Trust

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding."  Proverbs 3:5

I used to sing a song in Sunday School that I have enjoyed singing as an adult.  "Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey."  Sadly, a large portion of my life has been spent in the absence of trust.  Sometimes I wonder what it means to trust at all.  If I am trusting, does that mean I should do nothing to help myself and just let God do it all? 

And then I was reminded of this simple verse.  I want to make a few observations.

The command is simply to trust in the Lord.  The verse seems to imply that there are other places that your trust could be placed.  We can trust our bank accounts, our families, our church, we can trust a lot of thing and the command and the initial observation is that our trust should be placed in the Lord and no in anything else.  This is so similar to the first command to have no other gods before Him.  Trust the Lord, nothing else!

Secondly, we are to trust with all of our heart.  Again, the simple truth is that we have the ability to trust with less, but God calls for all of us.  We are not to trust when things are good, and worry when things are bad. We are not to trust with only half of who we are, we are to trust with all that is within us.  This reminds me of the summary of the whole law that we are to love God with all of our heart, and soul and strength. 

Lastly, and perhaps most challenging of all is that the antithesis of trust is not a lack of trust, but a trust in my own understanding.  Here is the hard part.  I have to trust only God, with all of who I am and none of my own understanding.  I get tripped up here because I bring my own understanding into the equation far too often.  I think that my own understanding is accurate and true and I have this conscious desire to tell God how to interpret the circumstances that I find myself in.  And this is precisely what I am to avoid.  I am to avoid leaning on my own understanding.  Notice that it does not say that I cannot have my own understanding, or even that my own understanding is incorrect, simply that I am not to lean on it.  Not to rely on it, not to trust it. 

May God give us the grace to be able to trust in the Lord with all of who we are and not lean on our own understanding!