Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

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Here is a very valuable proverb. It can save your life and your family’s life. All seekers of wisdom should memorize it and the next one (Pr 3:6). Here is the law for gaining the wisdom to please God and live a successful life. Take a few minutes to save yourself.

Here is the true basis of wisdom. Reject your own ideas, and instead trust God’s inspired revelation and sovereign providence to save you from the ignorance of the human race. If you cherish or protect your opinions against His will, you will suffer. Beware, reader.

Trust equals faith. Trust in God believes He exists, and it believes He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb 11:6). It believes God has revealed His perfect will for men in the Bible (Pr 22:20-21; Deut 29:29; II Tim 3:16-17), and it rejects all contrary opinions as vain babblings of ignorant rebels (Ps 119:128; Is 8:20; I Ti 6:3-5,20).

The foundation for wisdom is to trust God completely, with your whole heart, for all aspects of your life. Such trust does not question God, rejects reservations about His will, and refuses to blend His word with human learning. It is sold-out humility to live by the propositions there is a God, He has revealed His will, and He rewards the obedient.

Trust in the LORD that leads to wisdom has faith in the Bible and in His sovereign rule of the world. It believes every verse of Scripture as the absolute and only source of truth, regardless of what subject it addresses. And it also believes the circumstances of life are carefully orchestrated by an all-wise and all-powerful Potter expecting your submission.

But where did your understanding come from? You were born without any. You nursed by instinct like a newborn hyena, screamed for food every few hours like a baby bird, and messed all over yourself. You arrived in this world just like a wild ass’s colt (Job 11:12). Where did your understanding come from, and why would you ever lean toward it?

Did you get your understanding from parents? They arrived just like you did. Following them perpetuates their ignorance. Did education give you understanding? America’s schools are bankrupt in discipline, morality, truth, and wisdom. The most warped people in society are the most educated. They teach evolution, endorse sodomy, abort babies, protect baby squirrels, call Picasso an artist, worship big government, and hate the Bible.

Did you get your understanding from your peers? They arrived just like you about the same time. Putting 100 such morons together does not produce wisdom. Did you get it from the television? Cartoons, comedies, news, soaps, and sports are all the same – devoid of even basic wisdom. Did you get it from magazines like “People,” “Time,” “Parade,” or “Readers’ Digest”? Together they are uninformed or misinformed as mud.

Grasp the issue. You have no understanding. What you think you know is dangerous. Because it seduces you away from truth and wisdom and resists any change toward them. Your greatest enemy is your own heart and mind. Ignorant from conception, fed misinformation since birth, encouraged to idiocy by peers, deceived by false interpretation of experiences, and inherently arrogant and selfish, you are in deep trouble.

In order to succeed, you must reject your understanding. To progress beyond the rest of your species, you cannot even lean toward your own understanding. You must flush it all. Any infatuation or protection of your thoughts will take you down with the rest of this foolish race. The rule is simple and strict – do not even lean toward your own thoughts.

Trust God. He has a corner on all the truth in the universe. Trust God. He gave you existence without your permission, and He governs all the minute details of your life. Put your trust totally in Him, and you can be a wonderful success over the dysfunctional sheep around you rushing to the slaughter of depression, divorce, drugs, and death.

Wife! Trust the Bible when it tells you how to treat your husband, and do not even consider your own thoughts on how it should be done. Trust the LORD with the husband He gave you, and do not even lean toward ideas of it being easier with a different man.

Citizen! Trust the Bible when it tells you to submit to every civil ordinance, pay your taxes, and honor those in authority. Do not even lean toward your thoughts of protecting your rights. Trust the LORD with the leaders you have, whether you like them or not.

Parent! Trust the Bible when it details child foolishness and right training methods. Do not even lean toward your own ideas or those of speculator Ben Spock or compromiser James Dobson. Trust the LORD’s promises that right training will bring future success.

Christian! Trust the Bible when it consistently describes baptism as a symbol of burial and resurrection down in the water – immersion! Do not even lean toward any heretical notions or false tradition that sprinkling holy chrism on a baby’s forehead is a baptism.

Single person! Trust the Bible when it limits sex to marriage, limits marriage to Christians, and ridicules odious women. Do not even lean toward the foolish desire for sex or someone outside these limits. Trust God to bless your efforts for a godly spouse.

Worker! Trust the Bible that giving money away will bring prosperity, hoarding money will bring poverty, and listening to business schemes will take you down. Reject your arrogant and selfish thoughts. Trust God to keep His promises of promoting diligent men.

Reader! You have a choice. Trust God and the Bible and reject your thoughts, or trust your thoughts and reject God and the Bible. The choice is yours – the results are certain. If you will reject your thinking for God’s thoughts found in the Bible, peace and prosperity are yours to a degree that the world cannot understand or explain.