The Lord has been drilling this into my head recently. Proverbs 3:5-6 is a passage that most believers are familiar with. " 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."
In fact, I think that those verses are overused quite frequently. I find myself getting wrapped up in memorizing verses or reciting previously memorized verses in my head without truly meditating on the meaning behind them. I'm sure all of us are guilty of that to some degree.
This Proverbs passage in particular has been brought to mind a lot over the past few months as my series of doubts and frustrations have made themselves present. The Lord has been working me through a great deal of them and I can thankfully say that a lot of my doubts have subsided.
I don't know about you, but I tend to depend far too much on my emotions for stability in my walk with Christ. I'm sure that you are aware of my struggles in this area...I tend to vent about them a lot. I not only struggle with doubts about the Lord, but doubts about my position in the Lord. I have been going through a book called "The Normal Christian Life" by a missionary to China named Watchman Nee. It's based off of Romans and the conflict between the "old man" in the flesh and the "new man" in Christ. It goes really deep, and I find it extremely difficult to wrap my mind around. But it is solid truth from God's word. Slowly I am grasping what it means to belong to Jesus Christ. I'm grasping far more than I ever have before; and I thought I knew a lot. I've heard many older and stronger believers say that the longer one walks with Christ, the more of their flesh they see. I believed it to be true upon them sharing it with me, but I think I can agree with firsthand experience now. Perhaps pathetic experience compared to those older and wiser, but God is giving me heart knowledge of it. And for that I am completely thankful.
One thing that I am disciplining myself to do is to surrender my thoughts to the Lord. Whenever doubts arise, I am learning to give them to Him right away. A scary part about doubting God is letting the thoughts linger in my mind. When I do that, I allow myself vulnerability to Satan's lies. Without even consciously knowing what I am doing, I give him room to create more doubts and fears in my mind. It's a vicious cycle, but [in theory] it can be stopped easily. Surrendering my thoughts as they present themselves allows the Lord to protect me from attack. That is when I can have the peace that goes beyond my comprehension that Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:7.
"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." (4:8)
It is a choice that I must make. I must choose to surrender.
"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."
Al, so much of this is, uuuh, like exactly what has been on my mind. Woww..are we related? ;) I love you so much. Thanks for letting the Lord use you. Keep surrendering those thoughts, keep striving to trust in Him with all your heart. I am so proud of you. (And I am so excited, also, that God is using you, stretching you, and growing you so much!!)
ReplyDelete-Gopher /:B