March 13 – The Direction to Lean (Proverbs 3:1-12)

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5)

IN WORD:
In order to learn the mind of God, we have to face up to a sobering fact: Our own understanding is fundamentally flawed. The human mind is never dependable, and it cannot be given free reign to choose its own direction. Why? Because our knowledge is limited and our motives are not pure. In our original condition, we do not desire above all else to glorify God at any cost. Even when we’ve come into a relationship with Him, our motives can be mixed. We want His glory, but we want to seek our own good — in our own way — as well. We cannot be wise in this world without realizing we need the wisdom of Another. Desperately.
Think about it. Would you prefer to depend on the logic of a finite mind tainted with sinful motives? Or on the vast intellectual resources of the Omniscient — the One who knows the fabric of our souls and holds the future in His hands? The answer ought to be clear. Yet, at a practical level, we are often ambivalent about the choice. In principle, we want God’s wisdom. In practice, we follow our own.

IN DEED:
The best advice we can find in Proverbs repeatedly points us to a wisdom beyond our own. God is worthy of all our trust. We are worthy of suspicion. Yet we often struggle between His wisdom and ours. His can seem so hard. We forget that ours is harder. There are ominous consequences for depending on our own limited resources.
Trust is not natural to the fallen human heart. The redeemed heart has to learn it. We must make a conscious decision to forsake our own understanding and lean on His. Crises confront us all the time. Use them as opportunities to drink in the wisdom of the Source of all wisdom. Are you faced with a choice today? Make up your mind not to act on it until you have sought God’s wisdom diligently, persistently, and patiently. Ask Him for it. Follow it, no matter how hard it is. Let His mind become yours.

“O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.”
-Book of Common Prayer-