Trust is a word that we sometimes throw out there without fully understanding what it means. The original Hebrew is fairly accurate to our modern vernacular. It simply means to be confident in something. We are to be confident in the Lord with all of our hearts. There are some things that we trust readily and do not even think about it. We sit down in a chair without inspecting it because we trust that it will hold us. We have a confidence based on experience and knowledge that the chair will hold us, even if we have had an experience of a chair crumbling under us, I have not yet met a person who require a full chair inspection before agreeing to sit in a chair that is offered to them.
We use the word trust a lot. "I'm trusting God to take care of it." I have said it myself related to the sale of our house, I have said it related to our finances. I have said it in church, I have said it to family. I have said it an awful lot. And yet, when the rubber meets the road, simply stating your trust in something does absolutely nothing. You can talk about how much you trust the chair, but until you sit, your trust is not complete. Most of the things I have said I trust God to care for I am still concerned about and still think about and worry about and even stress about. Do I really trust?
And sadly, the verse does not end with trust. The verse gives us a more complete definition of the confidence that God requires of us. I am not even referring to the expression "with all your heart", but to the latter half of the verse. "Do not lean on your own understanding." This is astounding. The confidence that I am to have in God is to actually counter my own understanding.
I understand a lot of things (or at least I think I do). God here tells me not to rely on the understanding of things that I have. Instead I am to trust. It seems that trust is therefore something that is to go beyond my understanding. So it is more than sitting in a chair. I trust the chair precisely because of my own understanding. I understand the physics involved and the fact that due to the way the chair was constructed it is designed to hold weight by distributing it evenly to four focal points instead of one. I understand my history with chairs and that they do not break easily, and I trust based on my understanding, and sadly, I believe that this is where most Christians falter. We trust God based on our understanding. We know what He has done in the past and what He is capable of. We have an understanding of who God is, and our trust is challenged when God chooses to operate in a way that is different from our understanding of who He is and how He works.
This is why Proverbs 3:5 is such a good verse. The verse demands that I do not get complacent in my trust and only be confident in the things that my understanding allows, but demands instead that I am confident in the things that are beyond my understanding. I am to trust when I do not understand. I am to rely upon God even when I do not comprehend what He is doing and where He is taking me. This is the type of trust exemplified in the Scriptures. It is the trust of Abraham going to a place that he did not know but allowing God to lead. It is the trust of Moses allowing God to work through his own insecurities. It is the trust of David allowing God to use his mistakes. It is the trust of Joshua walking around a wall instead of building siege ramps against it. These things defy human understanding and logic. And yet God calls them and us to trust. You and I are to be confident that God knows what He is doing, even when we do not understand.
As Anselm said, "Faith seeks understanding. I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."
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