Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Sometimes the right path ahead is simple to see, but I find more often that life is complex. God isn’t asking me to figure it out – He says, “trust Me.” Submitting to this can be difficult, yet it can also be freeing. I don’t have to decipher what the best option is, which is good news. God has a plan beyond what my understanding could conceive.
There are questions I will never understand this side of eternity – matters of sickness, evil, brokenness. My efforts at knowledge can either lead me to pride, needing to resolve the issues, or to faith, trusting in the One who knows. God says to trust Him alone.
But God also wants me to use my brain. He gave it to me! It is good to wrestle. God wants me to think about things. Seeking reasonable answers, planning and working to understand are good and even godly endeavors.
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord…” Isaiah 1:18
For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Luke 14:28
Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21
We are called to learn, to plan, to make wise decisions. But the key word in our proverbs passage is trust. In what do I trust? The Hebrew, batach, can be defined as:
… the sense of well-being and security that results from having something or someone in whom to place confidence. … It stresses the feeling of being safe and secure rather than an intellectual and volitional act in response to revelation. It means to live at ease because of confidence in God.[1]
My understanding is faulty. I can deceive myself. I make errors. God may even lead me in a way that seems “unreasonable.” But when I follow Him, He is faithful to take me in the right path. When I trust in His way, I have rest. I have confidence and peace despite my circumstance.
Lord, let me use my mind, soul and body to its fullest as a gift from You. But may my trust be in You and You alone.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Matthew 22:37
[1] https://skipmoen.com/2016/01/the-hiding-place-from-2012/
