“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” — Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV.

 

King Solomon gives some very wise advice to those who would venture to read his book of Proverbs; none perhaps more difficult for us to grasp than the verses above. “All your heart”? “In all your ways”? What could be more difficult for those of us with active minds, bent on understanding all that we hear or see, than to trust in another, even God, to provide that understanding? I submit to you that it is not merely difficult, it is made even more so by the humbling of mind and spirit required to put aside the God given ability to reason, and to depend upon God Himself. This proverb goes against all that we know in the natural realm of the non-regenerated. We, or at least I, was convinced that I could know, if I didn’t already, all that was necessary in order to be fulfilled. Along comes my conversion and the subsequent spiritual growth toward Christian maturity that followed. I now know that my own understanding was flawed, to say the least, and that I would certainly fail miserably if I continued to lean on such a weak position.

To lean on His understanding that cannot fail, even though difficult, is far better than continuing to lean on my own flawed and prone to failure reasoning. But this passage says, “all your heart, in all your ways”! Yes, even the little things that are automatically dealt with through our personal experience, should be processed through His will and wisdom. This takes much practice, along with many failures, to become a way of life. For that is exactly what it must become if we are to ever be able to trust Him fully with all things, a way of life, better yet, a way of living.

Trusting Him in all things relieves us of the agonies of indecision, uncertainty, and remorse over our lack of understanding. Through the application of these verses we find peace when we encounter Scripture that challenge us, we do not have to fully understand, we simply have to trust that He does.

One day all Christians will have perfect understanding (1 Corinthians 13:12), until then, trust God and lean on His understanding, always.

 

Bobby Thornhill is a retired Methodist preacher.