His Encouragement: Do not lean on your own understanding

Welcome! Welcome, dearest friends, to His Encouragement: Biblical Inspiration for Your Thursday. Every Thursday, a few blogging friends and I will each bring you a Bible passage and a little hope-filled discussion. We pray that these Thursday posts help you end your week strong in God’s love and purpose for you.

Today’s Encouragement

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

— Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV 

The other evening, my dad and I watched Flywheel, the first film by Sherwood Pictures/Kendrick Brothers Productions. They would go on to make such amazing movies as Facing the Giants (2006), Fireproof (2008), Courageous (2011), and War Room (2015). I had never seen Flywheel before and was surprised to find that, for a first film on a minuscule budget made completely by amateurs, it was very good.

At a certain place in the film, the main character is faced with a dilemma: he has given his heart, his life, and his failing business over to the Lord yet it still looks as if the business will go under. Now his human nature is prompting him to do something, to take matters into his own hands — take out another credit card to pay off the bank, for example — but he reads Proverbs 3:5-6. He tells his wife that he trusts the Lord, but the hard part is to not lean on his own understanding of the situation… to ignore his instincts to do whatever necessary to preserve his business and let God handle it.

The Scriptures remind us repeatedly that God knows our hearts. He knows our needs, our thoughts, our tendencies, our habits, our strengths, our weaknesses. He knows our circumstances even better than we do. We can only see the here and now, but God sees the beginning and the end and everything in-between.

Friends, we stand at the start of a brand new year. With it may come the start of a new chapter in your life: new job, new relationship, new child, new house, etc. For some of us, it may be the continuation of last year’s story. Others, plans that we had made and goals we had set may have fallen through and we find ourselves unsure of what awaits us.

No matter where you are this first Thursday in 2019, let us hide Proverbs 3:5-6 in our hearts and carry its wisdom with us through the entire year ahead. If we acknowledge the Lord always and do not lean on our flawed human reasoning and instincts, He will guide us through. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”

One of my blogging friends, Gina, asked her readers this morning what their personal verse for 2019 is. After giving it some thought, I have decided that mine is Proverbs 3:5-6. What is yours?

Be sure to also visit my fellow bloggers and read their encouragement for your Thursday as well:

• Trisha of Joy of Reading
• Nicole of The Christian Fiction Girl
• Jessica of A Baker’s Perspective
• Becca of The Becca Files
• Jenny Lynn
• Gina of Stories by Gina
• Rev. Rebecca Writes

Hi there, blogger. Would you like to join us in sharing encouragement from the Word of God every Thursday? Don’t be shy! Contact Trisha or Nicole today!

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