A Clear Path

Hi, this is Cynthia Dowling, and have you ever thought about having a family life verse? Years ago, when our children were young, my husband wanted to have a guiding influence from God's Word for our children and us. We knew the truth of the adage, “If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time,” so we wanted a verse or short set of verses that, if honored, would keep our family serving the Lord all our days. So after much prayer, we chose Proverbs 3:5-7 for our family to quote together every night and to apply to real life situations. I love these verses! They are and have been precious and directive to all of us! Fast forward to this year, for my personal Bible study, the Lord showed me to take a deep dive into Proverbs and Psalms, emphasizing Proverbs. So right now, I'm working through the first three chapters of Proverbs and thinking deeply about what God is saying through Solomon in this book. Proverbs 3:5-7 is the core of Proverbs chapters one through three, so let's shake the dust off our memories by reading those verses and then take a look at what the Lord's been teaching me from them to apply to my life. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.”

The backdrop of the book of Proverbs is that Solomon as a father is addressing his son as an older youth, who is ready to start in-depth training for adult life, possibly as king, much as David trained Solomon himself. Solomon wants to make sure that his son avoids the pitfalls of life by developing a solid, personal relationship with God with a strong determination to keep his parents godly counsel intact. Also, that his son receives the wisdom necessary to make a successful transition into adulthood; and that he shuns those that would seek to minimize the value of that wisdom, steal it from his heart, and eventually bring ruin to his life. And that's what we want for our children isn't it? That they will be God's men and women as they go out into the world to do the work that God has called them to do.

Do you remember this time in your life? The time when you were becoming less dependent on your parents and more independent, especially in your thinking? Or, maybe this is right where you are now in your life, standing on the edge of that transition. I remember this time very clearly, when life's choices started looming before me. In fact, it's my first real memory of being afraid that I could mess up my whole life with one bad decision at an age when I didn't have much life experience. And to be honest, I was listening to some defective voices of friends, who weren't really taking God into account. This awakening started coming to the forefront when I was a junior in high school. Winter break was coming up, and I had plans to enjoy some winter sports, read some books, and relax. But my dad had different plans! He wanted me to go to a youth conference about six hours away at a small Christian college, where there would be a dynamic speaker that God could possibly use as a catalyst to shift my thinking to what God had planned for me in life. Of course, I thought relaxing at home sounded pretty good, but as my dad talked with me seriously, I knew what God wanted me to do. So, I got on the church bus with a bunch of other kids, and we rode said hours straight, only stopping at McDonald's for lunch. After we arrived and unloaded said bus, there was time only to get ready for dinner and the evening service. The stage was set for God to work. In obeying God up to this point, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was following the process Solomon expressed to his son in Proverbs chapters one and two: I wanted wisdom for the decisions ahead, I wanted to know God's mind on those decisions, I had listened to my father's counsel over my friends’ counsel, and now, I was ready for and in the right place to receive the core of God's counsel.

So, what happened at the conference? This speaker was truly God's man for my life at that moment. His challenge to each of us was to find out what God wanted us to do with our lives and then do it. Well, I thought, that was easy! Since I was a young child, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher. Friends and family alike reinforced that desire. By this time, I assumed that because God gave me that desire, that's what He wanted me to be, end of story. But at this meeting, I realized I was trusting in an assumption and not in a directive from God. What would I do? Would I hang on to my assumption, which made total sense to me, or would I hold it up to God? Would I go far enough to pray, “Lord, if You want me to be a teacher, I want to be a teacher; and if not, I want You to show me what You do want me to do.” I wrestled with God and my common sense until the last service. There the speaker gave this challenge: Persevere in reading God's Word until He shows you what He wants you to do. So, I decided then and there that I wanted God to show me if He wanted me to teach or if that was just my idea.

Now back to Proverbs three. My situation was a parallel situation with Solomon’s counseling his son and my dad's counseling me. So let's look at the first admonition in Proverbs 3:5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. That's it, that's all you're going to do, because the second half says don't lean on your own understanding. I had been leaning on my own understanding, now I wanted to trust the Lord with all my heart; I wanted to rely completely, wholeheartedly, and confidently on Him. Many times, when we're faced with a choice like this, we want to know what God wants us to do, so we can decide if we want to do it His way or our way. That does not work! The Bible calls that method being double minded. When you're double minded, you become the chooser of your best option. But only God has all the facts and knows the future and what He created you to do and be, so trusting Him alone is paramount.

Now, I’m ready to start the second directive, in verse six, to know God in all your ways, so back to the bus. I'm on my way home a much less boisterous and much more contemplative person than I was on the way up. My thoughts were, “How will this work? Where in the Bible do I start reading, and what do I look for?” So in my mind, I began to survey starting places in Scripture. The only two that really surfaced were starting at the beginning of the Old Testament and reading all the way through the Bible or starting at the New Testament first. Since it was February and school ended near the beginning of June and I was going to start filling out college applications before my summer job started, it occurred to me that the better place to start was probably the New Testament. This idea was reinforced by realizing that in starting with the gospels, I would be reading Christ’s own words and seeing His works in many situations. That’s it, I thought! Perfect! Now that I had my starting place, I wondered what would happen next, and how soon God would give me the direction I needed. How could He do it? The speaker had assured me during his preaching that if I wanted to know, God wanted me to know, and He would show me. So, I began reading, and often reading several times during the day. I finished the gospels, nothing yet, so I started into the epistles to the churches, not there. Hmm... I thought, “Surely, I'll find it in the epistles to individuals,” but no. At this point in time, May had started, and I began to wonder if I'd made a mistake or been confused. I mean, really, how was God going to let me know? That preacher didn't know my situation. Then I had to counsel myself with the third principle of Proverbs 3, verse 7: Don't think you know better than God, fear the Lord, and depart from those evil thoughts. Do you know what I've discovered the “fear of the Lord” is in my life? The fear of the Lord is not wanting my own path so much that I won’t stop trusting God to do it my way, I’m waiting until God acts, even if it looks impossible. So, at this point two things came to my mind: 1) You haven't even finished the New Testament yet, and 2) If you quit now, you still won't know what God wants you to do. So I told myself, “Keep on reading.” Guess what? In the very next book, the book of Hebrews, the phrase that I'd been searching for leaped off the page at me, and I was stunned. God answered my prayers, and the preacher was right after all. I kind of walked around in a daze for a few days, hugging my precious answer to myself. Then I decided that I wouldn't say anything to anyone, so my joy and wonder could stay intact, without interference from context experts or detractors. I was a novice, I wanted to know God's will for my life, and God answered my prayers, simple and plain. I was ecstatic! God cared about me; and now He was my God, not just the God of the adults in my life. So, should I tell you my special verse? Yes, I will, I believe you will understand. Taking this verse as mine did not disrupt the context or create heresy in any way; but I'm sure when God had Paul write this phrase, He had no idea that a young girl would use it in this way, but God knew! Hebrews 5:12a reads, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers . . . .” Can you believe it!

I now know that God was using Paul to chide the Hebrew believers for not maturing in their faith as they should have been doing, but to me it was a directive from God to pursue education as my major. I couldn't wait to fill the major blank in, on my college application, with “elementary education” and God's blessing. What a relief! And how amazing that I now knew God better and He knew me, me, not just the oldest child in a Christian family! The first step into a one-on-one relationship with God initiated and completed. What a faith booster! I now had confidence with a track record that He would continue to guide me personally in the decisions to come! That’s how Proverbs 3:5-7 works! First, you choose to trust the Lord alone, then you want to know His mind concerning your choice of path, because you want to stay on the straight path He’s created for you. Last, you determine not to think you know best and be “wise in your own eyes;” instead, you chose to fear the Lord and take His path, walking away from the wrong choices. After that, you can rest assured that no matter what happens as you proceed you are on His right path.

But just for just a minute, let’s back track and zero in on verse six, just to clear up any confusion we might have about God's promise to make our paths straight, when we choose His way. What does that mean in day-to-day life? If you’re like me, when you think of a straight, smooth path, it’s flower-strewn, easy, trouble-free, and idyllic, literally a heaven-on-earth path. That is not what God is talking about. That's my idea, not His. This is a fallen world, and we are fallen and under a curse, so our path from birth is already crooked and rough. But when we know God, first in salvation and then in moving toward Him day by day, He will give us wisdom and strength to choose His straighter, more direct route to heaven. You might be thinking, “Sign me up for that!” But what does God mean when He gives us this promise? We already know life isn’t a flower-strewn path. So let's take two examples from Scripture, a father and a son. Let's first focus on the father by zooming all the way back to the book of Genesis in our minds. Jacob is our man. The Bible is clear that God chose Jacob before he was born, and He loved Jacob before he was born, and God said that he would be the next patriarch, following Abraham and Isaac, before he was born, even though he was the younger brother. But then it got dicey, didn't it? Isaac, his father, decided to take things into his own hands and give the older son Esau the blessing. Jacob and his mother knew God's promise, but there was no time to wait on God. They had to act! So they leaned on their own understanding and came up with a plan to get that blessing from Isaac for Jacob. Now let me ask you a question. Do you think that the Almighty God was in heaven with a shocked expression on His face, just hoping that Jacob and Rebecca would come up with something, so the prophecy would be fulfilled? Of course not, God knew exactly what He was going to do, and it did not matter what Isaac did. But Jacob and his mother took it into their own hands by valuing their understanding of the situation over God’s, and not waiting for Him to act. We may look at ourselves and say, “Well, what else could they do? Or, no way out of that one!” As you can see, we also fall prey to rationalizing. God puts our noses to the wall, we see no way out, so we lean on our own understanding, and act. And then like Jacob, that choice messes everything up. Now, like Jacob, we're on our own path, and it's crooked and rough. Twenty wasted years with Laban and a family mess later, Jacob hears God's voice telling him to go to Bethel, and there, God gives him the blessing; then God graciously does for Jacob everything He intended. He becomes the next patriarch, he becomes the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, and his name becomes Israel. We still call his family by his name.

Now, let's look at Jacob's son Joseph. We know from Scripture that Joseph loved God and God loved Joseph. God had given Joseph dreams whose fulfillment seemed impossible at the time he received them, and his brothers hated him for those dreams and for the special love that Jacob had for Joseph. So his brothers took things into their own hands, sold Joseph to slavers headed to Egypt, and Joseph was put on the slave block. But God had not forgotten Joseph. Over time he became the steward of a high official named Potiphar. The best out of a bad situation, right? But then things deteriorated with Potiphar’s wife. What did Joseph do? What he always did. He trusted in God with all his heart, even though his position was extremely precarious. Joseph wasn't going to disobey God to get a chance to fulfill the dreams God had given him. When she pressed him to sin, he made that wonderful statement in Genesis 39:9, “How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” And he ran out of the house. Yikes, this seems to be going from bad to worse! But God was working, just as He was working all the way through Joseph's life. God spared Joseph's life, but he was cast into prison. In a short time, he became the prison warden's right-hand man. As the warden’s assistant, he met Pharaoh’s butler and baker, and God gave him understanding of the meaning of their dreams, and then of Pharaoh’s dreams, resulting his becoming the second ruler in the kingdom of Egypt. So, let me ask you two questions. Did Jacob have an easy life? Did Joseph have an easy life? Same answer: no, not at all! Just a quick reminder here that all of us have our share of trouble because of the Fall and because we are fallen. But if we know God regarding all our ways, we will walk His straight and direct path not adding our own crookedness and roughness to that path. Let me illustrate with an up-to-date story. Some years ago, I heard this true story that, I believe, will help clarify further the difference between Jacob’s life and Joseph's life. Although both lives were filled with trouble from this world, there was a big difference.

Here’s the story. There was a young man who loved the Lord, and he went to a church that preached God's Word. He had a family that was growing, and he needed a new vehicle, so he asked the church family to pray that the Lord would give him just the right one. Through the months of prayer, he did his research, he went to the dealerships and finally found the exact car that he believed the Lord wanted him to have—make, model, and color. He passed these clarifications on to the church and asked them to pray that the Lord would provide this specific vehicle for him. So they prayed. After some time had elapsed, the Lord prompted an older man in the congregation to buy that car for this young family. So he went down to the dealership, bought the car, and got the title. He was all excited about giving the young man the title the following Sunday at church; but when he drove into the parking lot, he noticed that the exact same car was already parked in a parking space. He wondered how in the world that could happen? So he walked into the church, and there was the young man with face glowing. “Guess what,” he said, “the dealership worked it out so I could make payments on my vehicle and buy it over time, isn't that great?” Of course, the man was surprised, but he congratulated the young man and was happy for him. But in his heart, he knew that God had had a better plan for this young man and his growing family. So with a little bit of sadness he took the title back to the dealership and got his money back. The young man had, at the last minute, leaned on his own understanding and been wise in his own eyes, instead of waiting until God acted. Now, he had added the crookedness and rough spots—the complications--of car payments to God's path. This young man could have been car-payment free, if he had just waited one more week. That's the difference between Jacob and Joseph. Jacob added payments to his life, while Joseph waited on God until God acted--trusting God, knowing God, and fearing God.

Joseph got it! When you trust God, and know God, and fear God, you understand God's ways. Jacob could only see that birthright going to Esau, so he took it. Joseph, instead, continued to believe that God was working good in all his dire straits. Listen to what Joseph said after Jacob died and his brothers thought that he would kill them to get revenge. Genesis 50:19-20 reads, “And Joseph said unto them, ‘Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.’” That’s God's plan! Only He can take all the evil intended against His children and turn it into good for us, for others, and for His kingdom.

We all face transition points throughout our lives, and, interestingly, I’m at another one of those points this year, the transition of starting a new decade. This one is weighted more toward the opposite end of the age spectrum, but still just as much a transition as the time of the youth conference. Even so, the process of trusting the Lord wholeheartedly, knowing God ‘s mind for each decision, and then fearing to displease the Lord when I make that choice is very important for me to keep in place, even at my age. Why? So that even now the path I choose will be a straight, clear, and direct route to heaven. These verses are counsel for every age from the youngest child to the oldest adult, including the imbedded warnings: Don’t lean on your own understanding, or else you leave God out. Don’t think that what God wants you to do doesn't quite work for your situation by turning your face toward defective voices that agree with what you want to do, or else you’re being wise in your own eyes, thinking you know better than God does. The result of disregarding those warnings: A detour down a crooked path of wasted time. Don’t do it!

So, what transition is happening in your life? Will you trust God with it? Will I? Starting this year, let’s yield ourselves to His directives in the challenges of life—trusting Him, knowing Him, fearing Him; and in the process, like Joseph, let God use us to “save much people alive,” resting in God’s gifts of grace to help, peace in our hearts, and the joy of no regrets!

“Trust and obey, for there's no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

(John H. Sammis)