TLIC PROVERBS. FEBRUARY 4: TRUST.

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

This verse is one of the most loved verses in all the Bible, and for good reason. Proverbs 3:5 is basically a summary of the entire Bible and of our entire relationship with God. Why do I say that? Because there is nothing more important than trusting the Lord with all your heart. More than anything else, God wants us to trust him and the whole Bible is meant to teach us how to do just that.

The word trust comes from a Hebrew word that means to lie face down on the ground. Combine this image with lean not and we begin to get a picture of our posture before God. We are not meant to prop ourselves up in any way before God (lean not), but rather we are meant to collapse before him in complete dependence.

Did you know that it’s possible to believe in God without trusting God? It’s even possible to obey God without trusting God. How often do you confirm your own faith and obedience by judging your own efforts?  How often do you take the time to literally be still, lie prostrate, collapse in rest before God?

Many a Christian have made trust in the Lord with all your heart a standard to live up to, equated with whatever form of law keeping or ego charged morality that you embrace to justify yourself. When in reality, trust in the Lord with all your heart must be a desperate disintegration of the self and a complete reliance on your union with Christ. 

Therein lies the irony of the verse. No one can or will ever trust in the Lord with ALL their heart. Even the Christian who is united to Christ and indwelt by the Spirit will fail in obedience to this command. There will always be doubts. There will always be worries and fears. There will always be questions. There will always be belief mixed with unbelief. The heart will always be divided to some degree. Which is exactly why we need to double down on trusting the Lord. The Lord who does everything for us even when our faith is the size of a mustard seed. It is exactly at that moment of failure, that moment of temptation that moment of doubt, that we must recall what the Lord has done for us and choose to surrender our hearts once again to a grace and mercy that often make no sense.

Christ alone and our union with him justifies our existence, nothing more and nothing less. Leaning on anything else will cause the collapse. When that happens, when the thing you are trusting in more than Christ lets you down, when it causes you to fall over on your face, may I recommend that you just stay there. Stay on the ground. Stay defeated. Stay humble.

Start trusting Christ alone again.

You: What do you trust in daily to justify your existence? What are you leaning on?

You in Christ: Meditate on this -In Christ you have everything you need from God, but this can only be realized when you trust him (collapse before him in dependence).  

Christ in you: What might collapse before God look like in your practical experience today?

Pray: Father, I want to trust you. I confess that I often turn my faith into rules, laws, and principles instead of Jesus. Help me to live in complete dependence on Jesus today. Amen.