Proverbs 3 and the Trust Fund: A Sunday Message in Concord NC

Solo Faith Church came off a two-week hiatus this month, and Pastor Doug Lattimore stepped into the pulpit and told the room he was not going to preach much. A Queen City News crew had been at the church the day before. Travel had stacked up. He said he wanted to talk instead, because God had been doing something in his own faith that he needed to hand to the congregation.

He opened somewhere other than his text. A few Fridays earlier he had preached a revival in Charlotte on a psalm that begins with God delivering His people and, five verses later, has them asking to be delivered all over again. Same God. Same cry. Different place. His point was that people keep going back to look for God where they last found Him, and miss that they have moved and that God has met them somewhere new.

The text was Proverbs 3, verses three through ten, the opening installment of a series he plans to teach in sections. "I'm going to break this up like baby food," he said, "so that I can establish you in how you should be approaching God."

His hook came from outside the text. What do people with real assets do to protect what they own? They put it in a trust: houses, stocks, holdings moved out of their personal name, so that when someone comes looking to take it, there is nothing in their name to take. He spelled the word out loud, letter by letter, and let the room sit with it. Then he turned it back on the verse: trust in the Lord with all your heart. "What's in God's trust for you?"

That question carried the rest of the message. Most people, he argued, come to God as beggars, unsure whether what they are asking for is even available. He read the Lord's Prayer back as evidence: it does not open with "deliver us from evil." It opens with "Our Father," then "hallowed be thy name," then "thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Honor first, and an acknowledgment that there is something in the account.

He described a friend of his wife's who grew up with a trust fund and wrote checks against it without flinching, because she knew what was in it. "When we go to God, oftentimes we don't go to God with the faith that what we're asking for is in the trust."

He walked verses seven through ten as evidence rather than requirement: strength to say no, health to the body and nourishment to the bones, and the strength to honor the Lord with your wealth. Then he closed on confidence. It is not vocabulary that keeps people from praying, he said. "You don't pray because you're not confident." The benediction was the text itself, spoken over a standing room.

Solo Faith Church meets at 587 Old Charlotte Rd SW, Concord, NC 28027. Twice during this message Pastor Doug came back to the people who cannot get there, households "locked out of having a genuine experience when there is no transportation." The church keeps a streamed sanctuary open for exactly that reason at solofaith.org/watch. Donations at solofaith.org/giving sponsor grocery deliveries to Concord households that cannot get to a pantry themselves, starting at five dollars for a single delivery.

Originally published on the Solo Faith Church blog: https://www.solofaith.org/post/proverbs-3-and-the-trust-fund-a-sunday-me...

Community Support Note: This story is part of Solo Faith Church's community journalism initiative to share what is happening in our congregation and across Cabarrus County. The quotes and details in this post were drawn from a recorded transcript of the message as it was preached, provided directly to Solo Faith Church, not from independent reporting.