Readings
Proverbs 3:5-6; Mark 14:32-36
Introduction
Throughout the land, there are people waiting for pandemic restrictions to be lifted so they can get on with their lives; us included, no doubt! There’s talk about “building back better, greener.” The thirst for change has never seemed so prominent as it does now. Nor, perhaps, has the challenge of change ever seemed so scary.
There are probably some here who can’t wait for church to get back to what it was. But, along with others, I want to ask, is that really enough? Is there not something more than that? Are we really fulfilling Christ’s commission to his church?
There may be others among us who have a vision of the church of the future—a God-given vision, even—but who have no idea how to bring it into being.
Where do we go from here?
Today, in pondering that question, I want to talk about what may be the very first step in discovering the way ahead.
But this is not relevant only for people in leadership roles who may be saying, ‘There must be more to church than this.’ This is something for anyone and everyone who may be saying, ‘There must be more to life than this.’
Let’s unpack the two verses we heard from Proverbs 3.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
Trust
What do we understand by, ‘trust’? When we say we trust someone—truly trust them—we’re saying they are someone we can rely on, someone who won’t let us down, someone whose word is their bond. We can count on them absolutely.
Trust in the LORD
We’re told here that the person we’re to put our trust in is the LORD. In the Hebrew, that’s YHWH, the eternal God who was, and is, and is to come; the one who created everything that was created, who designed and built the universe.
This is someone who really knows a thing or two!
Trust in the LORD with all your heart
To the Hebrew, the heart is not the seat only of the emotions. The word for ‘heart’ includes our mind and our thoughts as well as our emotions. The heart is the centre of all your inner life and being.
We’re told to trust God with everything we are, from the outside, right into the very core of our being. Don’t hedge you bets! Stake your all on God!
God knows what he’s doing. We can count on him absolutely.
Well, we kind-of trust God but we trust him warily. We hold back from giving our all. Why do we do that? Is it because we lean on our own understanding of how things should be? The Bible tells us not to do that.
Lean not on your own understanding
Now, God gave us minds and the ability to reason but, when it comes to God and what he might want us to do, our understanding is much less than perfect.
Our understanding can be flawed. For example, someone who grew up with a strict, overbearing or abusive father may have great difficulty in relating to ‘Our Father, who is in heaven.’
Our understanding can be incomplete. How long has God been around? How long, by comparison, have we been around? He knows a lot more than we do. And God often leads us only one step at a time. He rarely gives us the full picture all at once of everything that’s to happen.
There can be times when things don’t seem to be going the way we thought they should. The story of Job illustrates the point. Poor Job had no idea why his life was in such a sorry mess. The opening chapter tells us that there were things going on in the heavenly realms that he didn’t know about: his understanding was incomplete. But he maintained his trust in God: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Job 13:15
Our understanding can be influenced or, worse, manipulated. We can’t be guided by cultural norms. Our society may hold one view, in another society a different view may be upheld. Which one do we trust? And who’s pulling the strings?
It’s absolutely true that God is in ultimate control, but here’s an interesting verse of scripture: 1 John 5:19 says, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (NIV) A direct translation might be, “secular systems rest passively in the evil one”.
Given that, do we really want to rely on secular cultural trends for guidance?
Depending on our faulty human understanding can be very foolish. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death." (NIV)
In looking for the way forward, we need to trust in the LORD with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.
To put that another way, trust God wholeheartedly; don’t try to work it all out for yourselves.
Moving on to verse 6, we read
In all your ways submit to him
The old Authorised Version express this as, in all thy ways, acknowledge him, which probably had a much stronger meaning in the 17th century. We could carelessly take that to mean giving a nod in God’s direction by going to church on Sunday. But it’s much more than that.
The latest edition of the NIV reinforces the meaning with the idea of submission to God. What does that mean? The NLT gives us the translation, “Seek his will in all you do” and I think these two translations together give us a clearer understanding.
In our acknowledgement of God, are our prayers along the lines of, “We’ve decided to do this, please bless it”? Would we do better to seek his will by praying instead, “Lord, please show us what you would have us do”?
A good way of discovering God’s will for your life is to read your Bible. You’ll get to know what God is like, his character, his nature. You’ll find out what pleases him, what grieves him, what makes him angry, what fills him with joy. You don’t need me to tell you which of those things to do!
But seeking and finding God’s will is only part of the recipe. There’s no point mixing the ingredients of a cake and then not putting it in the oven! And that’s where the submission comes in. Having discovered God’s will, we need to be obedient to it, even when it may, on occasion, be something we really don’t want to do.
The idea is shown clearly in our New Testament reading. Jesus is agonising in prayer, in the full knowledge of what lies before him. He knows what the Father’s will is, and he knows why it has to be that way, but, as a man, he draws back from the physical torment and the spiritual separation he must face. Yet he surrenders to the Father’s will.
So, in all your ways submit to him. Seek his will in all you do. And really, this is the essence of what it is to live as a Christian.
He will make your paths straight
Now we come to a very clear promise: God will make your paths straight! This doesn’t mean he’ll remove all difficulties. Other translations say, ‘he will direct your paths’, and ‘he will show you which path to take.’ He knows the way through or around the difficulties.
Now notice something else: this is a conditional promise. The promise is conditional on trust and obedience.
Wow! How does all that sit with our shaky trust and our choosy obedience?
I think of Abraham, who leant on his own understanding several times, with less than desirable outcomes. God still led him, and he seems to have learnt along the way.
I think of the man who once said to Jesus, ‘Lord, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief!’ I’m sure his faith was much stronger after Jesus there and then delivered his son from an unclean spirit.
And I’m sure that as we take our tentative steps of trust and obedience, our confidence in God will grow and lead us on to greater things. God is gracious! And we’re on a journey of discovery. Our paths can be twisty but God can straighten out the kinks.
There’s another promise for guidance in Psalm 32:8-9:
God promises to guide, but he wants our trust, he wants our willingness to be led. And he loves us to bits!
He doesn’t give us a road map and leave us to get on with it. He leads us one step at a time, and he walks with us all the way.
Conclusion
As children of God, we have every right to hold him to his promises. And as our loving father, he has every right to expect our trust and obedience.
So, where do we go from here?
Well, the first step in the journey is to seek out God and ask him to show us the way. Now is the time to seek after God for his guidance. Now is the time to ask and go on asking, to seek and go on seeking, to knock and go on knocking
The step after that is to share together what we believe God has shown us, and then to obey what we recognise to be his leading.
He’s promised to guide. Let’s seek him for his will, and then trust him and obey.
5Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (NIV)
