This is a transcript of Episode 9 of the WAK Talk podcast. Listen by clicking here. Watch on YouTube by clicking here.
The other day I went for a walk during my break at work. This is something new for me because I’ve always had a manual labor type of job and am out in the field working. I never needed to take a walk for my sanity, but I started this new job in January where I’m learning more of the office side of things in the surveying field. I’m learning that part of the office side of things means gaining weight and needing to go to the chiropractor. So, I use my 15-minute breaks to go on walks. And I try to not only get exercise in this time, but make it intentional time with the Lord.
In this particular walk, I was talking with God about His plan and purpose for my life. I was asking for direction, guidance, and wisdom. Lately, I’ve been feeling led to speak. But I was telling God how I’m not cut out for this. I’m an introvert. I’ve never thought of myself as a good speaker in general. I like reading and writing. But God simply said: “Obey me.” “Trust me.”
A little later that day, I listened to a sermon and one of the points was that we need to stop trying to focus so much on ourselves and trying to define ourselves. Instead, we need to get to know God so that we better understand ourselves because He is the one who has the authority to define us and give us purpose.
The first question that I want to ask is this: How much do you miss when you choose not to obey God?
Remember, this isn’t a master and slave relationship. This is a loving father and his son or daughter relationship. If you’ve accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, believing He died on the cross for your sins and rose again, then you’ve been adopted as sons and daughters into the family of God. You are family, not slaves. And God, as a loving father, is patient and gentle in guiding us on the right path, but we need to listen and obey, or we easily veer off the path.
The reason we need to listen and obey God is because He knows best. He’s the Creator and we are the created. He sees the big picture. When God says to obey Him, He’s asking us to trust Him. How do we build trust in any relationship? By getting to know the person. So, we need to get to know God and understand who He tells us He is. That means getting into His Word and communicating with Him through prayer.
Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6 tell us to: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
There’s so much good stuff in these two verses. Did you hear any part say look deep into yourself and trust yourself for understanding and you will find your way? No. It’s all about depending on and looking to God. Trust God, not your heart. Submit to God, not to yourself.
Trust in the Lord
The Bible tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9-10). So, then how are we to trust in the Lord with all our heart? We need to submit to Him and not rely on our own understanding. But in order to do that, like we talked about earlier, we need to first get to know God. He reveals Himself in His Word, the Bible. He reveals Himself in other ways, but the most important reference and source for getting to know God is in His Word. Jeremiah 9, verses 23 and 24 tell us: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.”
When we get to know God, everything becomes clearer. Our understanding of the world, why there is sin, why we need saving, and we understand what a man and woman is, what a husband and wife are, what a father and mother are, what a son and daughter are, what a follower of Jesus is, and what it means to be a child of God. It’s not that complicated, but we make it complicated because we want everything to be about ourselves. We want to define ourselves and declare our own truth about the world around us, instead of accepting how God defines us and the world.
Not on Your Own Understanding
When we lean on our own understanding, we don’t get a full or clear picture of things. And we are often left with more questions and confusion than answers and clarity. One example is in how we choose to define ourselves.
How are you defining yourself?
Do you define yourself by what you do or by your personality type? Do you define yourself by the world’s standards—by race, gender, or political views? Our understanding of who we are is so small compared to how God defines us and who He made us to be.
When I was explaining to God why I’m not a good speaker on my walk, I was defining myself. I was saying that I’m an introvert and quiet person, not a speaker. I was essentially telling God how He made me. How foolish. I think He knows me better than I know myself. And He knows the purposes He made me for.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in ourselves that we begin to think we understand ourselves and the world enough to do things our own way. We may even think we know ourselves so well to tell God “no” when He’s calling us to do something or when He has us where we are for a purpose and we choose not to follow.
But when we lean into God’s understanding, letting go of our own, we see who He is and the purposes for which He created us. Then we understand why we are here and are better prepared to answer God’s call, ready and willing.
Submit
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been working through each section of Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6. So far, we have covered: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Now we are going to get into “in all your ways submit to Him.”
The word “submit” usually gives people a bad taste in their mouth. But that’s because our culture has given it a negative meaning. What does it mean to submit? Submit means to surrender to the will or authority of another. When we’re talking about God, submitting should never be taken negatively. It won’t be easy, but it’s never a bad thing to submit to God.
This is what the Bible says after listing the ten commandments in Deuteronomy 5: “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess” (Deuteronomy 5:32-33). We can also look to the wisest man, King Solomon, in the Book of Ecclesiastes. After seeking happiness and the meaning of life in all the things he could obtain from the world, he concluded with this: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Obedience and submission to God equals life. God created life, why would we not listen to Him? Submitting to God isn’t about being forced to do things we don’t want to do, but it’s about building a healthy relationship with God, our loving Father, in order to understand why He wants us to obey Him. He desires to share His will, His purpose, and His plans with us. But that means getting to know Him.
I think we have a hard time with obeying and submitting to God because our culture is all about the self and being free to find our own way. Having to obey or submit to God seems like a major setback. But what if it’s our thinking that needs to change? What if by obeying God we discover who we really are and the path He wants us on?
When we obey and submit to God, we grow in our understanding of who He is which helps us better understand who we are. It doesn’t work the other way around. We don’t go trying to figure out who we are before we can seek God. We go to the Creator first, then everything follows.
When we build a relationship with God, He reveals His plans and purposes. And He invites us to be a part of them. There are two things that are always true of His plans and purposes. The first is that they are always good. God is all good. The second is that they are for His glory. With this, we know that life’s not about us, it’s about God. That frees us from trying to perform and please the world. Instead, we do all things for an audience of one—God. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31 says: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
You see, God is after our hearts and minds. He wants to soften our hearts and transform our minds for us to know Him better. When we grow in our obedience to Him, our desires change. We begin to desire the things that God desires. We begin to pursue the fruits of the Spirit instead of the fruits of the sinful nature. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We want to be more like Jesus.
When this happens, we are in fact doing exactly what Proverbs 3 says: “in all your ways submit to Him.” We are surrendering our old ways and desires for His ways and desires.
Straight Paths
And then God makes our path clear and straight. When we trust Him, lean on His understanding and not our own, and when we submit to Him, He promises to make our paths straight. What does this mean?
It means that God will guide and direct us. When we trust and submit to Him, He will walk with us through life. He will be with us. We also can take from Proverbs 3 that we need God. Our life will not go well without Him. We will be lost and confused without Him. That can be clearly seen in today’s cultural ideology. The culture has turned its back on God, leaving more people confused about who they are and why they are here.
This brings us to the question: What if we fail?
You will fail. The reality is that we are sinners in a fallen world, even when we’ve declared Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We won’t always choose to obey God. But there is grace. There is forgiveness. Because of Jesus’ work on the cross, we are reconciled to God the Father. Thankfully, our salvation is not based on our performance. It’s not based on whether we obey every second of the day. It’s only based on the work and obedience of Jesus Christ; and our believing that He died and rose again.
Ephesians 2:8-10 tells us: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
This isn’t an excuse for us to disobey. It’s simply a reassurance that if we fail, God still loves us and is here to help us. Again, He desires a relationship with us. So, just as parents want their children to obey them and they help them understand why it’s important to obey them, God works with us and helps us understand why it’s important to obey Him.
Jesus proved how important it is for us to obey God because He willingly went to the cross to pay the price for our sins. Our disobedience is such a big deal that God sent His one and only Son to die in our place. Our disobedience–our sin—sets us up against God. And it has to be dealt with. But instead of you and me paying the price, Jesus gave His life so we wouldn’t have to. And He willingly did this in perfect submission to His Father. Jesus perfectly obeyed His Father, making Him the perfect sacrifice to pay the price for our sins.
He perfectly trusted in His Father with all His heart and leaned not on His own understanding, but in all His ways submitted to His Father and His path was made straight. Jesus is our example to follow. Ultimately, Jesus’ obedience to His Father led to life because He rose again. And we have the same hope and promise in Jesus that our obedience only leads to life. We will die in this life, but, if we believe in the work of Jesus dying on the cross and being raised to life again to defeat sin and death, we will rise again and look forward to eternal life with God.
So, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
