{"id":72,"date":"2011-05-22T21:18:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T20:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=72"},"modified":"2011-05-22T21:18:22","modified_gmt":"2011-05-22T20:18:22","slug":"trust-in-the-lord-with-all-your-heart-proverbs-35-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Trust in the LORD with all your heart – Proverbs 3:5-6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some sermons have three points. Some have four points. Some occasionally even have five points. I’ve heard some sermons which have had no point at all! Usually from me you get a three point sermon. Sometimes you get a ten point list. On day soon you\u2019ll get what’s called in the trade a \u201cstarburst\u201d sermon, which takes you rushing up to heaven and then gently glides back down to earth again. This morning was probably a hammer sermon, where you get the same point repeated again and again and again like hammering home a nail until eventually hopefully it sticks.<\/p>\n

The one thing they teach you in sermon classes is that although all sermons should have a structure, that structure should be imperceptible to the hearers. The structure of a sermon is like the skeleton of a body. Every body needs a skeleton but nobody like to see bones sticking out all over the place. But tonight I am going to break all the rules of preaching and tell you the structure of this sermon before I begin. Because tonight without the aid of a safety net I am going to attempt something very difficult I have never attempted before. This is going to be a circular sermon. That is to say, where we end up is going to be exactly where we started. And hopefully by the end you will see why that is very important as we look at tonight’s text. <\/p>\n

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
\n6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
\nThis are perhaps the most well known verses in the book of Proverbs. If you have ever committed Bible verses to memory it is probably one of the first texts you learned off by heart.
\nTrust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
\n6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
\nTrust in the LORD with all your heart<\/p>\n

Scripture is not short of examples of what it means to trust in the Lord with all your heart. Noah building a great big boat in the middle of dry land when there wasn\u2019t a cloud in the sky, despite all the ridicule of his neighbours, just because God said so. Abraham packing up everything and leaving his home land when he was 80 years old, because God told him too. The apostle Peter stepping out of the boat to walk towards Jesus who was walking on the water, because Jesus told him too. Ordinary Christians declaring \u201cJesus is Lord\u201d in a Roman Empire which only recognized one Lord his name was Caesar.<\/p>\n

Somebody has said, \u201cFaith is spelled R-I-S-K\u201d. Trusting in the Lord with all our hearts will sometimes mean going out on a limb for God.<\/p>\n

Psalm 37:3 Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
\n4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
\n5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will act:<\/p>\n

Commit your way to the Lord \u2013 trust in him and he will act! The proof that we are trusting in God to act is that, if He doesn\u2019t act, we will fall flat on our faces! What have you done in the last week, or last month, or last year, which has depended for success or failure on the intervention of Almighty God? What have you done where the outcome would have been different depending on whether God actually existed or not?<\/p>\n

In fact most of the time we don\u2019t need to rely on God for what we do. We rely on our human understanding. We rely on our natural abilities and our skills and all our experience. We rely on our bank accounts which are always there to fall back on if things don\u2019t go as well as we planned.<\/p>\n

Jeremiah 9: 23 This is what the LORD says:
\n\u201cLet not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength
\nor the rich man boast of his riches,
\n24 but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me,
\nthat I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,
\nfor in these I delight,\u201d<\/p>\n

We are trusting God with all our hearts when the only thing we have to boast about is not our wisdom or our strength or our riches, but simply that we know God and He knows us! When we are delighting ourselves in the Lord and we receive the desires of our hearts because receiving his blessing and approval is absolutely the only thing in the world that matters to us.<\/p>\n

Trust in the Lord with all your heart \u2013
\nand lean not on your own understanding;<\/p>\n

We can spend lots and lots of time and energy and thinking trying to work out what we should be doing in life \u2013 in our own lives and in the life of the church too. In relationships, or careers, or hobbies, or family life, we think about what we want and how we should get it. In church, what are our aims, what should our worship be like, what activities should we be running, how can we reach different kinds of people, how can we care for people?<\/p>\n

In all these areas of life we need to learn how to let God guide us, and how not to lean on our own understanding.<\/p>\n

God guides us in many different ways. In the Alpha Talk about Guidance, Nicky Gumbel gives us five ways God guides, in a double acrostic each beginning with the letters C and S.<\/p>\n

1. Commanding Scripture \u2013 Objective Standard
\nPsa 119:105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.<\/p>\n

2. Controlling Spirit\t– Subjective Witness
\n\u201cMy sheep know my voice\u201d God speaks to us as we pray, in an inner voice and in spiritual gifts of prophecy, dreams and visions, words of knowledge and wisdom and discernment.<\/p>\n

3. Common Sense
\nBUT\tGod’s heavenly plan doesn’t always make earthly sense. Charles R. Swindoll <\/p>\n

4. Counsel of the Saints
\n\u201cThe wise man listens to advice\u201d (Proverbs 12: 15) \u201cPlans fail for lack of counsel but with many advisors they succeed\u201d (Proverbs 15: 22) \u201cMake plans by seeking advice\u201d (Proverbs 20: 18)
\n\u201cMen give advice; God gives guidance.\u201d Leonard Ravenhill (1867\u20131942)<\/p>\n

5. Circumstantial Signs \u2013 Divine Providence
\nIn his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps\u201d (Proverbs 16: 9)
\nSometimes God closes doors (Acts 16: 7) Sometimes God opens doors (1 Cor 16: 9)\t<\/p>\n

There are so many ways that God guides us. So when did you last do something which was totally contrary to what you would have naturally thought to do anyway, because God guided you to do it? For so much of our lives we don\u2019t expect God to guide us. In practice we just lean on our own understanding. When was the last time you did something which would prove me wrong in that? Something which came out of trusting in God and went against human wisdom? God wants to guide us in every step of our lives \u2013 but we just don\u2019t ask Him to!<\/p>\n

\u201cHe does not lead me year by year, Not even day by day
\nBut step by step my path unfolds; My Lord directs my way.
\nTomorrows plans I do not know, I only know this minute;
\nBut He will say, “This is the way; By faith now go walk in it.”
\nAnd I am glad that it is so, Todays enough to bear;
\nAnd when tomorrow comes, His grace shall far exceed its care.
\nWhat need to worry then or fret? The God who gave His Son
\nHolds all my moments in His Hand And gives them one by one.\u201d<\/p>\n

We need to ask God to guide us \u2013 not just go on doing what seems best in our own eyes!<\/p>\n

The words of David to Solomon, who God had chosen to build a Temple to the Lord..
\n1 Chronicles 28:8 \u201cSo now I charge you in the sight of all Israel and of the assembly of the LORD, and in the hearing of our God: Be careful to follow all the commands of the LORD your God, that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants for ever.
\n9 \u201cAnd you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you for ever. <\/p>\n

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;<\/p>\n

6 in all your ways acknowledge him<\/p>\n

We acknowledge God publicly by speaking up for him! By letting people know we are Christians and letting people know how important God is in our lives.
\nLuke 9:23 Then he said to them all: \u201cIf anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? 26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.<\/p>\n

We acknowledge God privately by praying. Prayer is at the heart of our relationship with God. And prayer is the ultimate expression of our dependence on God. If we think we can do things by ourselves, in our own strength, we don\u2019t need to pray. But if we acknowledge that without God we can do nothing, then we will show that acknowledgment and dependence by praying.
\nPraying As individuals
\nPraying As a church
\nGeorge Washington wrote about the \u201cdue sense of the dependence we ought to place in that all wise and powerful being on whom alone our success depends.\u201d
\nWe acknowledge God by praying to Him!
\nTrust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
\n6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
\nand he will make your paths straight.<\/p>\n

How do we know if God is making our paths straight? How will we be sure that God is directing our lives and that we are really doing what He wants us to do?
\nIn the world around, people judge the rightness or wrongness of their actions by criteria of success. If what we are doing is successful, or popular, or goes well, then it must have been the right thing to do. If things are unsuccessful, if things go wrong, then we must have made the wrong choices.
\nIt may appear that some verses of Proverbs teach this very thing. Here in chapter 3:
\n3 My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart,
\n2 for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity.<\/p>\n

16:3 Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
\nBut other verses and the Bible in general make it clear that it usually not the righteous but rather the wicked who are successful and popular in human terms, and believers have no guarantee of success!
\n Proverbs 23: 17 Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the Lord.<\/p>\n

24:19 Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of the wicked,
\n20 for the evil man has no future hope, and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out.<\/p>\n

Great King David makes the same point in Psalm 37
\n1 Do not fret because of evil menor be envious of those who do wrong;
\n2 for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.
\n7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.<\/p>\n

I like the story of the Atheist farmer who often ridiculed people who believed in God and wrote a letter to the local newspaper: “I plowed on Sunday, planted on Sunday, cultivated on Sunday, and hauled in my crops on Sunday; but I never went to church on Sunday. Yet I harvested more bushels per acre than anyone else, even those who are God-fearing and never miss a service.” The editor printed the man’s letter and then added this simple comment: “God doesn’t always settle His accounts in October.” As believers we should be looking beyond this world and this life to the world to come and the age to come. We should not be looking for treasures on earth, but for treasures in heaven.<\/p>\n

So how do we know that the Lord is making our paths straight? It is very important as Christians that we do not get sucked into wrong ways of looking at life. Because following Christ is not a recipe for success in worldly terms at all. It is instead the pathway to suffering and opposition. We follow the servant King, the suffering servant, whose greatest triumph only came through his ultimate sacrifice. We have seen in our sermons on 2 Corinthians and 1 Peter that the true marks of ministry and faithful Christian witness are not success but suffering.
\nWe chatted about this at a Minister’s meeting a while ago. How do we judge whether as ministers or as churches we are doing the right thing, in the right place? Then I found myself discussing the same thing with a missionary. How do missionaries know they are in the right place, doing what God wants us to be doing? What we were talking about applies to every Christian in every walk of life, in our ordinary day jobs as well as our church activities. It is so important that we don’t go fall into the trap of measuring the rightness of what we are doing by the level of success we seem to be experiencing.
\nThe truth is that even when a minister or a missionary or a church, or any Christian does make all the right choices and does do all the right things, there is no guarantee that \u201csuccess\u201d however you seeks to define it will follow. Sometimes things do go wrong because we mess up, and sometimes things do succeed when we do the right thing. But we must never assume that when things do not turn out right it is because we have done something wrong. That is \u201cthe fallacy of the excluded middle.\u201d The reality is that things can and do go less than perfectly even when we do everything right, sometimes because of satanic opposition, sometimes because we live in a fallen world, sometimes because the church is made up of fallible human beings, but mostly because we follow the Servant King whose victory and glory came through submission and suffering and sacrifice and powerlessness. For Christians, relying on levels of success as a measure of whether we are doing the right thing or not is inevitably a recipe for discouragement, depression and disaster!<\/p>\n

So how do we know that the Lord is making our paths straight? This is where this circular sermon brings us right back to where we started. By faith. Simply by faith. Only by faith. We have done our best, relying on God’s grace, to trust in God with all our hearts. We have done our best not to rely on our own understanding but to rely on God and on his grace. We have done our best to acknowledge God in everything we have said and done. And then all we can do is trust that God has made our paths straight. We just have to have faith that the situation we are in is the place that God has brought us to and wants us to be in. And whether things seem to be going well or badly, we just have to trust that Jesus is Lord of all, and that God is in control of his world and of our lives. We just have to have faith.
\nThe great missionary Hudson Taylor put it this way.
\nLet us give up our work, our plans, ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our influence, our all, right into God’s hand; and then, when we have given all to Him, there will be nothing left for us to be troubled about. — Hudson Taylor
\nHow do we know that the Lord has made our paths straight. Through faith! Just faith.
\nTrust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
\n6 in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.<\/p>\n

Here are two of the most familiar and also the most important verses in the book of Proverbs. You may like to learn them off by heart. Maybe you might like to try using them in a particular way in the week ahead. Try using these verses for a couple of minutes every day as a framework for reflection. At the end of each day think back to the events of the day and consider what Proverbs 3:5-6 has to say about your day. Then use the verses to think about what tomorrow holds.<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION \u2013 let\u2019s use these verses in reflection right now!<\/p>\n

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
\n\tWhat specific things do I need to do tomorrow to express the fact that I am trusting in God?
\nand lean not on your own understanding;
\n\tWhat will I do differently tomorrow if I am relying on God and not on my own understanding?
\n6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
\n\tWhat will I do tomorrow to inwardly and publicly acknowledge God and His Lordship over my life?
\nand he will make your paths straight.
\n\tIn what ways will I expect God to make my paths straight tomorrow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some sermons have three points. Some have four points. Some occasionally even have five points. I’ve heard some sermons which have had no point…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}