have to do it, particularly when they went out of their way to bless us it seems to me to make an enormous amount of sense simply to say thank you because the chances are if I do they’ll do something nice for me again.

Yeah I’m a typical male, they say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach well let me tell you they’re absolutely right. When Jacqui, my wife, goes to some trouble to cook a really nice meal, you know, the above and beyond type of meal that you don’t cook everyday, it makes me feel so loved. I mean really, I’m not being flippant. I feel really valued that she would go to so much trouble for me and I always make a point not just of saying thank you but I make sure she understands how much I enjoyed it and how much I appreciated it and how valued I feel because she cooked that dinner for me.

In fact while we share the cooking around, she probably cooks a little more than me, I always thank her for cooking the meal. I want my Jacqui to know what it meant to me and just quietly I want her to cook me a meal again some time real soon.

So there’s the first really pragmatic reason for saying thank you. You can chalk it up to self-interest but it’s not an unreasonable perspective yet there’s a much deeper reason, a much better reason why we should use the thank you words more frequently. Because when someone does something for us it’s more than just a simple act, they often put their heart and soul into it, they often sacrifice a lot to do something for us. Most acts of service are an act of the heart, not all but most and so it makes an enormous amount of sense for us to make a heart connection with that person don’t you think?

I want to share an interesting story with you today. It’s a story I believe is true word for word, of course you may not, but humour me because it’s a story with a powerful message in it for you and for me about being a blessing rather than a burden, which is the very theme that we’re exploring at the moment on the program. This story comes from the New Testament of the Bible, chapter 17 of the Gospel of Luke beginning at verse 11:

“On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance they called out saying, ‘Master, Jesus, have mercy on us’. When he saw them he said to them, ‘Go and show yourself to the priests’ and as they went they were all made clean.

“Then one of them, when he saw that he’d been healed, turned back praising God with a loud voice and he threw himself at Jesus feet and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, ‘Weren’t ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go your way your faith has made you well’.”

I know there are people who find believing that story a bit of a stretch, I’m not one of them but if you are I understand where you’re coming from. So whatever you believe or don’t believe imagine with me for a moment that this story is true, that these ten lepers were healed.

Leprosy is an awful disease, especially back in the 1st century two thousand years ago when all this took place. There were no antibiotics, there were no immunisations, there were no treatments, people’s bodies literally rotted away, covered in pus filled sores, eventually they died and because it was thought to be contagious lepers were ostracised.

They couldn’t live with their family, they couldn’t live in the town or city, they were consigned to living outside the safety of the city walls and gates amongst the rubbish. So it wasn’t just a health thing, this disease has social, emotional and economic consequences, a terrible affliction. And here are these ten guys all completely healed, not just of the disease but of the ramifications of that disease, all that’s lifted off their shoulders, amazing. And only one out of ten comes back to say thank you, one in ten for such a huge blessing.

Jesus noticed, He commented on it wondering what happened to the other nine but that one in ten hit rate of two thousand years ago I find still holds pretty much true today. I answer a lot of questions people send to me by email, speaking God’s truth into some very difficult situations. It’s something I take very seriously, I often take a long time over a response, can I tell you, on average about one in ten of those people will email me back to say thank you.

Hey it’s not that we do it for the recognition, I’m sure you help people in your own way given what you do and who you are and you’re probably experiencing that same thing. Hardly anyone ever says thank you. What’s the matter with people, you ask yourself? Just like Jesus, what is the matter with people?

We’re talking this week about being a blessing or being a burden, being a giver or being a taker, being part of the solution or part of the problem and in this story about saying thank you it seems to me that we can be a blessing even when we’re on the receiving end of blessings from someone else simply by saying thank you.

Nothing grows a givers heart more than feeling appreciated because after all, the reason they did what they did for you was to bless you and a genuine heart-felt thank you completes the feedback loop. It let’s them know that the blessing that they intended hit the mark, that the effort they went to was worthwhile because it made a difference; it did what they were wanting to achieve. Hey, that feeling is what’s going to cause them to bless you again and cause other people to be blessed by them as well.

Most times we don’t think too much about this stuff do we? But it’s true. Thank you is one of the most powerful blessings that we can ever give because it grows the givers heart and blesses them in return. Thank you.

I wonder as we live our lives how often we thank God for all that He’s done and all that He’s doing for us. I suspect if we were able to tune into the prayers of people across the globe I reckon we’d hear a whole bunch more grumbling and complaining than we’d hear thankfulness.

Oh God, how can you let this happen to me? Oh God, how long is this going to go on? Oh God, I can’t take anymore. Okay people do go through tough times, we do struggle and that’s fine and it’s good to be honest with God. We don’t have to put on a face or pretend with God, He wants us to be honest but He also wants us to be thankful. Have a listen to this 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 18:

“Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Do you pick up what God is saying to you and to me about when we should be thankful, under what circumstances we should be thankful? Is it just when things are going well, is it just when we’ve been blessed, is it just when we’re healthy and feeling great and the sun is shining? No. Give thanks in all circumstances, all circumstances, I’ll say it a third time, all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Because in every situation, every circumstance that we travel through we’re in God’s hands; He planned everything. He knew about all of them. None of the things we’re going through is a surprise to God and He is in every place with us, encouraging us, helping us, comforting us, that’s His promise, that’s why I put my trust in Jesus because He is trustworthy.

And that’s why I give thanks even when I don’t really feel like it, even when the stuff going on in my life doesn’t seem to warrant thanks, even when it feels like the gates of hell have opened up against me. It’s my way of blessing God because hey, He is such an awesome blessing to me.

God, THANK YOU.

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So as we kick off our time together today looking again at how we can be more of a blessing than a burden can I ask you, are you a person I can trust, are you trustworthy? In other words are you a person who is worthy of my trust or not? I’m really looking forward to unpacking that with you today and as we chat, remember at the end of the program I’ll be telling you about a very special gift that I’d love to send you, it’s all to do with being more of a blessing than a burden.

Trust is an interesting commodity, it’s an important commodity and all too often these days sadly it’s a rare commodity. Friedrich Nietzche was a 19th century German philosopher. Now I don’t agree with much of what he philosophised about but he said something interesting once about this whole issue of trust. Have a listen. He said:

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Interesting isn’t it? The moment we deceive someone or lie to them we break this thing called trust. Trust means that I can rely on you to be direct and honest and open with me. It doesn’t mean we’ll always have to see things the same way, it doesn’t mean that we’ll always have to agree on everything. It just means that come what may I know that you won’t deceive me to your advantage and my disadvantage and vice versa, you know that I won’t deceive you.

Not so long ago there was a man in whom I placed my trust. Now trusting people is not something that I do lightly even though I always want to think the best of people, I realise that people aren’t always what they claim to be, they won’t always do what they say they’re going to do. That’s something that I’ve had to learn the hard way I have to tell you.

And so it takes time to gain my trust because I want to make sure that the person in whom I trust is actually worthy of my trust. There’s nothing worse than placing your trust in someone and relying on them to be what they purport to be and to do what they say they’ll do and discover that your trust in them was misplaced.

Well I spent time building this relationship with this man, watching and listening and eventually I was convinced that he was trustworthy. So I involved him in certain aspects of my life but as soon as we faced adversity in our venture together, as soon as things looked tough, at the very time I needed him to stand with me and help me he pulled away. He decided it was all too hard even though he believed in what we were doing together, at a crucial point he deserted the cause, he left me high and dry and so I totally relate to what Nietzche said.

Let me come back to the question I’ve been asking over these past few weeks, the question that each one of us should constantly be asking ourselves, are you a blessing or a burden, an asset or a liability, a problem solver or part of the problem?

It seems to me if I want to be a blessing to the people around me then I need to be someone who they can depend on. I need to be a person who does what he says he’s going to do and I need to be a person who says the same thing behind a person’s back as I do to their face. I need to be a person who won’t desert or undermine or lie to people who are depending on me, the people who’ve placed their trust in me.

I want to get back to something wise old King Solomon wrote about three thousand years ago on this whole issue of trust and trustworthiness because it rings so true to me. He says it just this way, Proverbs chapter 4, verses 24 to 27:

“Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you. Keep straight the path of your feet and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil.”

He’s talking about living a straight life, a life that’s true, a life that’s dependable. You may have heard the saying that someone may not be able to sleep straight in bed at night, we use it for someone whose life is crooked, someone who’s not straight up and down and interestingly Solomon talks about three important aspects of living a straight life in this short passage. What we say, where we look and where we walk. What we say:

“Put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you.”

What we say is really important because it’s with our words that we deceive people. He’s talking about being a straight talker here, being a straight talker is so important. Words matter; what we tell people matters. A little lie here and there, the careful emission of part of the truth, that’s crooked talk. When you talk are you a straight talker, do you speak the truth or not?

Secondly Solomon talks about where we look, what we look at, how we use our eyes. He says:

“Let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you.”

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but when you’re driving a car inevitably you steer it in the direction in which you’re looking, that’s why it’s important to look in the right direction, at the right place. The same is true in life, if we’re looking at crooked paths, if we’re looking at gaining a selfish advantage no matter what the cost then that is precisely the direction we’re going to end up travelling in.

And finally he talks about a direction:

“Keep straight the path of your feet and all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil.”

Too many people head off in the wrong direction in life – lying and cheating and manipulating and causing strife between people. Come on! Is that any way to live our lives? Put away from you crooked speech, the things we say. Look directly in front of you, where our gaze is, where our objective is and finally keep straight the path of your feet, head in the right direction.

People who are untrustworthy are an incredible burden in our lives, really they are. Not only can you not depend on them when things get tough but you have to spend an enormous amount of time and energy keeping yourself safe from them, checking up on them, making sure that they are in fact doing what they said that they were going to do because you can’t trust them. And being that person is no way to be a blessing at all, would you agree?

Yet show me someone who’s a straight talker, a straight shooter, show me someone I can trust and depend on and I’ll show you someone who’s an enormous blessing. This is a great picture, it’s a great thing for us to measure our lives against, do we live a straight life or are we the sort of person that really can’t lie straight in bed at night?

There’s a reason that trust and trustworthiness is important to us, it’s because it flows directly out of the nature of God. See God is faithful, God is trustworthy because He never lies, He never tricks us, He never pulls a fast one. Back in the Old Testament Book of Numbers chapter 23, verse 19, it says this:

“God is not a man that he should lie or a son of a man that he should change his mind. Has he said and then did not do it or has he spoken and then did not fulfil it?”

And a Psalmist writes in Psalm 9, verse 10.

“And those who know your name put their trust in you for you O Lord have not forsaken those who seek you.”

God is trustworthy. God can be depended on. Why? Quite simply because every word that He speaks is the truth. By definition the truth is what God says. Jesus Himself said:

“When the spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority but whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John chapter 16, verse 13).

My friend, truthfulness flows from the heart and each one of us has dark thoughts and dark intentions and motivations and selfishness that if we let them we’ll set our tongue on fire with crooked speech, have our eyes looking down crooked paths and have our feet heading down those paths. That’s what Solomon said to us through the Book of Proverbs.

And the only way, THE only way I’ve discovered to not live my life that way, to live my life straight instead of crooked is to draw close to Jesus, my Lord and my Saviour. As He writes His word, His truth on my heart, as His Spirit speaks the truth to me, God’s truth, God Himself guides me into that truth so that my life is walking down straight paths not crooked paths.

Try as I may it’s the only thing that’s ever made a difference, ever.

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