Proverbs 3:5-8 (Amplified Bible)

5 Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. 6 In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths. 7 Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear and worship the Lord and turn [entirely] away from evil. 8 It shall be health to your nerves and sinews, and marrow and moistening to your bones.

The hardest part of putting our trust in God is when we know God’s ways in theory, but we have not experienced it in practice yet.

If we read His Word, we will see over and over again how loving and faithful God has been to all His people and that His promises are true, and that He works all our evil ways out for good if we trust in Him and obey him. And He leaves the freedom to choose to us but He promises that with obedience come blessings and protection from the Devil.

He loved us and planned our existence before the Creation of the Universe, and He wanted nobody to perish, but all come to repentance and the knowledge of Him. He created heaven on earth in the Garden of Eden, but man ruined God’s good plans for us. So God wanted to immediately work out an alternative plan, which was to save us by sacrificing His only Son for our salvation, the ultimate price of love.

Death, disease and decay came in with the fall when man gave his free will up to the Devil. To protect man in the waiting of a Saviour, God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden for our own good, that we would not suffer death, disease and decay for all eternity. Man lost the revelation of God’s purity and sin spread like wildfire, so God had to put the law in place to give us a yardstick to measure Him by.

The law made people understand that they could not be as perfect as God, and Jesus’ coming made the law even more perfect, He pointed out that it was not enough to obey the law externally, we were to obey the law in our hearts. He compared killing someone to being angry with someone in our hearts, and he compared having an affair with someone with lusting after someone in our hearts. Jesus obeyed the law perfectly, so that in Him we are made righteous. God did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

His laws and His precepts are there to guide us and protect us from sin and the Devil. But we are not under the law anymore, we are under Jesus. Jesus is our law of love, and if we dwell under His wings of love, we will be protected or carried through by His grace.

This does not mean that we will not have any trials anymore, but it means that we will do things God’s way, the best way, that He will be with us and in us, that He will never leave us nor forsake us but that he will see us all the way through to the end.

I pray that you may come to the end of your own self-efforts and put all your trust in God, as He knows best! I pray that the eyes of your understanding will be opened to see the hope and the good plan that He has for you, and that you would experience God’s love and God’s goodness, so that you will trust Him more and more every day as you grow nearer and nearer to Him.

  1. Why is it wise to trust God instead of our own understanding?
  2. What was the true purpose of the law?
  3. Why is there so much death, decay and disease in the world?