The Chair

Sam Stringer

Nov 23, 2024

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

We live in a world full of faith. I can’t stress that to you enough; there is no person you’re going

to ever meet or see or hear about in this world that does not live by faith nearly every moment of

every day. Why do I say that? Because we all trust in so many things, including ourselves, when we do not know whether what we’re trusting in is going to support us.

A person, probably many, will jump into their car this morning to hurry off to work. They’re

running late, they put down their coffee in a cupholder and they go to start their car. Upon either

turning the keys or pushing the button or however they try to start it, it’s going to sit there dead.

In a world of nearly eight billion people, you can guarantee that there’s plenty of people in those

shoes any given day. Someone’s going to go to their wall this morning, flip a switch to turn on

the lights and “voila” the lights will come on…or they won’t. People trust in things every day,

hence they act in anticipation of their trust being fulfilled. Believers do it, atheists do it, everyone living does it.

Now imagine with me that there’s a chair and you want to sit in it. What does total trust in that

chair look like? Is it saying you believe it will hold you up? No, but you have to start there. Is it

putting a little of yourself on that chair but also holding onto a table or being ready to jump up to

stand? No, it’s not. Total trust in that chair means fully placing yourself into the chair and taking

away any parts of you that will be there to catch you should it fail. It means completely relying

upon the chair to fully trust the chair. You’re very likely sitting on one right now and you didn’t

think too much about the faith it took to sit in it. Congratulations. If it failed you, you’d be on the

floor. Since it’s strong enough and functioning appropriately, you’re sitting there minding your own beeswax (am I showing my age talking like this?)

I’m going to make a strange statement and I hope you hear it right: faith does not save you.

Now, I don’t know how you took that, but pause and breathe and calm down. Faith does not

save you. There’s countless people in this world who have placed their faith in gods that do not

save, in people that do not save, in emotional states that do not save, in money that does not

save, and on the list goes. You see, faith is not about its inherent worth; faith only serves to

direct us to trust in something that is trustworthy. God calls us to trust Him and the reason that

He’s trustworthy is not because we believe Him, but because He’s trustworthy. Faith in Christ is

what saves, biblically speaking. So, faith does not save you, but you can’t be saved without

faith, in Christ. You must fully trust Him to be saved, placing your faith in Him, but think about it

this way: saving faith means God keeping His promises to us, not us keeping our promises to

Him. Bold Christianity comes from living upon, risking for and resting in the promises of God,

one of those being that God has forgiven you when you’ve trusted in Christ as your Savior.

One of my favorite statements that my seminary theology professor one day said went as

follows: “Don’t place your faith in your faith.” Hear me out: there’s a lot of people in good Bible-

believing, Gospel-preaching churches that I believe have not placed their faith in Christ so much

as they’ve placed their faith in their faith. They feel secure only so much as they feel committed

and sincere. I’m historically Baptist, so I say this very solemnly: if there’s people going to Hell in doctrinally sound churches, it’s going to be that they never trusted in Jesus’s work on the cross

but in their own trust and doctrinal conformity. They have grown in their Bible knowledge and

learned to talk the talk but remained dead in their sins. Reformed, but not transformed. Trust in

the Lord with all your heart; not, trust in your trust with all your heart. Again, solemnly I say this:

are you one of those people? You don’t have to be, but you very well may be. Trust in Jesus, not in your trust.

Your own understanding may serve to hinder you from doing great things for God or from getting

unstuck from hard places in your path. Sometimes the reason that we’re getting nowhere with

God is because we want to be blessed by Him while still trusting in ourselves. The Lord is

calling each of us to trust Him, and to fully trust Him at that. It’s not the strength of the subject

(us) but the might of the Object (God) that is the source of power, joy, transformation and so

forth. Bravery doesn’t come from “I can”; it comes from “God can.” Be blessed.

Sam Stringer

The Chair

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

We live in a world full of faith. I can’t stress that to you enough; there is no person you’re going

to ever meet or see or hear about in this world that does not live by faith nearly every moment of

every day. Why do I say that? Because we all trust in so many things, including ourselves, when we do not know whether what we’re trusting in is going to support us.

A person, probably many, will jump into their car this morning to hurry off to work. They’re

running late, they put down their coffee in a cupholder and they go to start their car. Upon either

turning the keys or pushing the button or however they try to start it, it’s going to sit there dead.

In a world of nearly eight billion people, you can guarantee that there’s plenty of people in those

shoes any given day. Someone’s going to go to their wall this morning, flip a switch to turn on

the lights and “voila” the lights will come on…or they won’t. People trust in things every day,

hence they act in anticipation of their trust being fulfilled. Believers do it, atheists do it, everyone living does it.

Now imagine with me that there’s a chair and you want to sit in it. What does total trust in that

chair look like? Is it saying you believe it will hold you up? No, but you have to start there. Is it

putting a little of yourself on that chair but also holding onto a table or being ready to jump up to

stand? No, it’s not. Total trust in that chair means fully placing yourself into the chair and taking

away any parts of you that will be there to catch you should it fail. It means completely relying

upon the chair to fully trust the chair. You’re very likely sitting on one right now and you didn’t

think too much about the faith it took to sit in it. Congratulations. If it failed you, you’d be on the

floor. Since it’s strong enough and functioning appropriately, you’re sitting there minding your own beeswax (am I showing my age talking like this?)

I’m going to make a strange statement and I hope you hear it right: faith does not save you.

Now, I don’t know how you took that, but pause and breathe and calm down. Faith does not

save you. There’s countless people in this world who have placed their faith in gods that do not

save, in people that do not save, in emotional states that do not save, in money that does not

save, and on the list goes. You see, faith is not about its inherent worth; faith only serves to

direct us to trust in something that is trustworthy. God calls us to trust Him and the reason that

He’s trustworthy is not because we believe Him, but because He’s trustworthy. Faith in Christ is

what saves, biblically speaking. So, faith does not save you, but you can’t be saved without

faith, in Christ. You must fully trust Him to be saved, placing your faith in Him, but think about it

this way: saving faith means God keeping His promises to us, not us keeping our promises to

Him. Bold Christianity comes from living upon, risking for and resting in the promises of God,

one of those being that God has forgiven you when you’ve trusted in Christ as your Savior.

One of my favorite statements that my seminary theology professor one day said went as

follows: “Don’t place your faith in your faith.” Hear me out: there’s a lot of people in good Bible-

believing, Gospel-preaching churches that I believe have not placed their faith in Christ so much

as they’ve placed their faith in their faith. They feel secure only so much as they feel committed

and sincere. I’m historically Baptist, so I say this very solemnly: if there’s people going to Hell in doctrinally sound churches, it’s going to be that they never trusted in Jesus’s work on the cross

but in their own trust and doctrinal conformity. They have grown in their Bible knowledge and

learned to talk the talk but remained dead in their sins. Reformed, but not transformed. Trust in

the Lord with all your heart; not, trust in your trust with all your heart. Again, solemnly I say this:

are you one of those people? You don’t have to be, but you very well may be. Trust in Jesus, not in your trust.

Your own understanding may serve to hinder you from doing great things for God or from getting

unstuck from hard places in your path. Sometimes the reason that we’re getting nowhere with

God is because we want to be blessed by Him while still trusting in ourselves. The Lord is

calling each of us to trust Him, and to fully trust Him at that. It’s not the strength of the subject

(us) but the might of the Object (God) that is the source of power, joy, transformation and so

forth. Bravery doesn’t come from “I can”; it comes from “God can.” Be blessed.

Sam Stringer

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by

permission. All rights reserved.