Devotional: Trust the Lord in all ways

By Rev. Timothy Mage
Lead pastor, Cornerstone Church, Cleveland, Texas

Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

The older I get the more I reflect back on these two verses.  These are some of those Bible verses that we never outgrow.  For me personally, I learned these verses when I was young and thought that I had them pretty much figured out, but now these are some of my most referred to and needed verses as an adult.

Verse 5 instructs us to fully put our trust in the Lord and rather than trying to figure everything out on our own, to simply trust that Our Heavenly Father already has it all figured out.  But, the reality is that our human nature is to try and do it ourselves, we want to figure it all out, have all the right answers, fix all the problems. 

Sometimes our minds and our limited understanding hold us back from realizing what is actually happening.  In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthian Church that we only see things in a dim reflection but that one day in Heaven we will see things in full clarity.  This reminds us that we don’t have all the answers and we are only able to understand things to the fulness of our ability and perception.

As smart as we are and as smart as we think we are, we don’t have all the answers nor do we see the full picture.  When we come to this realization, we have two choices: 1. We can act like we have all the answers and make what we feel is the right decision, or 2. We can admit our weakness, and instead put our trust fully in the Lord and choose to lean into Him and His wisdom rather than our own understanding.

This brings us to Verse 6, what does it look like for us trust God instead of our own understanding?  We are to acknowledge Him in all our ways and follow Him as He leads us in the right way.  This verse is a promise from God that if we will seek His will in our lives (all our ways), then He will direct our paths.  This word direct means to make smooth, right, and straight. 

So, the combination of both of these verses paint a great picture for us.  We don’t have to have it all figured out and have all the answers within our own understanding.  We simply need to trust and follow Him.  As we trust and follow the Lord, it is exemplifying our Faith in Him that we truly believe He does have all of the answers and that He does know what is best for our lives.  Then as we submit to following after Him, He will in turn make our paths straight and we won’t get lost along the way.

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