Life is filled with uncertainties big and small; we all have them. Whether big or small, they can cause worry or at the very least cause us to be unsettled. We want everything to be okay. However, we don’t know for certain whether everything is going to be okay or not. It is easy to trust God when everything is great but then we ask “Can I trust God when there is uncertainty or when things are not okay?”
Yes you can! Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart – This means we are to say “Lord, I trust you.” Simple words, I know, but not always easy to pray and mean. But when we are uncertain or scared, what do we have to lose? To trust God with all your heart means we hold nothing back. We do not just trust him with the good stuff, we trust him with all our stuff. We often hold back part of our hearts out of fear or a desire to self-protect but he is totally trustworthy. When we do trust him, we find he really is all we need.
2. Lean not on your own understanding – We do not know the why or the timing of circumstances in our lives. We want it to make sense but it does not and it does not have to. When we are leaning on our own understanding, we are relying on ourselves, our wisdom, our plan. Think about it: what happens when we lean on something? We rest our weight on it and expect it will steady us and hold us up. Our understanding is not strong enough to lean on. We do not see the whole picture, so we cannot understand the whole plan and that is okay. We do not have to understand everything to trust God with everything. There is a great relief we experience when we release our need to understand and trust God anyway.
3. In all your ways acknowledge him – To acknowledge means to know and to recognize. When we trust God with all our heart, we are acknowledging, knowing and recognizing him as fully trustworthy. When we lean on him rather than our own understanding, we are acknowledging—knowing and recognizing—that his ways may not be our ways. When we acknowledge him, we are affirming what we know to be true about him and we are then able to see that truth in our situation.
The result is that “He will direct your paths” and we do not have to know what to do. We can trust him, lean more on his wisdom than our own, and acknowledge him. We will be blown away as he does direct us and our path.
