Here Are My Thoughts

READ: Proverbs 3

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding…” (Proverbs 3:5)

Trust.

I have a hard time with that word. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s just that I’m not very good at doing it. I’m naturally skeptical and very analytical, so I find it difficult to trust, particularly when it comes to trusting other people. That’s true even of most people who are completely trustworthy (there are a select few who have managed to earn my unquestioned trust, but not many). Throw in the fact that a lot of people in this world are dishonest and inconsistent…and you see why I really struggle with trusting.

Then there’s the other part-“do not lean on your own understanding”. I’m also a control-freak (those of you who know me well can attest to this). I like things a certain way, and I often find that the best way to make things that way most consistently comes when I am in control. I like to eliminate as many unknown variables as possible, analyzing every situation so that I have a pretty good guess of an outcome before I start. This makes me pretty sure of myself about some things, because I’ve thought through it enough to be pretty sure.

So now that you know some of my many issues, when you add all of this up, it means that Proverbs 3:5 is one of the hardest verses in the Bible for me to follow. I don’t like to trust anyone other than myself. I far too often lean on my own understanding. And yet, Solomon calls me (and you) to do exactly what most often seems so unnatural. 

So here are two things I’ve learned from honestly trying (often unwillingly) to follow the challenge of this verse:

1. God is extraordinarily trustworthy. 

Duh, right? But hear me out on this, because this truth has changed my life. God never fails. He never acts out of character. He never lets his emotions get the best of Him. He never acts selfishly. He is always working for good. He always does what is right. He is always giving us exactly what we need. In short, all of the things that make us so untrustworthy do not apply to God. He is perfect consistency where we are constant inconsistency. And the trustworthiness of God has played out over and over again in my life. He’s had to drag me, often kicking and screaming, to exactly where He knows I need to be, simply telling me to trust Him, and time and time again, He’s created a better outcome than I could have ever drawn up in my head. God is wiser than I am-shocker! Which leads me to the other lesson I’ve had to learn…

2. My understanding is not worth leaning on. 

In the Old Testament, God refers to Egypt as a “splintered staff” that Israel is attempting to lean on. (Isaiah 36:6) The imagery is vivid and telling-when you lean on a splintered staff, two things happen: First of all, you fall down, because the broken staff can’t support your weight. But, to add insult to injury (or injury to injury), you’re also stabbed my the sharp shards of the broken staff. A splintered staff is especially dangerous, because it fails you AND harms you. So it is with our own understanding and wisdom. There’s a reason that Solomon makes it clear in the first two Proverbs-wisdom comes from God. Our wisdom, while sometimes sounding good, while occasionally being spot-on, is often like a splintered staff: it fails to hold us up in the midst of our decisions and situations, and it winds up hurting us even more eventually. Our own understanding is not worth leaning on because it doesn’t do for us what we need it to. It’s not trustworthy.

So thank God, that God is totally and completely trustworthy. Thank God that He’s worth leaning on, and is so strong and secure, that He can more than handle as much weight as we can throw on Him.

As with most things when it comes to faith, it’s pretty simple today, but really difficult: Start trusting in God. Stop leaning on your own understanding. 

-Brett