Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust. It’s easy to say that we trust someone, but do we really? One of my teachers had an interesting test to see if his pupils really trusted him. He’d blindfold one of us, and stand us right on the edge of his desk. When he gave a signal, the person on the desk had to lean back, and just allow himself to fall off the edge. The teacher would then catch the victim before he hit the floor. Some people trusted our teacher enough to just relax into the fall, whilst others, who were a little bit wary about trusting a grey-haired, eccentric RE teacher, would start to fall, and then when they felt themselves going, would try to grab at something, anything, to stop themselves falling.
It can be really hard to trust people. We’ve all been hurt by someone at some stage in our lives, and after we have, it can be really hard to trust people again, particularly if we were betrayed or let down by someone close to us. It can also be very hard to put our complete trust in God, who, after all, we cannot see, and whom we find it difficult to understand. Some people say that they have complete trust in God, and whilst many probably have, I’m sure there are a lot who struggle with this. I think I’m one of them. Trusting in God can be a very, very hard thing to do.
That is just what we are called to do in this proverb, though. We are told to trust in God with all our heart. Not a little bit. Not half-heartedly. Not when it is easy to do so. We are called to trust in God completely and utterly.
Solomon, the writer of Proverbs, does not leave it at this, though. He knows exactly how people work. He knows that we are comfortable living in our own little cocoon, feeding off what we know, or think, to be true. We like to feel secure. We are creatures of habit. We get scared by what we do not know. Just as a child is shy and nervous on their first day at school as they head into the unknown, older people, more experienced in life, also get nervous when they head into the unknown. The first day in a new job can be just as stressful for an adult as the first day at school can be for a four-year-old child.
This is the challenge, though. We have to put our own perspective on life to one side. Whilst we may not know what is going to happen to us tomorrow, God does. If we trust in God with all our heart, we can stop worrying about the unknown. This message is repeated often in the Bible, most famously in Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus says, “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25). God loves us, and will provide for us, so why do we need to worry? We should, as the proverb instructs us, trust in the Lord with all our hearts.
In the same way, we in the early twenty-first century can be very reliant on our understanding of the world. If we come across an alien concept, we tend to ignore it. If something does not fit into our world-view, the way we see the world, we push it to one side and get on with life. This is one of the most challenging things when conducting evangelism. Non-Christians don’t want to think about the possibility of there being a god, because a higher being doesn’t fit into the neat little chart they’ve drawn up of life, the universe, and everything.
Solomon knows we think like this. He tells us we must not rely on our own understanding. This ties into his command to us to put our trust completely in God. There are things we won’t understand, but then it is rather arrogant of us to think that we will understand everything in God’s great plan. I was made redundant in 1999 from a job which I firmly believe God led me into. After the initial shock had worn off, I was very angry. Angry with the company for casting me aside, and angry with God for leading me down a path which ultimately caused me a great deal of pain. I simply could not understand why God had let redundancy happen to me. With hindsight, however, I can see that God wanted me to experience working in a large company, but this was not what his ultimate plan for me was. He wanted me to grow, but not to put down roots.
If we rely completely on our own understanding, we run the risk of missing out on much. We should try not to get caught up in our way of thinking, but continually leave ourselves open to what God has in store for us. Our understanding is extremely limited; God, on the other hand, knows exactly what’s going to happen to us today, tomorrow, next week, next year – in fact, he knows and understands everything.
We saw in a Word of the Week article a while ago that God has a plan for each and every one of us. With this in mind, it seems rather silly to “lean on our own understanding” when we have no knowledge at all of what the future holds. Surely we’d be far better off putting our complete trust in God?
How, practically, do we put our trust in God, then? The writer deals with this in the final part of the proverb – “in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” We have to defer everything we do to our Lord. We have to hand over everything we do to him, and trust that he will guide us along the appropriate path. It is when we do this that the contradiction within us disappears. So often, we have an idea of what we want, and will pray that God will give us what we want. It can be hard when we don’t get our way. But if we place God first in all we do, our desire will be the same as his – he wants to see his kingdom expand, and that is what we should want as Christians.
By placing everything we do before God, and “acknowledging him in all our ways,” we will be rewarded – God, we are told, will “make our paths straight.” The devil, who may try and drag us away from the path God has set out for us, will not be able to erect obstacles in our path, that will cause us to weave around. God will ensure that, all the time we are acknowledging him, and putting his will before our own, we will not be dragged off the course that ultimately leads to eternal life.
Life as a Christian can be hard, but we often make life harder for ourselves, by not following God’s path. If we make a conscious decision to trust God, to lean on him, and acknowledge him in everything we do, we will be rewarded. So put aside your self-reliance, and strive to trust God.