Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6
Whenever I need to find a short summary of advice that will guide a young life along the way, I turn to this passage. This is the best advice I have found. This is also some of the most difficult advice to follow because it instructs us to ignore every instinct we have.
This verse tells us that we cannot trust ourselves because we don’t have sufficient understanding. Contrary to our egos, we don’t know it all. Whether you are eight or eighty years old, you have not figured life out. This is a level of honesty few of us are prepared to admit or practice.
In response to this honesty, Scripture instructs us to go to the extreme in two areas of our lives: trust and submission. We are to trust God with all our heart and submit all of our ways to Him. Of course, we will rarely achieve this perfection, but this is the desire of our hearts. Considering our inadequate understanding, we trust the One who knows and understands everything. This is faith. To trust someone so thoroughly that you put your life in their hands, allowing them to lead you through the uncertainty of hardships, difficulties, and sorrows is a faith we reserve for God alone.
These verses end with a promise. If we have resisted the impulse to trust in ourselves and have disciplined ourselves to trust and submit to God, “…he will make your paths straight.” I want God to straighten out my life, don’t you? I need him to straighten out my personal circumstances, my family, my career, my finances, my health, and my future. I want every day I live to be a day in God’s mighty hands.
