Mar 3 - Today from Proverbs 3 we look at verse 5 and 6
"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."
This is a well-known proverb. It comes up as a memory verse in many discipleship programs, for children and adults alike. People are drawn to it because it is such a profound thought, much like John 3:16. The danger is that it becomes so 'common' that people no longer become absorbed in the depth of its profoundness. It serves us well to memorize such verses - and then meditate on them so that we benefit from the great spiritual nutrition they provide.
Trust. Trust is probably the most foundational piece in any meaningful relationship. There is an element of faith in trust. When a trusted friend makes a promise to come through for you in some kind of endeavor, there is no visible evidence that he or she will perform to your satisfaction. It is the trust factor built into that relationship that gives you peace of mind that the task will be done right. The greater the value of the object or the task, the greater is the trust needed for you to commit it to another. You might 'trust' your two-year-old child to bring daddy a cup of water out on the patio. But do you 'trust' that same child to bring daddy a glass of grape juice across your white carpeted living room?
We all have a close friend or two that we can truly depend on in almost any situation. Almost. But are there are some things that are so 'valuable' to us, that we dare not entrust them to anyone else? What about our very life? Not just our physiological blood-pumping air-breathing life, but our life - that which determines what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what makes us fearful, what brings solitude, what motivates us, what makes us content, what makes us hurt deep inside, what makes our juices flow, what makes our dreams, what makes us so full inside that we could burst – that life. Who are we going to trust with that? I mean to trust even when it goes against what we think might be the right thing to do? That's tough! That's what God desires of us. To entrust our lives to Him, even beyond our own understanding.
When one gets off balance, one instinctively looks for something to lean on in order to keep from falling. When life gets out of balance and calls for an important decision, we tend to want to find the most stable thing we know to lean on in order to keep from falling. As children, it is usually a parent. Then we go through that incredible stage of adolescence where our entire being seems committed to independence. (I’m not sure we ever quite recover from it.) We tend to become our own best leaning post - until we get to know our heavenly Father. To know Him is to trust Him, even beyond our own understanding. That takes real faith - to entrust our very life to someone we cannot see. Faith is not knowing the end, it is knowing the One who knows the end, and taking a step in the direction He gives. Faith is a walk - step by step, trusting the One who leads. The path may not always be smooth, but it is straight. The path may lead through some very dark valleys, but He promises to be right there beside us. We will never get to the level of trust required unless we spend quality time with God and work on our relationship with Him. When we know Him, then we know we can trust Him with our most critical decisions - even with our very lives.
Since Nov 08
About Me
- Ken
- While mentor-ing a couple of young men late in the year 2001 , I told them that if they agreed to read a chapter of Proverbs each week-day as a part of their devotions, I would choose one verse from the chapter and share a meditation by email. They agreed. I continued to write the meditations at my desk in my home for the next two and a half years. They began to forward them to their friends and I received requests from those friends to be placed on the email list. My personal email bundle was to about eighty people. Many of those people forwarded them to friends all over the country – and some over the world. Only the Lord knows how extensive the writings traveled. I am not a professional writer, and each meditation was spun off in a relatively short period of time during my own personal devotions in the morning. In April of 2004 I assembled 366 of the meditations into a calendar year. As I now bring up the Proverb of the Day to send on to my friends, I am surprised at how fresh each of them is to my own heart – and often how they speak to me in a completely different way than when I first wrote them. . . . . Ken Sweers
2 comments:
Thank you for the post. I have been reading your proverbs as a devotion and appreciate what is here. This one in particular seems to speak to several questions that have come to me in the last few days. Thanks again. Pastor WaynO
Even though I penned them, as I cycle through these meditations year by year, I am always surprised at how contemporary they are in my own life. Even now I am struggling with trust issues in my faithwalk. It is eerie when my own voice comes back from the past to admonish and correct me.
"Physician, heal thyself." But I'm not the physician. Then I realize it's not my voice at all. It is the voice of The Great Physician speaking through me. It's incredibly humbling.
Thanks for the comment.
Post a Comment