Trust in The Lord

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT)

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.

This proverb tells us to trust in the Lord, not a little, but with our entire heart. It is difficult to depend upon our own understanding; for we are flawed and the understanding we have about ourselves is also flawed. We are reminded that if we seek out The Lord’s will in all areas of our life that The Lord shows us the proper paths to take.

Eugene Peterson, writes in Earth and Alter (Intervarsity Press, 1985), Two commands direct us from the small-minded world of self-help to the large world of God's help. First, "Come, behold the works of the Lord." Take a long, scrutinizing look at what God is doing. This requires patient attentiveness and energetic concentration. Everybody else is noisier than God. The headlines and neon lights and amplifying systems of the world announce human works. But what of God's works? They are unadvertised but also inescapable, if we simply look. They are everywhere. They are marvelous. But God has no public relations agency. He mounts no publicity campaign to get our attention. He simply invites us to look …

The second command is "Be still, and know that I am God." Be still. Quit rushing through the streets long enough to become aware that there is more to life than your little self-help enterprises. When we are noisy and when we are hurried, we are incapable of intimacy—deep, complex, personal relationships. If God is the living center of redemption, it is essential that we be in touch with and responsive to that personal will. If God has a will for this world and we want to be in on it, we must be still long enough to find out what it is (for we certainly are not going to learn by watching the evening news). Baron von Hugel, who had a wise word on most subjects, always held out that "nothing was ever accomplished in a stampede."

The words of Eugene Peterson, who is both pastor and author, go well with the proverbs above. We need to stop and behold what God has done in world; for in stopping to see His wonders we come to trust His works. In stopping and being still we also take time to develop a relationship with God so we better understand His will for us.