Jim Van Gelderen: This is Jim Van Gelderen, and I am podcasting from Malvern, Arkansas. I have enjoyed being here at Malvern in the past—I think it was in 2022, 2024, and now 2026. I appreciate Pastor John Horton and the folks here at Gospel Light Baptist Church, and I am looking forward to a good week of revival meetings. If you are at all close, we would certainly love to see you here in one of the evenings this week through Wednesday.
Last week I was in Houston, Texas, with a wonderful meeting at Christ Church Baptist Fellowship in Houston with Pastor Johnny Pope. I was certainly encouraged by the good people there. I had something happen last week that has never happened in my entire ministry. They had a men’s prayer meeting from five in the morning to six o’clock, and I think a low day would have been twenty men, while a high day would probably have been near thirty. I was encouraged by men who would get up early and come to pray.
There were some wonderful moments in those prayer meetings. I thoroughly enjoyed praying with the good people there at Christ Church Baptist Fellowship. I appreciate the leadership of their pastor and his vision for that kind of prayer. Certainly prayer is one of the great burdens of the moment and a burden of my heart. I know I need to grow in that, and God’s people need to grow in it. It is a great need in our day. We have so many things that we know God will do if we will just get serious about trusting Him.
Really, trust is what I might even call silent prayer. Somebody said prayer is the breath of dependence, and there is no doubt about it. When you sincerely pray, it is because we need God and are depending on Him to meet a need we cannot meet. But I sometimes wonder if dependence is not wordless prayer: when we have a heart to depend upon God, we are in many senses praying, because that is what dependence is. It is a heart cry to God.
That brings us to the topic at hand. Reading through the Psalms—I try to do that at least once a year—a couple of days ago I was in Psalm 71. It starts with, “In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion.” I have found in my own life that life throws you all kinds of curveballs. There are going to be times when there are spiritual distractions, and confusion is one of them.
When you are confused, you wonder what is going on. You thought God was going to do this, and now the opposite seems to be happening. Maybe we get hit by a curveball from things we were not anticipating. Perhaps somebody turns on us or gets frustrated with us, and we were not anticipating that kind of opposition. A lot of times I have found it is easy to be confused, but when you focus on the confusion, you are in trouble.
It is like this: you focus on hurt, and you will be hurt. You focus on frustrating circumstances, and you will be frustrated. You focus on confusion, and you will be confused. In the difficulties of life, if you focus on a disappointing situation, you are going to be disappointed. Those circumstances always seem to confuse us, but God says, “Here is the answer: In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust.” In other words, “God, even though I cannot figure out why it happened, what is happening, or what purpose You have in all these circumstances, I am trusting You.”
That is the key I find to the Christian life—not that I live it well, but I know what it is. God is always working, no matter who wrongs us, no matter what happens, and no matter even if the devil attacks. I think of Job. Satan had to get permission, but he attacked Job, and God had a purpose in it all. We do not understand it all, but the Book of Job helps us understand.
Sometimes we call those secondary influences that God allows into our life. We know that Satan used the weather to attack Job and his family, and God allowed him to do that. God has ultimate control over the weather, but evidently Satan can use it; he is the prince of the power of the air. When those things happen, I know that sometimes, in doing a ministry program where an outside part of the event is critical, bad weather comes in. In my early years I would get frustrated: “God, why did You allow this?”
He may not have been the first cause. Maybe Satan was using the weather to try to hinder what God wanted to do, and God was looking to us to pray and depend on Him to overcome. I have certainly seen God overcome many weather situations and work them together for good, and it encouraged my faith early on in life. But if you look at the circumstances and at something that seems confusing or hurtful, you are going to be confused, hurt, and disappointed.
The point is not to focus on the confusion, disappointment, hurt, or frustration, but to trust God no matter what happens and no matter where it comes from. Whether it comes from the ill will of a human being—perhaps because Satan is yanking their chain—no matter where it comes from, God has it. He has the full perspective. He is working it together for good.
That is why I believe the psalmist says, “In thee, O Lord, will I trust: let me never be put to confusion.” If we truly trust in God, we cannot be confused, because even though we cannot figure it out, we know God has it in His hand. He knows what is happening and where He is going with it, and He is waiting for us to trust Him. Our unbelief, as Psalm 78 so clearly tells us, limits all that God wants to do. We do not want to limit it because of the hardness of our heart and the great miracle-working hand of God.
Here is another thought. Confusion, disappointment, hurt, frustration, and all of these human experiences are very real, and sometimes we do feel like we need to be delivered. That is why I love the next verse. I have a lot of favorite verses in the Bible, but this has to be on that list: “Deliver me in thy righteousness, and cause me to escape: incline thine ear unto me, and save me.”
Notice that the deliverance was in His righteousness. Our righteousness in the sight of God—our self-dependent, flesh-dependent righteousness—is as filthy rags, even as a believer. Isaiah was clearly a believer, and he said all our righteousness is as filthy rags. My self-dependent righteousness does not impress God, and I cannot deliver myself with my own human, self-dependent righteousness. But notice what it says: “Deliver me in thy righteousness.”
When you got saved, you were justified, which means you have positional righteousness, or forensic or judicial righteousness. When God looks at you, He does not see your sin; He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ. On judgment day, that will be a wonderful thing. But it is more than that. It is real righteousness. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” That is 1 Corinthians 1:30.
It is His righteousness fleshed out through my God-dependent obedience. When you and I look to Jesus and say, “God, I need deliverance, but it is not of my human righteousness; it is in Your righteousness,” that is what comes out. Friends, when we depend on Jesus and then obey—“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey”—and when you trust God in moments of confusion, hurt, and disappointment, then obey depending on Him for supernatural enablement, it is Christ’s righteousness being fleshed out through your obedience.
Where does the glory go? The glory goes to God, because Jesus enabled me. It is His righteousness. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” “Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” Some of you who have read Zero to One Hundred know that truth, but I am trying to apply it now in the moment of confusion, attack, discouragement, or disappointment.
It is easy to focus on the circumstances, just as Peter did when the wind and waves began to surge. He took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink. He needed divine deliverance, which he got because he turned to the Lord and said, “Lord, save me.” That is what the rest of the verse says: “Incline thine ear unto me, O Lord, and save me.” Jesus will divinely deliver when we look to Him to deliver us.
This is sometimes found in verses throughout the Bible that are in what we call the passive voice. I think of Ephesians 4:31: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you.” “Be put away from you” is passive voice, which simply means allow God to put away the bitterness, anger, wrath, and clamor. Allow God to do it. Trust Him for deliverance.
We are talking about Christian-life deliverance: deliverance from sin’s power, temptation, frustration, unbelief, and bitterness. We need divine deliverance. I am sure someone listening to this is having a hard time and is confused about the Christian life. You surrender to the Lord, and everything seems to go haywire. Maybe there are family problems, and your heart for God seems incongruous with the circumstances you are going through. God is telling us to trust Him. You do not have to be put to confusion. Look to Him to deliver in His righteousness—supernatural deliverance through His enablement.
You are saying, “Lord, I am looking to You to deliver because I cannot deliver myself, and I am trusting You to do it. I am expecting You to do it.” That is what a life of faith is. It does not mean it is all easygoing. It means that in the wind and waves of life we keep our eyes on the Lord. If we do look away, we do what Peter did: “Lord, save me.” We look back to Jesus and look to Him for divine intervention.
That is really what the Christian life is—a series of divine interventions, because that is what I need. I do not need Jesus every hour—nothing against the songwriter who wrote that. I like the song “Moment by Moment”: “I’m kept in His love, moment by moment, life from above.” I need Jesus every moment of every day. I need divine intervention.
Be encouraged with that, and cry out with the psalmist: “In thee, O Lord, do I trust: let me never be put to confusion. Deliver me in thy righteousness,” and He will. May the Lord bless you with that kind of dependent life, which is also a surrendered life. Again, the Thee Generation motto is total surrender to the will of God and total dependence on His grace to live it.
