Mar 21, 2025 Wisdom and Trust – Words of Grace Blog – March 21, 2025
To trust in the Lord with all your heart and in all your ways is the wisest way to live.
But it’s possible that our conception of the wise person amounts to someone who doesn’t need to trust anyone or anything. Maybe if you have ever asked for wisdom or thought you wanted to be wise you envisioned yourself without need. Wise people, we often think, have all the answers to life’s questions, all the solutions to life’s problems, an apt word for every situation, and are adequate for every challenge. Wise people aren’t asking for directions, they’re giving them. People come to the wise ones for advice while the wise go to no one. The wise are self-contained and self-sufficient, and the reward of their wisdom is that they have no needs. In short, the wise ones do not need to trust.
There is the issue… trust. We don’t like being in a position of real need and therefore needing to trust others. Sure, we’ll trust our neighbor to get our mail while on vacation and to not break into our house while we are away. But even then, we know they will need us to get their mail someday, so it’s a negotiated trust that keeps everyone with a sense of control in the situation. Our thinking is, “I need you, but you need me, too. Let’s make a deal.”
The point is we can come to believe that possessing wisdom will help us avoid being in need and therefore protect us from needing to trust.
Then we come to Proverbs 3 where wisdom calls us to trust the Lord with all our hearts and not lean on our own understanding. This shatters our conception of what it means to be wise. This implies that we are not all the things we misconceive wise people to be. We will not measure up to the self-contained and self-sufficient image we’ve constructed for ourselves.
But Proverbs 3 also reconstructs a true understanding of wisdom that really does work. It puts God before us and reveals him to be the one who grants us the wisdom to really live to the fullest in proper relation to him. And it makes trust in him the condition for receiving this wisdom.
We recall Ronald Reagan quoting the Russian proverb to the Russians when negotiating nuclear weapons reductions, “trust, but verify.” That is wise foreign policy. But what makes for wisdom on a human to human, nation to nation level cannot be carried over to one’s relationship with God.
With God, it is trust and trust and trust some more. Trust the Lord absolutely, with all your heart and soul, in all things. Why, because he is the Lord God, sovereign over all things and Savior of our souls. He has given his Son for our salvation and will give us all things necessary for life and eternity. He is wise and trustworthy. Wisdom is to trust him completely, and to trust him completely is to be a Christian.
This weekend, spend some time reflecting on the ways you might be avoiding absolute trust in God. Are you seeking to build a life without need, and then letting that thinking carry over to your life with God? If so, prayerfully repent of this pride and come back to putting the full weight of your life on the Lord who loves you and gave his Son for you.
This Sunday at Grace Community Church we will consider the wise words of Proverbs 3 to trust in the Lord will all our hearts.
-Scott