“Who is better than our Father in Heaven?”
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." Helen Keller.
The issues of life do not seize because your tired, in life there is a commodity called time and time can be your best friend or your worst enemy, no matter what side of the fence you’re on you will have to learn how to navigate through the challenges that will eventually try to consume you. This is a reality that many will strive to ignore some will try to make light of but will not be able to deny, trials, hurts, pains, disappointments, etc.
Many people today live in a fantasy land of lies. Many believe in their minds and in their hearts that they can start life all over again, that they can bypass the responsibilities of life by allowing time to pass without any form of action. Today we live in a generation of joyful slackers. These people have no substance, no foundation, no urgency no sense of responsibility and yet they believe that they can develop, they can grow, they can mature by letting time just pass them by.
Grace is God drawing sinners closer and closer to him. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the work, the flesh, and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstance, not yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology, but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely.
This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another -- it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak is that God spends so much of his time showing us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find or follow the right road. When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, likely we would impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm brewing and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we would thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn to lean on him thankfully. Therefore, he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself, to -- in the classic scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly man's life -- "wait on the Lord."
Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
1st Point “Trusting God”
One of the hardest things to do as a Christian is to trust. Meaning of trust is: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.
Here we have a very well-known scripture that is not well practiced. In times of trouble in times of travail the last thing we do if we are honest is be still and trust and yet this is exactly what the bible tells us to do.
Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
And so we are faced with this reality this truth that in trusting God it is going to take the action of being still. In other words beloved before you take action to fix whatever issue is at hand you would find yourself waiting for clear direction from God. In our scripture it says to Trust in the Lord and in addition our next scripture tells us to be still and know that He is God. Trust takes place over time, trust is formed through relationship, through a pattern of struggles that were overcome by someone that has helped you and someone that has been by your side, by someone who has not deceived you. Be still and know that He is God.
The heart is a deceitful and wicked thing, many tell me that they know their hearts and I just look at them and not really comment on their statement but just kinda look at let them reveal to themselves that the bible is truth.
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
God spoke this and left it in our bible for us to understand that the heart is in every way at times fighting against the things of God. You go through trouble what do we ask? Where are you God? That’s a heart issue, that’s a trust issue. We are challenged on some things in our lives and the heart readily rejects challenges from God, if it goes against what we want to do. Beloved the heart will lie to you, your heart will lie to you. You have to put that muscle in subjection, kill the flesh daily.
Galatians 5:24
And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
We need God’s help to navigate our passions and our desires to be His passions and His desires. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts, but we want our ways in every sense to be born in the ways of Christ.
2nd Point “Lean not on your own”
And lean not on your own understanding;
We could be such independent people, this has been the culture of our generation for years. Don’t depend on anyone but yourself. Educate yourself and success will be yours, you are powerful with knowledge, what a deception. Let me ask you a question, where do you get your learning from? Imperfect, inadequate men. Men that come up with their own ways of doing things that do not suffice. They don’t work, its all a theory, would you rather have theory or truth? These men have leaned on their own understanding and have failed.
1 Corinthians 1:20-25
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the [a]disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a [b]stumbling block and to the [c]Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Many have leaned on their own understanding only to disappoint themselves and others alike, to lean on something is to depend on it, something that can hold weight that can sustain you, something that can keep you up. To have an understanding is to have the ability to understand something; to have full comprehension, its having insight or good judgment.
The word of God I believe is a fantastic navigator of life, it has all the answers man has been looking for, for years, answers on brokenness, answers on healing, answers for the defective marriage, for the broken family, answers for the wonderer, the addict the lost and yet people would rather get advice from people who know nothing next to God than just going straight to the source. Jesus Christ.
God mocks the theologian, He asked where are the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer haven’t I made them look foolish? And so we are to be careful to not lean on our own understanding but rather seek for answers from the Master, God Almighty, Jehovah, Christ Himself.
When I thought of this scripture time and time again, I looked at this and kind of separated it word for word and I saw something I never really saw before. Own! It means to be independently, alone, singly, single-handedly, by yourself, unaided, without help, unassisted, left to your own devices, under your own steam, off your own bat, by your own efforts, (standing) on your own two feet. This sounds like a foolish man that says they can get to heaven without the hand of God, without the help of God. This is a very dangerous place to be, independent of God. This is to lean on your own understanding.
3rd point “Acknowledging God, getting clear direction”
Proverbs 3:6
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
God Himself wants to be glorified and rightly so, we are talking about the creator of all things. The creator of your mind, my mind the very essence of life comes from His hands. He is to be acknowledged for who He is. In all of our doings we are to give him acknowledgment.
Meaning of acknowledge: accept or admit the existence or truth of., accept the validity or legitimacy of., express or display gratitude for or appreciation of., show that one has noticed or recognized (someone)
How do we achieve that, we seek after God with all that is within us. He is our Holy
Ghost GPS. He has all the answers in His hands that can navigate us through the terrain of life. Men in the bible went to God for direction all the time, from Abraham, to Moses, to David and we have the same opportunity today, we have the living word that can guide and direct us in the righteous path of His will and His will alone. If you would confess today of your inability to trust God and be honest of where your heart is God can work with that, if you would repent today for trusting your understanding over Gods, He can work with that if you would just be honest tonight and acknowledge Him over everyone and everything else God will move through that. Will you find yourself at the alter of God tonight asking Him for His hand to move upon your heart to change in Jesus name?
Psalm 119:32
I will run the course of Your commandments, For You shall enlarge my heart.
One day, while my son Zac and I were out in the country, climbing around in some cliffs, I heard a voice from above me yell, "Hey Dad! Catch me!" I turned around to see Zac joyfully jumping off a rock straight at me. He had jumped and then yelled "Hey Dad!" I became an instant circus act, catching him. We both fell to the ground. For a moment after I caught him I could hardly talk.
When I found my voice again I gasped in exasperation: "Zac! Can you give me one good reason why you did that???"
He responded with remarkable calmness: "Sure...because you're my Dad." His whole assurance was based in the fact that his father was trustworthy. He could live life to the hilt because I could be trusted. Isn't this even more true for a Christian?
