Leaning On The Lord: Trusting Him and His Plans
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
The Lord is speaking to me a lot right now about leaning on Him. I was wondering why (seriously), and in one of those "ah-ha" moments it became crystal clear. You see, after having a house church for nine months, the Lord has blessed us with a beautiful historic church and we have been able to open our doors to the public. Therefore, as you can imagine, the need to lean has been kicked up a notch or two.
Leaning on the Lord sounds so easy, especially since I understand the importance of being a leaning bride. Nevertheless, being totally honest with you, I have found myself leaning on my own understanding more times than I care to admit and have learned, as King Nebuchadnezzar did, the folly of doing so. Let me explain.
The Book of Daniel
The fourth chapter of the Book of Daniel opens with King Nebuchadnezzar "praising God" and wanting to tell everyone the signs and wonders that God had worked personally for him. He had seen miracles and believed the Word of the Lord, and he wanted everyone to know. Then the testing comes... The king has another dream. The dream scares him, and what does he do?
Instead of calling on Daniel and the Most High God, he pulls out the ace in his pocket and calls, once again, on the astrologers, enchanters, and magicians that he has consulted in the past, even though they had let him down before (see Daniel 2:10-12). In other words, he returns back to his own understanding, revealing that he doesn't trust God with all his heart, but leans on his own understanding instead.
Daniel's advice to the king was to break off his sin of thinking that the kingdom was somehow established by his knowledge and his power versus the hand of the Almighty God. Basically, Daniel was telling him to "know that you know that God alone rules, or else everything in your dream will happen to you" (verses 26-31, my interpretation).
Not following Daniel's advice, the king held on to his aces. He chose to trust/lean on what he knew based on past experiences. The moment he did that, the wilderness that was predicted in the dream comes upon him... (verse 31)
While the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from Heaven: "King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom has departed from you! And they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make you eat grass like oxen; and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses." Daniel 4:31-32
What a fantastic lesson for us all to glean from today. You see, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. We naturally spring into survival mode, into self-preservation. Being worried or distressed, we naturally formulate our "Plan B." We pray of course, and ask God to bless our plan, feeling that praying means that we are leaning, but it's not. We need to be still and know that He is God, trust Him and the plans He has for our lives, even when we don't understand them. Our "Plan B" is just another ace in the pocket.
No comments:
Post a Comment