Joanna Bome Kure

Exhortation presented during weekly Sunday school teachers preparatory class, 18th October 2023

Greetings and Prayers,

Today, we will be taking encouragement from Proverbs 3:5, a popular verse of Scripture. It reads:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3: 5, New King James Version

To explore this text, we will first examine the two parts of the verse independently before we consider the verse as a whole:

1. Trust in the Lord with all your heart
2. Lean not on your own understanding. 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

So, what does it mean to trust in the Lord with all your heart? Here, we will define two words: ‘Trust’ and ‘Heart’.

To trust is to rely on, to depend on, or to believe in the reliability of someone or something. To define the heart, we will examine it in three ways: biologically, emotionally and spiritually.

Biologically, our hearts sustain our bodies by pumping blood around them. Emotionally, science suggests that some of our emotions are linked to our hearts: grief, depression, insecurity, the loss of a job, etc., can affect our hearts and lead to heart diseases like cardiac arrest. Science confirms what we already say: broken-hearted, heavy-hearted, lose heart, heart’s desire. Spiritually, our heart houses our conscience, our mind, our will and our emotions.

Thus, to trust in the Lord with all your heart is to depend on Him with our life; to stake our living, moving bodies that are being sustained by pumped blood. It also means depending on Him with our emotions: our brokenheartedness, our heavy hearts, our sick hearts, our heart desires, etc. It further means that we would depend on Him with our conscience and our will. In summary: To depend on God with our whole being.  

Lean not on your own understanding

The second part of Proverbs 3: 5 says: “And lean not on your own understanding.” Here also, we will define lean and understanding.

To lean is to rest on something, to find security in something, like a pillar for example. Therefore, to lean on your own understanding is to find support, rest or security in your understanding. 

And what is your (our) understanding? For today’s exhortation, we will take understanding to mean those things that circumstances suggest can solve our problems: Money, fame, beauty, family, pastors, presidents, etc., Psalm 20: 7 says:

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses;
But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.

Psalm 20: 7, New King James Version.

In and of themselves, they are not bad; money is good, but we cannot afford to find security in money – we cannot lean on money. What if it all goes away? What if you lose your source of income? But what does leaning on your own understanding look like? I’ll use money as an example because it is common to us.

Leaning on our own understanding looks like trying tooth-and-nail to accumulate wealth because we are afraid of being poor. Emphasis on tooth-and-nail, or by hook or by crook; by all means. It can look like killing our conscience to take a bribe. It can look like willingly investing in get-rich-quick schemes because someone has promised us a hundred per cent return on investment. 

I understand. I know what it means to be broke; I am not speaking from a vacuum, and I do not have money stashed up somewhere. However, I have been called to remind myself and you as well that we are called to something different as Christians. We are to trust in the Lord with our emptiness, our fullness, our brokenness, our richness, and our exhaustion from having to live from hand to mouth or from paycheck to paycheck because it is only in the Lord that we will find security. To find security anywhere other than the Lord is simply Idolatry. 

Joining Sunday school this year has taught me how hard it is to be a Sunday school teacher. You’ll find yourself teaching about God’s love or trusting in God, but the circumstances of your life make no sense whatsoever. You would have to galvanise your will, emotions, conscience, mind, your whole being into relying on God before you can even stand up in front of the children. So I know how hard it is. Still, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

Before we pray, I would like to read from two passages: Isaiah 43: 19 and Psalm 131. The first is God’s solemn promise to us and the second is a prayer of humble trust. 

Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:19, New King James Version.

Lord, I have given up my pride
    and turned away from my arrogance.
I am not concerned with great matters
    or with subjects too difficult for me.
 Instead, I am content and at peace.
As a child lies quietly in its mother’s arms,
    so my heart is quiet within me.
Israel, trust in the Lord
    now and forever!

Psalm 131, Good News Translation.

Let us pray.