Does the Lord Really Know Best?
Meditation for the week of March 7, 2010
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding.
My wife was given a GPS system by our children. We recently left for an extended trip to Texas so I updated all of the maps before leaving. We have found this little gizmo to be quite marvelous. On our way to an out of the way address in the Houston area, it took us right to the door. We had the same experience in Orlando, Florida, during a trip there. We wanted to find a little congregation of Christians, and we had the address but didn’t have a clue as to how to get there. I put the address in the little machine and it started giving us directions. We turned this way and that way and in a little over a half an hour we were right at the doorstep of that little building.
However, as good this little invention is, I have a problem with it when I am going somewhere that I have gone before. I find myself trusting my own sense of direction instead of trusting the gizmo. We had been to the area in Texas several years back that we were going to on this latest trip. I was absolutely sure this invention was taking me too far south. But I steeled myself and did what it said and it was right and I was wrong!
My problems with my GPS system are similar to my problems in trusting the Lord. Most of the time my “own understanding” gets in the way. Before I was “born again,” I found myself thinking I knew how God should save me. When I finally trusted the Lord, I had come to a point where as a lost sinner, I couldn’t find my own way. At that point, I was able to let the Lord tell me how to be saved. Being saved is easy. The process of coming to the point where we trust the Lord rather than ourselves is generally not easy.
In addition to leaning on my own understanding, sometimes I ask somebody who should know about the things of the Lord and they lead me astray. I find that asking the wrong person for directions in a city where people don’t know their own neighborhoods can be disastrous. The same thing is true when we ask the wrong people for spiritual directions. Today it is possible ask people who have never trusted the Lord for guidance as to how to trust Him. Some of them are not even sure that you can know for sure that you are going to heaven. Some think the Bible contains the Word of God but that some of the passages may not necessarily be the very Word of God. Others say they are trusting the Lord and then they “sell” the Gospel which is free. They use man’s marketing techniques to support what they call their ministries rather than letting the Lord provide for them. We should certainly talk to other spiritual people and get counsel from them, but it would be wise to make sure that they themselves are trusting the Lord before we trust them. I suspect we forget that our best approach to trusting the Lord and letting him guide us is to pray and to study the Scriptures. Counsel from others should agree with what we are convinced God is telling us in the Bible.
God has given us a road map when He gave us the Bible, and He has given us a conscience. Using the two together with a prayerful attitude will get us where the Lord wants us to go. Those who have never trusted the Lord for salvation will find out that God loves sinners and that He provided salvation at the cross. When they trust Him and lean not to their own understanding they start for heaven. After we are saved we need to learn over and over again that our own understanding will get us into trouble Spiritually. The Lord will not guide us wrong if we trust Him. However, often His way just doesn’t seem like the right way. But it always is, I guarantee it!
Bruce Collins