Proverbs 3:5-7
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.
Proverbs can be summed up best as the book of wisdom, an education in how God works within our lives. This passage is one of the most comforting of the Proverbs, especially when your world seems turned upside down, inside out. It deserves a brief but thorough analysis, beginning with the meaning of trust. Dictionary.com defines trust as the reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, and surety of a person on whom one relies. Trust further amplified in this Proverb as an absolute dependance on God through the verbage, with all thine heart. The heart is the representation of the entire soul, essence, and being. How does one accomplish a trust in God like that? Think of it this way, you are dangling by a rope, you can not determine what is below or above, God tells you to let go, and you do so without hesitation. It is the ultimate trust fall knowing if I let go of my only source of control God will be there to catch me. The most appropriate explanation for lean in this context is two fold, one; to rest on something for support, and two; to depend or rely on it. We abandon what we interpret about any given situation, crisis, or trial, and reside solely under the ever present care of Christ. We exchange the agitation created by stress and anxiety of any predicament, for true rest in Christ, the Prince of Peace. Instead of self reliance we move to selfless dependance upon God's providence. The meaning of acknowledge is to accept something or someone as real or true and express gratitude. Both fit perfectly to demonstrate how we are to acknowledge God in every way. To experience God's providence, one must be entirely convinced that God is who says He is. Faith, the size of a mustard seed, can move mountains. A mustard seed measures about 1 to 2 mm in diameter. Compared to the size of a mountain the mustard seed appears, to us, insignificant. However, that small measure of faith is unbelievably potent in the hands of an almighty God. In addition to this unyielding belief is an indebtedness to the unconditional and unending love, grace, and strength that God supplies us on a daily, moment by moment basis. An absolute submission, to God, availing ourselves of any preconceived notion or conception of what is before us, combined with total commitment to God's character and appreciation for his care and support, results in guidance, wisdom, and correction in life that will carry us deeper and deeper into His will. This Proverb has not finished in its teaching yet. We are warned not be satisfied in our own knowledge. How can a limited mind in any way compete with or comprehend an infinite Lord? The reason why we struggle so intensely may be because we create complexities through our own judgement and miss the simplicity of God's direction. We see only the problem at hand God sees every millisecond of our life as a whole including every decision and resulting aftermath of each choice. We are as blind as a moles forging in the dark and as helpless as a fly trapped in a web. Its hard to argue our intelligence with the very author of it. How does one fear the Lord? What does that mean? Fear of the Lord is a devout respect of who He is, an understanding that He is all powerful, all knowing, existing eternally. He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. Time has no influence on Him because He invented it. Nothing is higher or greater than God. The fear of God is when God is placed first, and everything else is last, especially ourselves. Finally, to escape evil, you have to depart from it. This is not merely a quiet exodus, but a rapid, urgent, running from evil. We need to, at all cost, avoid those things that would lead us into temptation, walking away from the trappings of sin and its habits that once owned our soul. It is not a halfway process it is all or nothing. Sin hinders wisdom, it blinds us from the path of God’s plan. How many times have we perceived that prayers go unanswered when, in fact, the answers are drowned out by our own reasoning or the noise and calamity of sin? How many times do we stray from God’s leading because we believe, thanks to our own understanding, that we have a better way only to end up in a dead end? Trust, acknowledge, and respect, God and flee from evil. Very straightforward requests that God provides the strength and ability to fulfill. God bless.
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