"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." - Proverbs 3:5-6
The past few weeks have been extremely overwhelming. Not only because of school work and midterm grades, but all the stresses and worries that come with rushing too. Over these past few weeks I've leaned a great deal about what devotion is, and what it takes to persevere. There were some days that I didn't know what to do and I felt like I was drowning in stress and anxiety. But this command in Proverbs came to mind. I bet a lot of people would say that Proverbs 3:5-6 is their life verse. If not, you probably even have it memorized.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."
This is a promise that I have learned is essential to our spiritual life with God. But I wanted to go deeper into what each part of this verse meant. So I did some research and broke the verse down into four parts. So here they are.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart" is obviously an exhortation not to doubt. When you trust in the Lord with all your heart, you're making a tangible choice not to let unbelief "eat away" at your soul. You're confident in Jesus and jumping in with both feet.
"...Do not lean on your own understanding." You can't trust in the Lord with all your heart if you're leaning on your own understanding. I'd like to think I trust the Lord like that right now, but how can I be sure I do? I think that John Piper said it best in one of his sermons -
"Maybe you know some things. You've been around the block, you know how things work, you know how to get it done. There's nothing wrong with that. It's good, in fact. The problem is, are you leaning on those things when you hit a crisis? Are you confident in your own ability to get out of tight spots? Do you say anything like, "I know how to fix this. I've been through this before. I'm going to get on this right now." Yeah, that's not great. Don't lean on your own understanding."
"In all your ways acknowledge Him..." In every choice, acknowledge God. We might be able to handle that situation by ourselves, but we still want to glorify God in every situation we come in contact with. So in all our ways, we should put Him first.
"...And He will make straight your paths." If we will just lay all of our burdens, desires, and worries at His feet, He will work things out in His perfect timing. He knows what we are going through. God's grace keeps humbling me each time I think about how such a powerful and magnificent creator of the world can be so concerned and compassionate about our own microscopic worries and stresses. But He doesn't just offer compassion and grace, He challenges us to get back up and try again. "Just try Me on that one," God says. "Test Me and see if I'm not faithful." So here comes our chance to discover the amazing promise God gives to those who totally trust in Him. So let's Dive Deep.....and see what God has in store for our lives.
5 comments:
I liked how you broke down Proverbs 3:5-6. It was refreshing to look at it that way. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on something so important.
Oh man, you are so right. How often do we rely on ourselves? We're not too bad, are we?
But it's sufficient in no way!
Let's stick to the creator of the universe :-)
Just wanted to let you know that this blog really touched my heart. I have really been relying on myself lately and it just let me know that if we rely on God nothing can harm us and we wont be as worried or stressed.
Thanks buddy :)
I really like how you broke everything down and explained it. I agree that it is very humbling to be compared to someone as big as God.
Man, this is incredible! The way you broke it down was very insightful. You are great. I have enjoyed our friendship.
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