“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. “
This is a tricky thought.
I can just imagine many reading this and saying, “see–it’s all about just trusting God.” And so they go about their merry way endorsing what they’ve always believed–trust apart from knowledge and understanding. Then of course there are many reactionary others (Christians included) who would resist that camp and even this verse because they believe one must commit intellectual suicide in order to come to a right trust in God. And so, not unlike the first group, they pit what they’ve always most believed in–knowledge and understanding–against trust and faith.
Just a quick word to those stuck in the tiring rivalry between faith vs knowledge:
I’ve been in both camps, but I think I’ve spent more time traveling back and forth between the two than actually settling into one. I’ve learned that they both have one foot in the storming sea and one on the safe shore. In other words, they both capture something right but because their entire foundation is based on an “either/or” system, they also both find themselves camped behind enemy lines.
It’s neither all “faith” nor all “knowledge.” The problem in our post-Kantian world is that we think of faith as blind faith. It’s not. It’s not a leap into the darkness; rather it’s a step into the light (John Lennox). Having faith in someone is to trust them. Your trust in your friend or spouse, however, is built up after spending time getting toknow him or her. Trusting God is trusting in a certain degree of enlightenment the Spirit Himself sheds on us. We get to know God and so come to trust Him. God causes LIGHT to shine in the darkness–to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus, our Lord (2 Cor 4:6). There are things God wants us to understand–namely, the revelations He’s given us. But there are the secret things that belong to the Lord.
Christianity and the Scriptures themselves hold faith and knowledge together in proper relationship–and so must we. Otherwise, we are found guilty of conforming the Scriptures to our cultural systems or personal philosophies rather than conforming ourselves to the Scriptures.
Back to the verse.
The point here isn’t that we aren’t to pursue a knowledge or understanding of God, for He himself gives us understanding and even commands us to seek Him and “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). How can we grow in love if we don’t grow in knowledge of the One whom we are to love? That’s a mistake some people make. But there’s another mistake many others make–and this is the common mistake of the theologian or pastor or teacher or seminary student, or any lay person who is in fact growing in the knowledge of God.
You reach a point in all your studies where the temptation shifts from the despair of “oh what a long way I have to go” to the satisfaction of “oh look how far I’ve come!” At that point there’s a question we must always be asking as we grow and give our heart time to catch up with our head:
Can you love and trust God in the midst of mystery and the unknown? When nothing makes sense (yet!), can you trust in the One whom you have known, the One who has revealed Himself to you? Can you now trust in Him with all your heart and not lean upon your own need to understand things outside the character of God? You don’t have to lean on your own understanding because you understand His understanding far greater and better than yours. So because you understand this, you trust Him over your limited ability to understand. And because you know Him, you also understand He’s already proven Himself faithful, steadfast, merciful, gracious, sovereign, good, and committed to you. Will He not be all those things to you–again, and again, and again? It’s only understandable that He will. Will He not come through for you–again? Even as you grow and change–He does not. He cannot. Will He now change His orientation toward you? Will He go back on His promises to you now? Impossible that the only True God of all truth would ever go back on His word. If He did, you’d have ground for calling Him a liar. And that is the one thing we know He is not. So far be it from us that we should distrust Him, His goodness to you now, His sovereignty over your situation now, His forgiveness toward you forever, His love to us at all times.
Will you trust Him? Will you trust the One you have known, or better yet, the One who has known you?
a beautiful inheritance 