What Don’t You Understand?
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5
Surprise! It’s a Christmas miracle. I am actually making a new post. I know it has been a while. For me, it has been too long. For ya’ll, you may feel it hasn’t been long enough. Anyway, here we are. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and are looking forward to a Merry Christmas.
Today’s scripture hits close to heart for me. I so often find myself trying to handle things myself. I try to depend on myself and not rely on God. This proverb is so important to our daily lives and how we handle things. Life is hard. It can be overwhelming at times. It comes at us hard and fast. Especially when we try to handle things ourselves.
The bible here is telling us to depend on God. Trust Him. He’s got this. He knows how to handle life. He is the creator of life. When we fully TRUST in God, we are putting our complete faith in Him. We are saying, “God I am giving this moment to You. It is too big for me. But, for You, it is very small.” Trust is a big word. It is easy to say that you trust someone. Words mean nothing. I may say that I trust you but, I have to admit, there’s still a little doubt about you in my mind and heart. Doubt is then where our problems begin. We let that doubt dictate our decisions and what we do from there.
“All thine heart”. Can any of us truly say that we have done anything with all our heart? It is a huge statement that means we never a doubt and our minds never wonder. It’s hard. God deserves that type of trust. He has never let any of us down and He never will.
The last half of this verse is probably the biggest stumbling block for people. We are too quick to follow our own beliefs and desires. We are often not patient enough for God. We want an instant response from Him and instant results. We cannot wait. It has got to be now! Then when it is not now, we take matters into our own hands. Why? Because we did not fulfill the first half of the verse which says to TRUST God completely.
So, what is the danger of leaning on our own understanding? We consider ourselves to be “good people” right? Absolutely. How many times have we heard a song or a line in a movie telling us to “Trust your heart”? Plenty. And on the surface, it sounds so great and deep. Perfect advice. Our hearts will never lead us wrong. Because we are good overall, right? Wrong!
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
“But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:” Matthew 15:18-19
As we see from scripture the heart of man is a wicked thing. It cannot be trusted. We cannot depend on ourselves. When we depend on our own understanding, we are allowing ourselves to be influenced by so many things. Things such as emotion, peer pressure, and selfish desires. We are not being guided by anything pure. We are being guided something with known substantial fault. It would be no different than if we knowingly followed a road map that we knew was not accurate to show us the proper way to travel. We would never do that. We would never measure with a ruler that was not accurate. Why lean on ourselves when we know that we are constantly messing up?
When we follow our own hearts, we are following basically what we want at the time. And we all know that our desires and tastes change constantly. We will often follow what society says is popular. We are easily influenced by what is popular because we don’t want to be left out or be ridiculed by our friends and family. I know it is hard, but trust in God not yourself. He is definitely a much wiser choice.