SLIDE # 1
GOD’S GUIDANCE:
FINDING YOUR WAY IN UNCERTAIN TMES
PROVERBS 3: 5-6
When I left here last week, I was suppose to be finished with one week-long intensive course, home for the weekend, and heading to another week-long intensive course at IWU for next week. But, due to some unforeseen circumstances, I came home Tuesday night, and am now not going back next week.
To make a long story short, Tuesday night I received a phone call from a local sheriffs deputy that my daughter had been dropped off at the emergency room for what would be best described as self-inflicted reasons. There are several other things that are going on through this situation. Some that I was already aware of. Some that I had no idea about. And some that had me just plain confused. Praise God that she is alright, and that there is no permanent damage of any kind from this, but the truth be told, there are some mental, emotional, and spiritual things going on in the background of all of this that are concerning.
In fact, my wife and I have found out over the last several years that when you decide to serve God with all you have, you are going to be tested. When I pray for protection at the beginning of service, I do that because I have seen how Satan will attack you, your family, and your life when you are trying to follow Jesus Christ. I have seen how he will try to pull you back into your past, through your actions and your attitudes. I have seen how he will attack the one’s you love the most, distracting you from the mission that God has given you. It is not a matter of if you will be tested or attacked, but when. And we have been hit hard, especially over the last few months, and I ask you to continue to pray for me and my family.
Now I don’t tell you this story so that you will feel sorry for me or my family, or that you will feel sorry for my daughter, or that you will run and tell everyone that the pastor has issues in his home. I tell this to you so that you can learn in the same way I have learned that my relationship with God means so much more than my life situations, that my relationship with God means so much more than going to him when I need him, that my relationship with God is what defines who I am, not my circumstances. This week has helped me to see God and my relationship with him in a new perspective, and I want to share that with you this morning.
The Scripture we are looking at is a familiar one for most of you and should be one that many of you have memorized. In fact, if you don’t have it memorized, I suggest you do. It is helpful in any situation.
SLIDE # 2
If you have your Bibles with you, turn to Proverbs 3: 5-6. If you don’t have your Bible the Scripture will be on the screen.
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. (Nkjv)
Like I said this is a really short and easy piece of scripture to read, memorize, and interpret. It is really pretty straight forward, but I found out this week that even though I had known these verses for many years I truly didn’t understand the depths of what it meant for me and my Christian life.
So today, I want to give you 3 insights that I have received from this verse on how to find your way in uncertain times.
SLIDE #3
1. When I am weak then I am strong
As we look at the first 2 lines of this text there two are words that I want us to concentrate on, the words Trust and Lean.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
As modern Americans when we think of the word trust, we tend to think of it as relying on somebody or something.
But was that the meaning of the original word when it was written in Hebrew?
I ask that because sometimes words from Hebrew or Greek do not translate well (or at all) into English, and many times we have taken a word (love/believe) and diminished the meaning of it.
So as I looked up the original meaning for the word trust in Hebrew I found out that it means “to lean with the full body,” “to lay upon,” “to rest the full weight upon.”
In our thinking the word trust means to rely upon or to have confidence in. But the Hebrew word is stronger. It is the idea of stretching yourself out upon a bed or laying on a hard surface. The word means to put your full weight prostrate on something.
To lay prostrate is to lay out on your face as if a servant before a king.
From a human perspective it is putting yourself in the most vulnerable position that you could be in. You have no way to see what is going on. You have no way to protect yourself, and it is not easy to maneuver out of if you need to. You are putting all of yourself physically at the mercy of anyone around you.
To trust in the Lord is to lay your whole weight upon him. To trust in the Lord is to take away our “own control.”
How about the word “Lean.”
“Lean not to your own understanding.”
It means to rest upon for support. Leaning is what you do when you walk with a cane or grab a walker because you are unsteady. It is used in the Old Testament for leaning against a tree or something for rest. You lean on something when you are not strong enough to stand alone.
Herein lies the problem. We are born with this will that makes us think that we can handle issues in our own power. When I showed up to the hospital the other night, I was fueled by fear, anger, and guilt. For over 24 hours, this was what I was fueled or driven by. I was going to handle this situation in my own power. I was going to decide how, when, where, and how everything was going to happen from then on out.
I can handle this situation. I kept depending on my own mental faculties, my own abilities to break down this problem and decide what needed to be done. To the point where it was probably the worst 2 nights of sleep I have ever had, until God gave me these verses.
SLIDE # 4
In 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, Paul talks about his thorn in the flesh and how 3 times he had asked God to take it away from him:
8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
When we depend on ourselves in our trials it is a form of pride and arrogance in ourselves. This kind of arrogance begins and ends with yourself and is thus incredibly small in its scope. True greatness is to be connected to the cosmic power source of the universe, whose resources and strength are without measure. For when I am weak, then I am strong (12:10).
Our human weakness and difficulty only give us a chance to turn to God’s power. When God turns on the power, it brings a voltage far greater than anything we could produce on our own.
So it is only when you make yourself truly vulnerable, putting your full load on God, not leaning on your own mental and physical faculties that you find true strength, safety, and rest.
SLIDE # 5
2. True Knowledge Has Nothing To Do With Knowing
Now I know this sounds a little screwy but stick with me here. Let’s look at the first part of verse 6 again:
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
Whenever we are asked if we know someone or know something, it is usually meant that we have a “head knowledge of someone or something.”
For example, if someone asked me if I knew Larry Bird, I would say, “Yes I know him. I know who he is.” But if Larry Bird and I met face to face he would have no idea who I was, and even though I have head knowledge of his identity and his basketball career, I don’t know him intimately enough to call him or go to his house for holiday dinners. Well, I could but I would probably end up having a conversation with local law enforcement.
In Hebrew the word “acknowledge is a command. It is the imperative form of the verb to know. You could translate this by saying, “In all your ways know him.”
The underlying Hebrew word means to know deeply and intimately. It’s the kind of knowing that comes with personal experience. It means to know something through and through.
To have knowledge of someone in Hebrew culture meant to know them intimately. It was used in a relationship setting where two people knew each other completely, like as husband and wife.
It is great to have knowledge of who God is and his attributes or character traits, but we need to know him with our whole being and our whole lives.
God desires for us to know him deeply, to know him personally. It is with our whole being that we acknowledge who he is.
We have this tendency to ask God to work in our daily tasks. “Okay God, today I ask you to protect me as I go to the grocery, help me when I talk to the teacher about my daughter grades, don’t allow the neighbor to annoy me. In fact, just make it so that she is not outside when I am so I don’t have to worry about it. Also God, I really need more money because I want to buy this new cell phone.”
We make him our “checklist God.”
And I am not knocking anyone for praying about specific situations, but what I am saying is that we should ask God that we represent him well in all of our lives. He’s not a “rubber stamp” for our daily plans but a personal God who wants to be in a relationship with you, who wants you to know him.
Acknowledging who God is has nothing to do with having knowledge and everything to do with knowing him in an intimate way.
SLIDE # 6
3. HE > I
So, as we come to our last line, we have seen that we are to put our full weight on God and we are not to rest on (depend on, boast on) our own mental faculties or abilities, that we are to know him intimately, with all of our being, in everything we do (GOD is not a vending machine God),
then he shall direct our paths.
SLIDE # 6
Our text ends with a promise. “He will make your paths straight.”
God is able to remove the obstacles in front of you. He is able to fill in the potholes and turn a dead-end into a short-cut.
We rarely see this ahead of time, but mostly in the rear-view mirror. We mostly see the potholes. The boulders block our view. Many times it seems that there is no road left on the other side of the boulder. But God always makes a way.
We have no idea how is going to accomplish this, but God always makes a way for us during uncertain times. He leads us through delays, detours, miracles, the advice of friends, unexpected opportunities, suddenly closed doors, answered prayer, unanswered prayer, and in my case, a still small voice in the night.
It is truly a miracle in how God works. I can stand here and think of several trials in my life that when I look back on I have no idea how I got from that point to this point, but I know it was Jesus who got me there.
If you give him the chance, he will lead the way for you.
But it is one word in this last sentence that is the Key, the word HE.
For it is the HE that King Solomon is writing about that spoke the Universe into being.
It is HE that Paul writes about in Ephesians 1 who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, who chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. who In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ.
It is HE who thousands of years before the coming of Christ revealed to the prophets that a messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
It is HE who chose to take a poor young couple from Bethlehem and have them raise his perfect son.
It is HE who took a ragtag group of followers and turned the world upside down.
It is HE who offered his son, his perfect, holy son on the cross for you and me.
It is HE who called you to him, who called you to salvation.
And it is HE today, the same He, the God of the Universe, who calls on you in your best times, in your worst times, in your life time, to put your full load on him, to fall prostrate before him, to rest in him, to know him intimately, to make him the center of everything today.
Why? Because He > I.
