When it comes right down to it, trusting God is my biggest weakness. In fact, at times it is my biggest rebellion. "No God, I don't want you to do anything. I want to be the one to fix things. I want to take the credit. I want the satisfaction of doing it. I want to bring myself the glory, not You. Just leave me alone."
I can't get away from Proverbs 3:5-8.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones."
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. With ALL your heart. With all your heart. Your heart is the metaphor for your emotions, for your feelings. It's kind of the center point of who you are. The Bible says our hearts are desperately wicked, who can know it? Our heart is what we love with, what we mourn with, what we rejoice with. So whatever heart you have, sad or happy, despairing or in love, trust God using it. And not just a part of it, all of it. You should hold nothing back. Your heart shouldn't be trusting in anyone else or in yourself. It's all or nothing baby.
Lean not on your own understanding. Your understanding of anything is limited and sinful. You can't get around that. Your perspective is skewed, your ideas are faulty. You are not an all-powerful God and so your understanding will never be sufficient. The only person with complete understanding of who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and where you are going is God. Which is why He calls for all of our trust, not some of it. Not part of it. Not most of it. All of it.
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. This is the promise God gives us. If we trust Him with all our hearts, not leaning on our own understanding or anyone else's understanding, He is faithful to make straight our paths. If our trust is in Christ alone, everything we do will bring glory to Him, will bring the focus to Him, and in that moment we are one with Christ. When we are one with Christ, He can lead us most effectively and instead of chasing us down every 5 minutes, creating a windy, convoluted path He leads us down a straight path.
Be not wise in your own eyes. This may be the hardest for me. I have a very high opinion of my own intelligence, and am furious when someone questions it. Which is very embarrassing to have to admit. You can find my worst side by just joking about my stupidity or ignorance and even I won't know what words will come flying out of my mouth. I put so much of my self worth on my intelligence, something that I attribute to my own efforts to grow it, that if someone doesn't think I'm smart, I'm either mortified or enraged. Depending on the situation.
I'm not smart. In case you were wondering. Any intelligence I have is by the grace of God, that He taught me something and allowed me to remember it. I can read because God gave me the ability and my mother taught me when I was little. I have a love for reading because my mom read to me so much as a kid. And any thirst for information or knowledge I have is directly fueled by the Holy Spirit.
There is nothing in me that is worthy of praise. There is nothing in me that can do anything. I am completely incapable of creating, of even simply functioning. Any good and perfect thing that you see in relation to me is directly because of my Great and Holy Father. It is He that you see, not me.
Fear the Lord, turn away from evil. I love this little sentence because I feel like it's an answer to every question or plea or complaint I ever send heavenwards.
"Lord, I can't deal with the way he talks to me. I can't take it anymore, I'm going to explode" "Fear the Lord, turn away from evil."
"God I'm tired, and I'm grumpy. I don't want to talk to people. Why is everyone so stupid?" "Fear the Lord, turn away from evil."
"God, I simply do not want to do what You told me." "Fear the Lord, turn away from evil."
I can't fear the Lord if I am wise in my own eyes. Fear for the Lord, healthy and reverent fear, means that I have a very accurate understanding of myself and of God and of the two of us in relation to one another. I can see just how small and humble I am compared to the Lord of the Universe. Be not wise in your own eyes, then fear the Lord and finally turn away from evil. You can't turn away from evil if you do not fear the Lord and you can't fear the Lord if you think yourself wise. Step 1, step 2, step 3. Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars.
And God promises that we will have healing to our flesh and refreshment to our bones. We are hurting and it runs deep, all the way to our bones. We may not know it but that is why we try to do things in our own strength. That is why we are reluctant to give the reins over to God, to trust Him or anybody else. Because we instinctively know that there is something wrong and we need to be fixed but for whatever reason we think we can fix it ourselves.
Thanks be to God that He is faithful to us when we let go. He doesn't ask us to give Him control, to trust Him with everything we have only to be told to "get over it". Once we go through those steps, that may not make sense to us and are probably very hard and maybe even painful to do, once we have done those things He is able to give us what we always wanted anyways. He restores us to a level we didn't know existed, He fills the holes we didn't know where there. He takes our pain and goes to the source of it.
He doesn't treat our symptoms as we have tried to do but rather eradicates the disease in us.
