"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." ~Proverbs 3:5
How many times have we all read this verse? For many of us this is a favorite verse that reminds us to trust God no matter the circumstances. I know I've looked to this verse many times to help me in times of trial. However, I realized over the last few days how often we focus on the first part of this verse (Trust in the Lord with all your heart...) but forget the second part, "...and lean not on your own understanding."
Having grown up outside of the church I was taught to look at logic and reasoning to help me solve problems or understand solutions. I've always enjoyed helping people figure out a solution to their problems and making predictions about what might happen next based off of patterns that I see whether it be in a story/movie or real life. So when I came to know Jesus I took this with me. Excited to see how the Lord would work I would try to figure out what His solutions would be before they happened and want to know why God was doing things the way He was doing them. Each time I would do this I would notice that I would be filled with anxiety and emptiness. That was when I realized the second part of this verse. It's been in these moments that I go off of my own understanding because that's all I have, but I'm not supposed to be leaning on my own reasoning. I'm not saying that we follow God with totally blind faith, but we ask for His understanding and realize that we're only meant to understand so much. We're not God, we didn't create everything existence, so we're not going to get all of our questions answered. This is faith, that we say to God, "I trust You to move" instead of saying "When You move I'll trust You". Our faith shouldn't be conditional, just like our love shouldn't be conditional.
We also have to realize that when we go off of our understanding and make decisions based off of it that we're going to make a mess because we're humans, we're flawed! If we really want to follow God and see all of the incredible blessings that He has for us then we need to follow Him and discern His understanding from our own so we can best follow Him. Faith is trusting without fully understanding. Joyce Meyer actually wrote in Battlefield of the Mind about abandoning our reasoning because it can distract us from God's voice and God's work in our lives. If we're relying on our reasoning then we're not relying on God, and if we're not relying on God then we're not trusting God, and if we're not trusting God then often times we're not following Him. So ask God for His understanding, wisdom, and discernment in your life and let go of your own so that you may follow Him with a much stronger faith!
"My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9
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