"5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.” Proverbs 3:5-8 (ESV)
If you’ve grown up in/around the church, have Christian friends or follow Christian ppl on social media, chances are you’ve heard verses 5-6 of this proverb. But as I was looking at this a few days ago, verses 7-8 caught me.
Let’s break this whole section down.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."
If I’m not mistaken, this was written at a time where the heart was seen as the center of the body, the source of feelings, memory, thought and essentially what we now know the brain to be. This verse means essentially to forget alladat. Forget human logic, forget how you feel, forget what you know and what you think you know, forget what Sammy, Susie, Oprah and Dr. Phil say, and any schema you’ve formed, but trust God with everything instead.
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."
This means more than (but does include) the “Thank you Jesus” we toss up when something goes our way. This means thanking Him when something DOESN’T go our way. This means acknowledging his sovereignty, developing a relationship with Him, and acknowledging and LISTENING when He speaks. This means reading and following his Word, staying focused on Him and continually pursuing Him. Boldly going before the throne and Boldly acting in faith that He is guiding you. Then when He makes your paths straight, you’ll be able to follow. The King James translation says that “He will direct your path” (which I honestly like the wording of that better). Conversely, that means if we don’t heed/acknowledge when he’s speaking, we’ll be misguided and misdirected. But we went even BE ABLE TO heed him if we don’t KNOW HIS VOICE.
"Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil."
We have to swallow our pride. In order for us to let God direct our path, we have to acknowledge that we are not fit to direct ourselves. We have to kill the flesh that tries to take the wheel from Him, and we have to move to the backseat. Jesus doesn’t need a copilot to get us to our destination. He orchestrated the trip , so He knows how to get there. What does that look like? That means submitting ALL things to him without anxiety. That means seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness before ALL else, especially our desires. That means that even though we may desire something, we must keep our hearts open to the fact that God might desire something different for us. That means fleeing that temptation instead of relying on our own strength to fight it. To stop hanging around those ppl that lead you to sin. To be HONEST enough with yourself to know that you can’t handle it, acknowledge that you need the only wise God to take the yoke, turn away from the evil/repent from the lifestyle you were living and let Him take the wheel.
All of that sounds like work.
Hard work.
It is. Killing the flesh aint easy.
But, we have the promise that
"It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to you bones."
But Esther, what does that mean?
I’m glad you asked.
When we decide to let God take the wheel, it means that we don’t have to go through the stress of navigating. We can chill, sit back, fall asleep, talk and converse with Him comfortably knowing that He knows what He’s doing. We don’t have to be paranoid, annoying backseat drivers. We can be still and know that He’s God.
In a more direct way, many of the ailments humans now deal with are brought on by stress. Migraines, heart attacks, ulcers, colds, the flu, and other ailments are often due to stress/over exertion that lower our immune system’s ability to fight these things and makes us more susceptible to them. Now imagine if instead of stressing about life, we truly followed Philippians 4:6-7? What if we prayed to God about our trials, made a conscious effort to stop worrying about them, and DWELL, not just feel for a minute, but to BE A RESIDENT of the peace of God that surpasses all understanding?
That’s the refreshment. We can rest. We can sleep at night knowing that God’s will for our lives is already set in motion. We can take care of the temple God gave us. We can spend time with Him without worrying about it interfering with issues that need to be dealt with. We can be calm when we don’t know the next step our how we’ll survive to the next day, because we serve a God that is able to do exceeding and abundantly above all that we can ask our think! We can be joyous in knowing that He will use us as instruments for the kingdom. We can take the stress off of us and our weak, susceptible flesh and give it to the all-knowing, all-powerful God. We can reduce these stress-induced ailments that physically and spiritually inhibit us if we learn to stop trying to figure it out and just follow where God is leading.
Shhh. Just rest.
Be still and know that He is God.
