The Reality of the Trusting Heart

The Lord commands us to "Trust in the Lord with all our Heart and lean not on our own understanding." Prov. 3:5-6. Charles Bridges said "This text is the pole star of every Christian life." The Christian life is an act of faith at the beginning and an attitude of faith to the end. Our Father did not say don't use your understanding just don't lean on it. Why? Because we are to lean on Jesus. What does it mean to trust the Lord? A missionary was translating the Bible into a native language. He was searching for a word that would convey the meaning for the word trust. The tribe he was ministering to did not seem to have a word that would convey such a meaning. Seems they were suspicious each other and everybody around them. The missionary had a large easy chair in his office. You know the kind that one falls back into and the chair catches you. One day a young boy came running into his office, jumped into the air and landed in the chair bottom first. As he landed, grinning ear to ear, he spoke a word. This word came to mean to "cast your full weight upon." The missionary had found the word for trust. This is what our Lord wants us to do. We are to "Cast our full weight upon the Lord with all our Heart..." Is he trust worthy? King David said he was. David looked back at his life and saw that the Lord was always faithful to him, even when David was not faithful to the Lord. Abraham trusted the Lord even when he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac. For Abraham to lean on his own understanding would have taken him in another direction. Had Abraham run away from the Lord's command we would have missed the great illustration of "God providing for himself a lamb." Jesus trusted His Father every step of his earthly walk, right up to the cross, death and beyond. We trust in the Christ of the Cross and in nothing else for our eternal salvation. As believers we are to "Walk by faith, not by sight." The Lord asks us to trust him because he is trustworthy. This is to be the primary motivation of the Christian life. We please Him by trusting Him. Hebrews says "Without faith it is impossible to please Him." Trusting the Lord makes Him the Boss, it's His will not ours, it's His way not ours, it's His time table not ours. To "trust the Lord with all our heart" is a command, not an invitation. It refers to a total capitulatin of our heart to God. "All your heart." God does not accept trust unless it is total. The trust is entire and exclussive. It involves a total renunciation of self. "Lean not on your own understanding." Total trust means no back door exit, no other bridges. Today the Lord is asking us to "Cast all of our weight on Him" because He and He alone is trustworthy.