Well-placed Trust

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will direct your paths.” -Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV)

In Proverbs 3:5-6, we have God’s Word to give us three important commands and one sincere promise.

The commands are:

1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

2. Do not rely on your own understanding.

3. Think about Him in all your ways.

The promise is:

God will direct your paths.

Can our way and God’s promise be more clearly stated than here in Proverbs 3:5-6? I have shared that in my early years, from the time I was fourteen when my mother died, I had to assume adult responsibilities. I was already a Christian, five-years (since age 9), when I joyfully accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my heart. I had already started at that early age of 9, to read and study my Bible daily and to pray earnestly that God would guide me. At age 14, with the responsibility of cooking, keeping the house clean and in order, doing the family’s laundry, taking care of my 11-year old brother and keeping him in school, and keeping up my own school studies, I sometimes felt overwhelmed by it all.

God put the idea in my mind that if I trusted Him and did not rely on my own understanding, all my responsibilities would work together for good. If I gave my ways and my life to God, he would work out what would be best for me. And God’s magnificent promise to me was that He would direct my paths. So I prayed, worked, studied, accepted and knew without a doubt that God would give me the understanding and strength—yes, and the “know-how” for all the tasks thrust upon me.

And the beautiful lining to this tapestry thrown over me at such an early age is that it was laced with gold and silver threads as I wove day by day the cloth of my life. I do not want to picture myself as the “unstoppable kid” who lived beyond her years, beyond her acumen to do, to accept, to press on. There were times when I temporarily took my eyes off the Lord and wanted to do things my way instead of His way. But for almost all of the time I had solid goals in mind and sought to follow God in all that I had to do.

Kind Aunts and other ladies in the community would sometimes visit and give me a hand with the hard things, and especially when work tasks accumulated beyond what I could physically do in the time I had to do them. This was especially true at “canning time” when our fresh vegetables and fruits grown so well on our farm needed to be preserved for winter. We would have “food preservation” parties, all-day work-days to get me through these hard tasks when gardens and crops came in to be preserved. We would take the prepared beans, corn, peaches, apples, peas, and “soup-mixture” (as my Aunt Northa called the vegetable soup we made and canned for winter use) to the “cannery” where the processing time was more expedited than in our home in a pressure canner or water-bath canner that could only take but about seven or nine cans respectively in each “batch” to cook according to the canning guidelines. And how proud I was of those beautiful glass cans lined neatly in the “can-house” shelves (a storage space, well-insulated to prevent freezing, built by my father for our home-canned goods) preserved for healthful, good winter meals! I think God forgave me my pride in admiring and showing off these rows filled with glass Mason jars of good food to eat in the winter.

Much later, I read that every morning when President Gerald Ford walked into the President’s office in the White House he quoted Proverbs 3:5-6, claiming its commands for his day and its promise from God that He would direct his paths. And since I was a child, I, too, have had Proverbs 3:5-6 memorized, a handy reference for my life and my work. Doing so provided a good and sound principle for me to follow, and it has guided me in seeking God and following His directives. Praise be to God! - Ethelene Dyer Jones 03.05.2017