Stripping Away Familiarity Proverbs 3 v 5&6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding
But in all your ways acknowledge Him
And he will direct your paths
Yes, of course, this can read like religious mumbo jumbo to agnostics or atheists, and an over-familiar verse to Christian believers.
Is there any need for comment? The words are plain enough. It’s not a parable or a prophecy. It’s not written poetically (although I do like the two words ‘lean not’…for me, that’s poetic). Putting it bluntly, it’s a radical challenge: the question is not whether it’s true, but whether, having believed the bible is God-breathed, you have found it to be true in your experience?
This morning, I read this verse for the umpteenth time and nodded with approval. Like an old friend, it possesses a comforting familiarity, but before I could sit back and relax, I was taken back to school for two further lessons.
I have never been to a striptease joint, but one is blessed with an imagination! And to be fair, don’t we all strip at least once a day, if not twice, minimum?
One piece of clothing followed by another is taken away, revealing the truth.
Truth 1. Heart. Trust in the Lord with the core of your being. It’s deeper than emotion, or thought, or motivations. Those are the surface waves of the soul. The heart is like the deep. It ignores thoughts that may conflict with the heart. It relegates raging emotions or numbness to a lower division. It stills the will, the terrible need to do something. The heart is trusting in the Lord when and only when, as in Psalm 23, He has made me lie down. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down…’
Truth 2. In all your ways, John. ‘I have ways, Lord?’ ‘Yes’. I sense a divine chuckle. He’s taken almost 68 years to show me this. I have ‘ways’. Here are some of them: Loud and confident people make me shrink. I have a multitude of ways of avoiding them, finding quieter places, going to the loo, sitting quietly, waiting for the storm to pass. I’m not a party animal. Almost as a contradiction, I have an instinct for leadership and form teams to accomplish a task. I make a cup of tea in a certain way; pronounce scones correctly (!); prefer to run into the sea than step in, toe by toe. Observational self-deprecating humour makes me laugh. I love Billy Connolly, but I also have a poetic/prophetic streak that demands some inner switch to flip – some might say left to right brain. I’m not sure. I have my ways.
Two pieces of familiar clothing stripped away.
It’s not simply that ‘acknowledging the Lord in all your ways’ means His direction comes first, even if it takes us beyond our comfort zones, but that the Lord has been with us all, in the formation of all of these things. ‘Our ways’ are what make us ‘us’ and not the next person. Our uniqueness. And, in Christ, there is a new ‘us’, a new creation…the essential you formed in the core of our being, our new hearts, being formed as the Spirit of Christ witnesses and communes with our new spirit, given to us in the New Covenant.
And he will direct our paths.
This is not some SatNav divinity, a guidance system from above the earth, from heaven as if heaven is a long way off. Or via a set of commands that we gird ourselves up to follow, come what may.
No, we are being discipled to live like Jesus. Relying on His voice within: ‘My sheep know My voice’, so that we end up being able to say to family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, and a watching world ‘I only do what I see my father doing in heaven’. Well, we might not put it quite like that, or we’d appear to be religious nutters only capable of quoting scriptures like automatons or cult-like clones!
To any agnostics and atheists reading this, I challenge you to ask a believer or two about their experience with this verse. You may discover some intriguing stories! To any believer reading this who’s struggling, I struggle. I fail. I go off-piste. I’m often like a dog that hasn’t learnt to heel. But I know who has bought me and who is at work in me. It’s all grace. He calls me back, and on we go.
Last point. Trust is trust. It never changes. It’s standing at a bus stop waiting for the bus. It’s believing that what God has spoken is trustworthy and will come to pass. It’s swimming, knowing the water will support you. It’s believing the seasons will continue, or that tomorrow the sun will come up. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart’ when He says ‘He will direct your paths’.