“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”
We have so much freedom. We live in a country that allows us to pursue our dreams. We serve a God who gave us free will to make our own choices.

This is great news, but it comes with a lot of responsibility. We must choose carefully because every decision we make will have consequences—good or bad.

Our country has laws to keep us from making really bad choices that hurt us and other people. God also has rules He wants us to obey to keep us from doing the same. God really wants us to love Him with all our heart and love others as ourselves.

He teaches that if we trust Him and obey His commands, even if we don’t understand why, we will make the right choice every time.

But it’s hard to look at a situation and not respond the way we want to respond. When the going gets tough, we want to take matters into our own hands and either “fix it” or sit around and worry.

In Proverbs 3:5, God is specifically instructing us not to take matters into our own hands. He doesn’t want us to even worry. Instead, God asks us to trust Him with all our heart. You can’t anxiously trust God. Trust means giving up worry for the peace that is bigger than any circumstance.

And taking matters into our own hands limits the power of God in our lives. God has more information that we do. He is more powerful than we are. He always follows through on His promises for those who believe.

When we resist the temptation to make decisions based on our limited knowledge, slanted perception and foggy understanding, we enable Him to perfectly work out His purpose in a situation. When we submit to God in every situation rather than relying on our own limited understanding, we are guaranteed to make the right choice.

Discussion Questions

1. Is there ever a time to take matters into your own hands regardless of how God asks us to respond?

2. Can you recall a time when you reacted to a situation and later found out your understanding of the circumstances was incorrect?

3. What could you do before you respond next time?

Prayer

Dear Lord, help me to trust you. Bring the Holy Spirit to guide me into all truth so that I turn to You rather than to my understanding of things. I admit that I’m more often wrong than I am right. Give me your wisdom and discernment to respond appropriately next time, by turning to you in prayer first. In Jesus’ name, Amen.