DEVOTION - MONDAY, JULY 2, 2012

DEVOTION – MONDAY, JULY 2, 2012

“Why two?”

BY

PASTOR BOB COY

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding… Proverbs 3:5 (NKJV)

Two commands are contained in this Proverb. First, there’s the call to trust in the Lord with all of our heart. Second, there’s the warning against leaning on our own understanding.

So, why does the Bible bother with two commands here? Why does scripture find it necessary to go beyond the simple instruction of trusting God and warn us against relying on our own understanding? The answer is simple: We need it!

Even after we’ve seen the surpassing greatness of God’s wisdom, we often revert back to our own understanding. “I know God’s Word says this, but I think that. That may be what the Lord wants other people to do, but given my situation, it can’t possibly apply to me. Yeah, I know what the Good Book says, but…”

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because all of us are prone to being pulled back into the pit of our natural and earth-bound understanding. We lose focus, we lose fire, and we lose faith when it comes to trusting in the Lord’s wisdom and His way of doing things. We pollute His perspective and mingle His methods with our own. And the result is always something that takes us off course.

In all actuality, the command to avoid our own understanding is just as important as the command to trust in the Lord. If we don’t keep the second, it will be impossible to fulfill the first. The weeds of human reason and logic, which don’t take God into account, will eventually strangle and stifle our trust in Him.

Proverbs 3:5 reveals a healthy tension that is required in life…a tension between our trust in the Lord and our distrust in ourselves. Our wisdom and understanding can’t compare with God’s, which is why He goes out of His way to warn us against putting any stock in it.