A Powerful Proverb.

During my mid-20s, I was involved with helping my mother coordinate a weekly children’s club called Sunshine Corner that had existed ever since I was a child. During the 6 week summer school break, we would often host a themed holiday club, which proved to be a lot of fun for adults and children alike.

One of my favourite memories of that era is of the “warm-up” action songs we would get the children to do at the start of the day. They usually came in with a lot of pent-up energy, so getting them to move around and do actions helped tire them out ready to participate in craft activities or story time. A lot of the action songs we picked were designed to teach Bible verses, and my favourite was a memory aid for Proverbs 3 verse 5.

This song proved to be so popular with the children that they would ask to sing it during our regular Tuesday meetings. I think they loved the leaning bit best and used to try knocking one another over. It was fun, but it served a brilliant purpose, as most of them could quote Proverbs 3 verse 5, and even if they couldn’t, they could sing it.

The trouble is that as an adult, I began to take this Bible verse for granted. I just associated it with the song and the actions, and its true meaning was lost on me. Then recently the Lord brought it back to my mind. I smiled a little thinking of those long-off days of laughing and playing with little ones, and then I began meditating upon the wonderfully powerful words of Proverbs 3 verse 5, and also of verse 6 which is a part of the same statement. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” In hindsight, I wish both verses had been included in the song, but maybe this would have been too much for the children to remember.

Since I have known the Lord all my life, it’s very easy for me to say I trust him and move on to think about something else. Yet as I consider my reaction to some of the difficulties I have faced, I feel my trust being brought into question, especially when I consider that the verse urges me to trust Him with all my heart. Trusting someone with all our hearts isn’t just trusting them a bit. It is a commandment to let go of our desire and need to take control, and believe that whatever they have in store, it will be for the best. It means trusting in the dark as well as in the light – when things don’t make sense as much as when they do.

Several years ago, my husband and I had to move to a new house because of an issue with our neighbours. At the time, I told everyone I was trusting God to guide us to the right place, but inside I was making plans and trying to “Help God along.” I spent days fretting over websites displaying local properties, and by the time we went to look around them, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted.

At first it seemed God’s plans were going to line up with mine. We looked around the house and all seemed well, but as time passed the whole thing unravelled because this house wasn’t part of God’s plan for us. Looking back now, I’m glad it wasn’t, but at the time I was heartbroken, and much though it pains me to admit it, I was furious with God because he seemingly hadn’t lived up to his side of the bargain.

As it turned out, God had something much better in mind, although we spent a year waiting for that to happen. In the meantime, he placed us in the most beautiful house I have ever lived in, and once again I began making plans. I was sure we needed to stay in this place. WE couldn’t possibly find anything better. So just a year later, when we once again found ourselves house-hunting, my disappointment and frustration surfaced.

Of course, God had his plan all along. In hindsight, I can see exactly what he was doing, and I’m so grateful for it, but I would have saved myself a lot of anger and tears if I’d just trusted him with my whole heart from the beginning, and not tried to engineer outcomes. God took us on a roundabout journey to get us to where we are, but he had lessons for us on every step, and he is still teaching me about trust today. Whenever I am faced with a perplexity, my gut instinct is to go into problem solving mode. If someone I love is suffering, I want to fix it, but all God asks me to do is love them through it and let him work. It is not my place to rescue them and try and make things better. Maybe God has a purpose for this season of pain. By jumping in to fix things, I may cause a delay in the lessons he wants to teach both them and me.

So as I sit here writing this, I have to be honest and tell you I am learning to trust God with my whole heart, but I’m not quite there yet. He often gives me chances to grow in that trust relationship, and I believe I am responding to them better today than I did 5 years ago, but there is still a long way to go. Thankfully, we serve a patient and loving God.

Next, the scripture from Proverbs tells me not to lean on my own understanding. Relating this back to our house move, my understanding of what was best was flawed. I had it horribly wrong, but I was leaning on my understanding instead of His. When we did the actions with the children, they used to lean hard on one another at this point in the song. I want to learn to do more of that with God – to let him take the weight of all my problems and concerns. Trust means letting go, believing he will take my weight and not let me fall, instead of holding back ready to jump back up the moment I fear he won’t catch me.

Next, we are told to seek his way in all we do. That means pausing to ask: “Lord, what do you want,” and then listening for the answer, not presuming we already know what his will is. This can be harder than it sounds, because we often come to prayer with preconceived ideas. We lay out our plans before Jesus, expecting him to bless them. Even when we ask what his will is, our ability to hear is clouded by our own thoughts and agendas. No wonder the Psalmist told us to “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46: 10.) I find it’s hardest to be still when I am worried. I pray, but my mind is racing with that problem solving tendency I’ve already written about. This is why it’s often a good idea to seek confirmation when we are searching for God’s will on a matter. If we do this, we are less likely to be simply hearing what we want to hear. It’s easy to find scriptures to back up what we are thinking on a subject, but if we seek confirmation from the Lord, and even sometimes from a trusted Christian friend, we are able to obtain more objective council.

I love the final part of verse 6, because it says that if we do all the things we’ve just talked about – trusting the Lord with all our hearts, not relying on our own understanding, and seeking his will in all we do, he will show us which path to take. That’s a promise, and it should bring us a lot of comfort. God has a specific path for each of us. Sadly, that path may sometimes lead through rocky places. We may even have to go through the valley of the shadow of death as I did a few years ago with my father, but it is a glorious path that will ultimately lead us to the best life Jesus has in mind for us and to an eternity spent with him. Remember, the Lord has many things he wishes to teach us as we travel along this path, and lesson learning isn’t always a happy experience. I speak as one who never liked school, so I know. It would have been great fun to stay at home every day doing what I wanted to, but if I’d done that, I never would have learned anything, and I wouldn’t be able to fulfil God’s plans for my life such as writing these devotionals. The skills I needed were often hard learned, but I’m glad I learned them.

I don’t know what you are going through today, but I want to encourage you to keep trusting, even when the way seems dark. The hardest times are when we need to lean the heaviest. Never be afraid God won’t catch you. And when you have been caught, let him lead you by the hand along his chosen path for your life.