Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding: in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3 vs.5-6
If you are reading this as a CFC Partner then it will be very familiar to you as our ‘Motto Verse’ for 2021. If you have just lighted upon it while exploring the CFC website it will likely be very familiar if you are a Christian. If you have just arrived at this site while surfing the web it is possible that these words are new to you. Whichever of these you may be I thought it would be helpful over the next two or three days to explore some of the truths that the writer of this Bible book has presented us with in these two verses.
I begin at the beginning!
Trust in the LORD.
Trust is a very precious thing. To be totally confident in someone is to have a solid and secure foundation. It is to know that come what may, you will not be let down in your time of need. That those in whom you trust are, as far as a human being can be, utterly reliable and will always be there for you. As the writer of Proverbs says in a later chapter ‘there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.’ 19 v.24. The old saying (proverb) reminds us that ‘blood is thicker than water’ although even at that family level we cannot be absolutely confident as relationships can all too easily break.
In the final analysis it is not the level of my trust which gives confidence but the character of the one in whom I place my trust. So ths makes the focus of trust in this phrase of paramount importance.
Trust in the LORD.
Here we are immediately introduced to the one in whom our trust is to be placed. The LORD. There are as number of different words in Hebrew that are translated Lord and when LORD is printed in capital letters it is in translation of the divine name YHWH and points us to the self-existent and eternal God. That is the God we are called to trust! Adonai is another word for Lord in Hebrew and where Adonai and YHWH come together they are translated Sovereign LORD. Another glorious description of the one in whom we are called to put our trust.
Two other phrases from older Bible versions – The LORD of hosts and the God of hosts – speak of God’s command over all the ‘hosts’ (powers) on heaven and earth and in more recent versions they are translated The LORD almighty or God almighty.
Pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that this is the one in whom the writer of Proverbs calls us to put our trust.
The broken world in which we live may make you feel you can trust no-one nor any thing. Maybe you trust has been shattered too often. Then hear and turn to the one who is utterly, completely and eternally reliable because he is the Almightgy Sovereign Lord.
Such a God cannot and will not let us down, so today, now and always.
Trust in the LORD!