Are You Trusting in the Lord?

Proverbs 3:5-12 (CSB)

Now that we are nearing the start of a new year, it is the perfect time to examine ourselves and take stock of how we are trusting in the Lord. Last year, I preached on the same text we are looking at today: Proverbs 3. I want us to revisit it again and see how we’ve done. Over the last year, have we applied the lessons from this text? Have we trusted in the Lord?

Most of us would say, “Of course we trust the Lord.” But if someone looked at our schedules or bank statements, or could hear our private worries, would they agree?

As Scripture tells us in James 1:23-24, “if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.” None of us wants to be that person. We don’t want to see that we have dirt on our face and leave it there. We don’t want to see that our hair is sticking up or there’s a nasty gash on our forehead and do nothing about it. If we see something wrong, we want to fix it, right?

So, let’s revisit this text, and see if we followed this message this past year. If we discover we did not, then let’s resolve that this new year will be full of change.

Proverbs 3:5-12 (CSB) says:

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

7 Don’t be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

8 This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.

9 Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest;

10 then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine.

11 Do not despise the Lord’s instruction, my son, and do not loathe his discipline;

12 for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.

Now let’s go through this passage again, this time taking it verse by verse. Verse 5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.”

Trust is a word that is used a lot in sermons. Most recently, on Christmas Eve, I stated that to wait with hope, peace, and joy, we must not only remain in Christ’s love, but we must trust in the Lord’s timing. The more we trust Him, the greater hope, peace and joy we will have and the easier all waiting becomes. Whether that waiting is for the Lord to fulfill a personal promise to us; for Him to help us with a need we have; or for Him to return: the more we trust Him, the more peace and joy we will have.  

It’s easy to say we trust the Lord, but it’s another thing entirely to actually trust Him, though. After all, what does it mean to trust in the Lord? To understand this passage correctly, we need to be sure we know what trust really means.

Alexander MacLaren, in his commentary on John 3:16, said he sometimes wished we had never used the word ‘faith,’ because it’s lost its meaning, and what Scripture really means is trust. But I think that even the word ‘trust’ has lost some of its meaning.

While seeking to define faith, MacLaren ended up giving us a great definition of trust. He said that instead of saying that we are saved by faith, we should say we are saved by trusting in Jesus. Because as he wrote, trust “is exactly what you have to give to Jesus Christ.” We have to “lean our whole weight” upon Jesus. He says, “Lean hard on Him, hang on Him, or, to take the other metaphor that is one of the Old Testament words for trust, ‘flee for refuge’ to Him.”

What MacLaren is saying is that the Biblical definition of faith equals trust, because both are only proven by our actions. We say we are saved by faith, but I’m afraid that in the English language anyway, this has come to mean “beliefs.” We end up with people saying things like, “my beliefs, my personal truth, my opinion about God”—nebulous, wishy-washy statements that lack conviction. Faith is the opposite of that. Faith is being convinced. Faith is having so much trust in something or someone that you base your actions on it. You “put your money where your mouth is,” so to speak.

We trust chairs because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t sit our entire weight on them. We trust bridges, and so we drive our heavy cars across them. When it comes to trusting in Jesus, we might say we trust Him, yet do we? Or do we lean our full weight on ourselves? If so, is that really trust?

We might have faith that Jesus came to earth, was born as a baby, suffered on the cross, died and rose again. We might have faith that He did this because our sins needed to be atoned for because we are sinners who need to be forgiven and washed clean. But the proof that we actually have faith is that our lives are transformed. If we really have faith, we will place our trust in Jesus and live like we believe it. We will lean our whole weight on Him.

So, looking again at verse 5, what happens when we swap those words for one another? It would read: “Have faith in the Lord with all your heart.” How much faith should we have? Faith with all your heart. That sounds like a whole lot of faith.

And we can’t forget the second half of that verse. It says, “and do not rely on your own understanding.” That means instead of relying on yourself—instead of trusting yourself, keeping the weight on yourself—we are to rely on the Lord and His understanding.

This is so important because, speaking from a practical point of view, what happens when we rely solely on our own understanding of something? If something is “my understanding,” it’s usually subjective. Otherwise, we would say, “This isn’t just my understanding; it’s based on facts, and I know it to be true.”

Relying on our own understanding limits our perspective, and it puts truth into a subjective, relative category. Truth isn’t subjective, though. Something is either true or not true. Everything else is an opinion or preference or possibility. Instead of relying on our own limited ideas about something, we are told to trust in the Lord with all our heart, and not to rely on our ideas.

Looking back over this past year, can you think of times when you said you trusted God, yet you still relied on yourself? Or can you think of any times where you did step out and fully trust your weight on Him?

In my own life, the beginning of last year seemed to be a series of one trouble after another for my family. But looking back, I can see how we took our problems to the Lord and He helped us. We leaned on Him for support and comfort, and He carried us. But I can also remember times when I viewed things from my own understanding of things, and I made problems worse. But after I fully trusted God, the problem might have still been there, but the stress it caused was gone.

Moving on to verse 6, we see there is another step to trust. It says, “in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.” In a lot of translations, this verse says, “in all your ways acknowledge him,” but I really appreciate how the CSB correctly translates it as “know.” According to Strong’s Lexicon, in the Hebrew, this word is “yada,” and it means, “To know, to perceive, to understand, to acknowledge.” It also says, “In ancient Hebrew culture, knowledge was not merely intellectual but was deeply relational and experiential. The concept of ‘knowing’ someone or something involved a holistic understanding that included emotional and spiritual dimensions. This is evident in the use of ‘yada’ to describe the intimate relationship between a husband and wife, as well as the covenant relationship between God and Israel.”

This certainly brings a deeper meaning to this word; it’s so much more than merely acknowledging something or someone. If we quote this verse and say, “in all your ways acknowledge Him,” we might think it’s enough to simply give a nod to God and go on our own way. Whereas if we say, “in all your ways know Him,” then it’s clearer to us that in all our ways we are to know what God would have us do. That’s very different, isn’t it?

To know what God would have us do requires that we discover His will. That requires us to spend a great deal of time with Him and speak to Him and listen to Him. That requires us to dig into His Word and find out what He’s said in the past and what He still intends for us to do today. That’s a lot more complicated than simply acknowledging Him as we make our own decisions.

Having said that, do you want to take a moment, like I did when writing this sermon, to stop and ask God to forgive you for any times you failed to do this? Maybe you want to pray what I prayed: Lord, forgive me and help me to trust You with all my heart, so I always take the time to know Your ways, and not rely on my own understanding of things.

The good news is, if you do this, “He will make your paths straight.” This is a conditional promise. He makes our paths straight if we find out His ways and follow Him. But if we do this, it’s a promise because it’s the result of following His ways.

Picture a map that shows a route to a destination. If we find out God’s plan and follow Him, then we won’t be sidetracked. If we follow our own plans, we will most likely stray off His path and have to come back by way of a side route or detour. Think of the Israelites in the desert. They perfectly illustrate this to us, don’t they? They wandered around in circles in the desert for forty years because they didn’t trust in the Lord nor follow His ways. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to do that! I don’t want to wander around in deserts—I want the straight path. I want the path God has for me because His path is so much better than any detours I might take.

Detours lead us into trouble and problems that otherwise could be avoided. See what it says next in verses 7-8: “Don’t be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.”

Oftentimes, our detours lead us into sin which harms us. This reminds me of the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray. He told them to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” We should pray that every day, not because the Lord might otherwise lead us into temptation, but so the Lord will lead us away from temptations we get ourselves into.

If we stray off God’s path, following our own ways, we complicate our lives. I think these verses show that our ways aren’t good for us. We will end up harming ourselves. That’s why it says that turning away from evil will heal our body and strengthen our bones. Turning to evil will hurt our body and weaken us. Metaphorically, all that walking in circles will be dangerous and exhausting, too!

But if we stop trying to direct our own path and we follow His ways, then we will be blessed. The next two verses tell us just how blessed. Verses 9-10 say, “Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest; then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine.”

God has promised to provide for us—that is why Jesus tells us not to worry. We can trust Him. Part of trusting Him is giving back to Him part of what He has given us. This is called tithing. As Barnes said, “God’s gifts are limited only by our capacity to receive them.” But not only that, God’s gifts are limited only by our capacity to trust Him. In order for Him to bless us, we need to stop trying to be wise in our own eyes and allow Him to lead us to His blessings. When we give a tithe to the Lord’s work, it is a way for us to exercise—and grow—our trust. By consistently tithing, it strengthens our reliance on God and reminds us that He is the one who provides.

I know that trusting the Lord with all our hearts is not always easy. It’s difficult to stop worrying. But the Lord has taught me to do this: when I’m feeling worried, I pray and hold my hands in front of me, palms facing up and flat. I then tell the Lord that I let go of my worry; I physically mime letting go of whatever concern I have. My open, flat hands signify that I am not holding tightly to whatever it is I am worried about. If it’s finances, I don’t need to try and hold on to it. If it’s worry over a person, I don’t need to try and hold on to them. Whatever it is, I can let God take it. I can trust that whatever I have, it belongs to Him anyway. It’s not mine to grasp. Instead, I should hold on to the Lord. When talking about this to my son Everett, he pointed out that if we are holding on to the Lord, we can’t hold anything else in our hands at the same time anyway. He’s right.

If we are trusting the Lord with all our heart, not relying on our understanding of things, and following His straight path, then we can relax and know that God has got everything else covered. Instead of holding on to worry, we can hold on to God. We can place the whole weight of it on Him. If we do that, then whatever comes our way, it’s going to have to go through God first. He’s going to watch over us. We can let go of worry and trust Him.

Now, the last section, verses 11-12, says, “Do not despise the Lord’s instruction, my son, and do not loathe his discipline; for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.”

This almost seems like a new thought, but I think this goes together with the above verses, for it takes discipline to trust God at all times. Discipline is self-control, after all. Discipline is choosing to do the right thing, even when we don’t necessarily feel like it. In fact, a disciplined person is someone who continues to do the right thing, even when he or she doesn’t feel like it. The Lord wants us to be disciplined.

As Hebrews 12:11 says, “No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Thankfully, God’s mercies are new every morning. Each new year is like that, too. If you are hearing this sermon or reading these words, and you realize that you have not been disciplined or have been relying on your own understanding of things instead of trusting in the Lord, I am here to tell you that it is not too late to make changes.

Without change, there is no growth, though. 2 Peter 3:18 tells us that in order to mature in our faith we must “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” If we don’t grow, we will become stagnant, and our faith will die.

In MacLaren’s commentary on that verse, he said: “As soon as the stream stands, it stagnates; and the very manna from God will breed worms and stink. And Christian truth unpracticed by those who hold it, corrupts itself and corrupts them. So Peter tells us that the alternative is growth or apostasy.”

Since growing in faith is not optional if we want to follow Jesus, what’s the best way to grow? It’s by spending time with God by reading His Word. Not only do we need to read it and memorize it, but we have to apply it to our daily lives. As we do, we will see that God can be trusted. Just as He was faithful to all the people the Bible tells us about, He will be faithful to us.

A new year is the perfect time to commit to reading God’s Word every day. There are many Bibles that break the Bible up into 365 sections to be read each day. It only takes about 15-20 minutes to read. With just a little commitment and discipline, the Holy Spirit will change you and grow your trust in God as you daily read it and put it into practice. That is how we will find healing for our bodies, strength for our bones, and our trust in Him will grow.

In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus says, “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.”

When we hear God’s Word and act on it, we are building our house on the rock, not on the sand. The rock is Jesus, God’s Word made flesh. He is secure and able to hold our whole weight.

Trusting God means putting our full weight on Him instead of trying to carry it ourselves. We don’t need to hold on to anything else. We can open our hands and rest on Him, trusting Him to hold us.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but if we draw near to God and lean on Him, He will carry us through whatever storms we may face. So, as we begin this new year, let us rest our full weight on the Lord, trusting Him to carry us wherever the path leads.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, as we get ready for a new year, we pray that You would strengthen our trust in You. Help us to have open hands, trusting in Your provision. Help us not to rely on our own understanding, but to trust in Your wisdom and love for us. Please fill us with Your Holy Spirit as we read Your Word so we can grow in trust and love for You. We ask this is Jesus’ name. Amen.