Trust and What is Right

God is always inviting us into a deeper level of trust with Him. In a verse that could be everyone's life verse, scripture states:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight." (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Remember Abram and his call to go to Canaan? Pretty significant. But forty plus years later being commanded to take the life of the promised son...way deeper. Now contemplate that it took God those forty some years to build enough confidence in who He was so that Abraham would not question or hesitate at the command to sacrifice his promised son. This is a small glimpse into why Hebrews 11 devotes so much narrative to Abraham.

Do we trust God? Do we trust God implicitly with every detail of our lives? Do we obey when He speaks to us by the Holy Spirit or do we ‘lean on our own understanding’? God wants us to trust him with our heart. It is significant that mind, soul, and strength are not listed in this verse. Heart?, what is that? It is the core of who we are. Some have said that the heart is the seat of the emotions. This is partially true but does not encompass all that the heart is in us. Yes it is emotions, but the reality is that it is truly who we are. The us that only we know fully and others rarely get to see fully. But God knows. So do we trust the Lord with all our heart? or do we lean on our own understanding? They say experience is a great teacher but often the teaching is negative and destructive. Experience taught me as a child that I could trust only myself. Then God wanted me to trust Him! I don’t think so! My journey of trust in God has been difficult mostly because experience was a poor teacher that twisted my thinking and made me hard-hearted and untrusting. But when I acknowledge God in ALL my ways He untwists my mind and makes my path straight.

This is where another proverb fits into Proverbs 3:5-6. Interestingly this proverb is one of the few that gets repeated by Solomon. It is in Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25,

"There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. "

Our way of doing things, apart from God, leads to the way of death. We think that they are right, and even feel that they are right, but it is the way of death.

1 Corinthians reads: "For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence."

Often the ways of God and the things that bring life are counter-intuitive to our flesh. To us God’s ways seem like a way of death not a way of life. Fasting is another of those things,... just saying. We think we are going to die, when the reality is that we find in fasting, that we truly become alive.