God's Way to Finding Our Way in 2017 - Proverbs 3:5,6

God’s Way to Finding Our Way in 2017

Proverbs 3:5,6

Introduction:  One good thing about having church on New Year ’s Day, is that so far, we are all probably doing pretty well on our New Year’s resolutions! A New Year is naturally a good time to think about a new beginning, about renewed priorities. But consider Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century revivalist, who sat down at age 17 and penned 21 resolutions by which he would live his life. Throughout his lifetime he would add to this list until, by his death, he had 70 resolutions.  He put at the top of his list: "Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat Him by His grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions…  Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week." Edwards didn’t casually make New Year’s resolutions with an expectation of eventually breaking them.  Each week he did a "self-check." He regularly summed up how he was doing and sought God’s help in the process. Discipleship is an ongoing process.  Christ calls us to commit to actively work at becoming conformed to His image (Rom 12:1,2). One aspect of that is to know God better and to trust Him to guide our steps. 

         How committed are we to trust God, to be a follower of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? How many surprises we had in 2016!  What will 2017 bring us? Only God knows. The good news is: God knows.  And He is good. We can trust Him. And He will prepare the way for us if we’ll trust Him.  Proverbs 3:5,6, one of the most familiar passages in the Bible, talks about this truth. Many of us have memorized these words, that is the easy part!  To say the words is easy, but it can be very difficult live them out when we are faced with choices in our daily lives. But these are God’s words, and we find in them “God’s Way to Finding our Way in 2017.” That highlights the “Maine Idea” I want to focus on in these verses...

The Maine* Idea: Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and take Him at His word, trusting Him to lead us on the right path.

I. Because of Who He is, we can trust God: “Trust in the Lord…” Our faith is only useful to the extent that the object of our faith is trustworthy. D.L. Moody said, "Trust in yourself and you are doomed to disappointment. Trust in money and you may have it taken from you; But trust in God, and you are never to be confounded in time or eternity."

             One of the cries of the protestant reformation came from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, via the apostle Paul: “The just shall live by faith!” At its root “faith” is believing God, taking Him at his Word. There is a proviso built into that idea: if we are going to believe God, we need to know what He has told us, that is, we need to read the Bible. Let’s start there...

This year we’re encouraging everyone to make it a priority to be in the Word daily. That is a resolution that should be on our “lifetime list.” One option to consider is to start a “through the Bible in a year” reading program. Will you make a commitment to be in the Word daily?  Last night some of us joined together here, reading through the Book of Revelation. We read in Revelation 1:3 “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.” Scripture restates that promise in various ways with respect to the entire Bible: it is God’s Word to us, it is the Word of Life. Let’s feed on the milk of the Word that we might grow thereby!

             The proverb starts, “Trust in the Lord...” Our trust, our faith, is only as good as the object of our faith. You might think someone is trustworthy but that doesn’t make it so. This week I read a story of a lady lost in a snowstorm outside of Denver. She saw a snow plow and began to follow it closely, barely able to see through the blowing snow. “If I just follow the snow plow, I’ll be alright!” she reasoned. Finally the driver of the plow stopped and asked the woman why she was following him and where she was going. She replied, “I’m going to Denver and thought I’d stay behind you.” He replied, “You’ll never get there following me lady, I’m just plowing this parking lot!”

             Here we are told to trust in the LORD...  Notice the word “LORD” is written in all capital letters in most English translations. That is the translators’ way of telling us that the Hebrew Bible uses the name “YHWH” in the original. The personal name of God revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures, the name that God revealed to Moses as He spoke to him from the burning bush. The name that is especially associated with His covenants, the promises He made to His people. Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and take Him at His word, trusting Him to lead us on the right path. We can trust in Yahweh as surely as He led the Jews through the wilderness in the Pillar of Cloud and Pillar of Fire, He will lead us. The same God who spoke in times past to the Fathers through the prophets, and in these last days has spoken in His Son. He is trustworthy. Do you hear the Father’s voice?  Do you trust Him?

       I recall the story of a building fire in Harlem, NYC. It was a desperate situation: a blind girl was perched on a fourth floor window. The firemen couldn’t get the ladder truck between the buildings to reach her, and they were trying to coax her to jump into a net, which she of course couldn’t see.  Finally the girl’s father arrived at the scene and took the bullhorn and spoke to her, saying that there was a net below, and that she had to jump. Immediately, she jumped, totally relaxed, because she heard her father’s voice and trusted him. Even when we don’t see the net, we can trust our Father. He is good. He loves us. He is trustworthy.  The proverb says, “Trust in the LORD...”

II. If God is who He claims to be, He deserves our whole-hearted trust: “…with all of your heart…” In the Old Testament we are told to love God with all our heart, to seek Him with all our heart, to serve Him with all our heart – only here do we find the call to trust Him with all our heart. The closest thing I see in the Bible is when the Ethiopian Eunuch asked Philip if he could be baptized. Philip answered "If you believe with all your heart, you may." Obviously there he is talking about trusting God for salvation, the kind of faith that saves. We are saved by grace through faith, and we are to live by faith. Oswald Chambers said, “Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.” 

       This passage must include the idea of trusting God for our salvation, but I think it goes further – we entrust our lives to Him – whole-heartedly – no reservation – nothing held back. That’s radical faith. That’s the faith that changes lives. That’s the faith that lets us live our life in dependence on Him. Even when we don’t understand, we can trust Him. With all our heart. We know He is good, all the time! It is not just a theory, it is something we can live by.

Ken Davis told the story of an assignment he was given as a college student. He was asked to prepare a lesson and present it in such a way that it would never be forgotten. He said he loved that challenge...

He was to be graded on creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable way. The title of his talk was, “The Law of the Pendulum.” He first carefully explained the physical principle that governs a swinging pendulum... A pendulum can never return to a point higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all forces acting on the pendulum are equal.
       He set up an experiment in the classroom to demonstrate the theory. Hanging from the steel beams in the middle of the room was a large, crude but functional pendulum made from 250 pounds of metal barbell weights tied to four strands of 500 pound test parachute cord. On one end of the room was a table with a chair on it. He asked the teacher if he believed the law of the pendulum was true, which he enthusiastically affirmed. He then invited the instructor to climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a cement wall. Davis then used a pulley to bring the 250 pounds of metal up to the teachers’ nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from the teacher’s nose he once again explained the law of the pendulum he had applauded only moments before, “If the law of the pendulum is true, then when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return short of the release point. It is impossible for it to hit you. Your nose will be in no danger.”
       After that final restatement of this law, he looked his teacher in the eye and asked, “Sir, do you believe this law is true?” There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat now formed on his upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, “Yes.” (Remember, this was not Jon South, this guy was a speech instruction, not a physics professor!).
       He then released the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far end of its swing, it paused for an instant and started back. Davis said that he had never seen a man move so fast in his entire life as the teacher literally dove from the table!
       It was easy for the teacher to “believe” in the law of the pendulum when it was all theoretical. But when his life literally depended on the law of the pendulum he showed that his belief was only theoretical. How easy it is for us to believe in God’s sufficiency in church on Sunday morning or in a Bible study. But in the real world where our lives are on the line too many of us demonstrate that our belief was only theoretical...

 We can trust Him—He is trustworthy, in theory, and in fact. We can trust in the Lord with all our heart. Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and trust Him to lead us on the right path.

 III. The opposite of faith is self-reliance: “Lean not on your own understanding…”

            First, what this is not saying. This is not saying that believers are supposed to put our minds on hold when we trust Christ! Paul reasoned with the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill and the Jewish rabbis in the synagogues. He proved from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ! We should be thinking people. In fact our minds should be on a new level – we know the One who is the truth! All truth is God’s truth! This is not saying that we don’t try to use discernment in making decisions. Faith is not blind, mindless faith.

        We are not to “lean on” our own understanding. Because our minds are affected by sin, and our motives and our thinking are askew we can’t trust our reason – certainly we can’t put our reason before the black and white truths of Scripture. Nor can we pick the parts of God’s Word that we want to accept while ignoring the rest.  The church father Augustine said: “If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you don’t like; it’s not the Gospel that you believe, but yourself.” Peter himself said that Paul wrote about many things that were hard to understand.  Faith means we take God at His Word, because He said it.

      Of course the problem is that we usually do understand, sometimes we would just rather not listen. Mark Twain expressed unusual honesty for an unbeliever when he said: “Many people are bothered by the things they can’t understand in the Bible. As for me, the things that have always bothered me the most are those that I do understand!”  Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and trust Him to lead us on the right path.

IV. Trusting God means acknowledging His sovereignty and recognizing His presence in every moment of our lives: “In all your ways acknowledge Him…”

            God is interested in every aspect of our lives. One of the saddest tendencies in the church today is to put God in a little corner of our life, and then to live the way we want to. People like the idea of “spirituality,” but cringe at the thought of obedience. We are to trust Him “in all our ways.” I read a while back:

“If you have been basically doing things on your own while occasionally expressing a semi-sense of dependence on [God] for your life and work and family, then you may not be prepared for suffering. But if you build a habit of daily acknowledging Him as your source and sustainer, you will feel welcome rushing to His side in an emergency.”

Like Jonathan Edwards, resolve to review those resolutions! Acknowledge his presence, His goodness, His promises about walking with us every moment. The word “acknowledge” is the Hebrew word yadah usually translated “to know.” We need to know the truth, we need to recognize it, receive it, to live by it. Truth: God is present, and He cares about every detail of our lives, every minute of our existence. Read Psalm 139:1-10:

 You have searched me and known me.  ² You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.  ³ You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.  ⁴ For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.  ⁵ You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me…  ⁷ Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?  ⁸ If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  ⁹ If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,  ¹⁰ even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me…

That is a Biblical view of life: where ever we go, whatever we do, God knows, and He is there with us. We need to know and be assured that somehow, He will work every detail of our lives together for our good, and for His glory.  Have you seen those bumper stickers, “God is my co-pilot!”? That’s good, but Proverbs 3:5,6 says we can do better. As the song says, “Jesus, take the wheel!”  Let’s try that more consistently in 2017. Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and trust Him to lead us on the right path.

V. God promises that He will lead us if we will trust Him: “…and He will direct your paths.”

            Literally, “He will make our paths straight…” He’ll level out the ground before us. He’ll make a way. I recall an instance when we just bought our Suburu and were on a trip in upstate New York, near Cooperstown. A sudden snow storm came out of nowhere. We came behind a snow plow, it cleared a path before us, laying down some salt and sand as it went. And he wasn’t just circling the parking lot! God goes before those who trust Him, preparing the way. He providentially guides the circumstances of our lives. He doesn’t promise that it will be easy, but He promises to be with us, and to prepare the path that He would have us walk. Will you trust Him in this New Year?

What is God saying to me in this passage? Rather than relying on ourselves we need to recognize God’s presence and trust Him to lead us on the right path...

What would God have me to do in response to this passage?  A GPS can be a good thing when you are navigating in an unfamiliar area. Will you rely on a real GPS in 2017 (God’s positioning system!) – taking God at His Word? Follow Him! Trust in the Lord (He is trustworthy) with all your heart (no reservations) and lean not on your own understanding (He knows best!) in all your ways acknowledge Him (know that He’s there, active, guiding, teaching) and He’ll direct your paths. 

1. To really trust Him, we have to listen, to be in the Word, daily. Reading with an open mind and an open heart. Make an appointment with God, whether in the morning, after work, before bed, whatever works for you, schedule time to read and pray and meditate on the Word.  We encourage the WOL Olympians to do that. This year I got a new Bible, and I plan to use a “read through the Bible in a year program” and take time in the Word every morning. Will you join me?

2. We can trust Him as we embrace the mission He has given us, to be used of Him to change our world as we bear witness, sharing the truth with those in our “sphere of influence,” ie., our oikos.  I’ve asked you to make a list and begin praying daily for them. Some of them don’t know the Lord. Will you ask Him to give opportunities to be His witness? Sharing a word of testimony, giving a tract or a book, inviting to a church event. 50 percent of the people who don’t attend church regularly said they would go if someone they knew invited them!  He is with us, always, and He will use us, if we choose to be available!

3. Will we trust the Lord, accepting His design for the church, believing that He has shaped each of us to fill a unique role, contributing to the working together of the body, to the building up of the body and the carrying out of the mission. We’ve got some challenges before us, maybe some big ones in 2017, but God is bigger than anything we will face!  Think about that, AMEN.