Proverbs 3 A Trusting Confidence June 2007 am
Proverbs 3:1-12
Trust Fall—youth ministry
Trust Fall—Rock Repelling
. *Can you imagine the absurdity of someone who doesn’t give it over to the doctor…they refuse anesthesia, they stay awake during their surgery, they demand a mirror so they can watch the surgery, and they question and second guess everything that the physician is doing. What surgeon in his right mind would let a patient do that?
* It is the same with God.
· He desires that we give it over to Him completely.
Take Him at His word that He knows what He is doing.
Give it over to Him!
--we learned that “to trust someone” means to place yourself under their complete care and control.
**It means to give over to someone else. Like a doctor who will do surgery on you…at some point you have to just let go and trust the doctor to do the cutting.
{Father to a child}
The Book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom, a collection of moral and ethical teachings, dealing with many aspects of life.
The Book of Proverbs instructed the Israelites in how their faith in the Lord and His Word should affect their daily lives.
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”
A Trusting Confidence
Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts. This
is a complete, trusting confidence.
**And it is “trust in the Lord” - not in
a purpose or a plan, but a Person.
To trust a person, you must love him. Most of us are unlikely to trust a stranger. ?Would you trust him with your wallet? Of course not. You don't know him well enough. **But you would hand your wallet to a good friend
and never worry that you would see it again.
How does this process begin? Are you spending time every day with God?
A Total Commitment
Proverbs 3:6a tells us about total commitment: "In all thy ways
acknowledge Him."
It is a total commitment of our ways to God's way.
And how do we acknowledge Him?
As Lord, as sovereign God - the rightful
Ruler of life.
We hand a signed, blank check to God and ask Him to fill it in. Have you
ever handed someone a blank check?
." The word for acknowledge here is "know."
It means to become intimately acquainted with by reflection and by experience.
The Bible even uses it for the physical relations between husband and wife as when it says, "Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived and bore Cain." (Gen. 4:1).
In other words the Bible tells us to know God as the traveling companion and Ruler of our lives whether it be the main road from the cradle to eternity or the side roads we travel along the way.
A young man in the Army was asked by his buddies to go with them to a bar. He declined and told them his dad had been an alcoholic and had made him promise never to drink alcohol. They said, “You don’t have to drink, just go with us.” The boy said, no, my dad would not want me to. How do you know that” they asked. He said, “Because I know my dad.”
A Thrilling Consequence
Out of a trusting confidence and a total commitment comes a thrilling
consequence: He will direct our paths (Proverbs 3:6b). Clearing the Path
The Hebrew word for "direct" in Proverbs 3:6b is yashar and it literally
means "to cut a path or clear the way." The exciting thing about this
concept is that God will not only lead you, but He will clear the way.
?!?!Isn't it interesting that we don't get to choose when we were born or when we die? *We only decide how we live!
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And he shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6
You will notice that many people live in the yesterdays of their past or the tomorrow's of their future?
---they don't live in the present------the yesterday folk are flooded with memories of "I wish I could live my life over" or “If only things would return to the way they were."
------the tomorrow folk can't wait for the future
"Just wait till I graduate" or "one of these days when I have a better job, you'll see"
(--I'm not advocating forgetting the past). That's foolish -- past is our heritage, our background, and has made us who we are.
---Neither am I implying that we don't plan for the future. That's imperative, essential, and give direction.
**What I am saying is that the controlling desire to live in the past or live in the future causes us to miss the most precious moment of all NOW.
**Reflect on the past - Plan for the future--but live in the present
In Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Emily, the main character of the play, discovers too late the singular joy of just being alive. After death, she is allowed to watch herself relive one day of her life. She is warned that it will be painful; nevertheless, she embraces the opportunity. She chooses her 12th birthday. The experience is painful as she watches friends and family taking life for granted and not valuing each moment. As she is delivered from the experience, looking back on her family and friends one last time, Emily cries out, "Good-bye, Good bye world. ...Oh, earth you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you." Then, with tears in her eyes, she pauses to ask the audience, "Do any human beings realize life while they live it? every, every, minute.?"
*A resolution needs to be made. "I WILL DELIBERATELY LIVE EACH DAY FOR CHRIST."
*Let's realize the marvelous gift that God has given us ---gift of the present moment
*May we value the opportunity of today to live for Christ's kingdom.
Conditions to meet (vv. 1–12).
The first condition for receiving God’s guidance is that we learn God’s truth (vv. 1–4).
**The will of God is revealed in the Word of God
(Col. 1:9–10), and the only way to know His will is to study His Word and obey it.
It isn’t enough for believers to carry the Bible in their hands; they must let the Holy Spirit write it on their hearts
Proverbs 3:3
Obedience to the Word can add years to your life and life to your years.
Second, we must obey God’s will (vv. 5–8).
“He shall direct your paths” (v. 6, NKJV) is the promise, but the fulfillment of that promise is predicated on our obedience to the Lord.
We must trust Him with all our heart and obey Him in all our ways. That means total commitment to Him (Rom. 12:1–2).
The danger, of course, is that we lean on our own understanding and thereby miss God’s will.
This warning doesn’t suggest that God’s children turn off their brains and ignore their intelligence and common sense.
It simply cautions us not to depend on our own wisdom and experience or the wisdom and experience of others.
When we become “wise in [our] own eyes” (Prov. 3:7), then we’re heading for trouble.
The wrong friends can corrupt you. Paul said, “Bad companions ruin good character.” (1 Cor. 15)
When God brought his people out of Egypt into Canaan, He told them of the horrible practices of the Canaanites and ordered them to drive them out saying, “What they do makes the land unclean, and you must not do them.” (Lev. 18:26-27).
>>Israel disobeyed and became just like their neighbors, and that is why God let the Northern ten tribes disappear from the face of the earth. The only reason He let Judah live was so they could one day give Jesus to the world.
It is friends who teach you to drive 100 MPH; to smoke and ruin your health; to take that first beer or joint or drug.
Few of us have the power to go against the crowd, so it is imperative that you choose the right crowd.
Share God’s blessings (vv. 9–10) is the third condition we must meet if we want God to direct our paths.
There’s no such thing as “spiritual” and “material” in the Christian life, for everything comes from God and belongs to God.
The Old Testament Jews brought the Lord the firstlings of their flocks (Ex. 13:1–2) and the firstfruits of their fields (Lev. 23:9–14), and in this way acknowledged His goodness and sovereignty.
The New Testament parallel is seen in Matthew 6:33: “ BUT SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE ADDED TO YOU.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”