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. Proverbs 3:5-6
Continuing on this theme of ‘knowing God’ and spiritual IQ I was reminded of this scripture. Back in the day I printed this scripture out on paper from a pin fed dot matrix printer in really large font. The paper had two full lines going the length of the room. I pondered this scripture in depth for over a year asking the Holy Spirit to deeply entrench this truth into me.
The scripture doesn’t just ask one to trust Him with your mind only but also with your heart. The ‘word’ heart in Hebrew here is ‘leb’ meaning ‘inner man, mind, will, heart’. Remember the will is where we make our choices after the mind has run all it’s machinations. Then we ‘decide’ from our will what to do. Here the decision we are to make …is to ‘trust’ in the Lord with everything in our ‘core’ of our being.
And then there is the next step, warning us about our ‘own understanding’. Here the Hebrew word is ‘binah” means ‘consideration, discernment, truth, understanding’. We are NOT to lean on our own past history and knowledge and our interpretation of it. Why do you think that is? Has the Holy Spirit ever called out your wrong interpretation or understanding of something? Our own interpretations and perspective can lead us down the wrong path. We can get so set in our ways that our ‘pride’ in that past accumulated spiritual knowledge that it can lead to our downfall. See Paul and his ‘thorn in the flesh’ as an example. Can we be taught new things by the Holy Spirit? Can we acknowledge our mistakes before Him? Are we open to new understandings from Him?
“In all your ways acknowledge Him…” The Hebrew word for ‘ways’ is ‘derek’ meaning ‘way, road, distance, journey, manner’. It as we go…. that we are to acknowledge Him. To me this speaks to our entire day … keeping Him in the forefront of our minds and hearts asking for His leading and help. We’re back to the question and issue of … is it our agenda or His?
And THEN after we are doing these things we will receive the promise we ALL want .. that He would direct our paths. But obviously we need to be readily doing the first three steps BEFORE this promise will be fulfilled for us.
1. Trust Him with everything that is in us. Choose that.
2. Be open to whatever the Holy Spirit directs you to do.
3. As you go throughout your day, be attentive to Him asking for His guidance. Be listening for the Holy Spirit’s directions.Then … He promises us to ‘direct our paths.’
People that do this regularly will increase in wisdom and spiritual maturity, and their spiritual IQ will rise.