Day 10

God breaks the rules of conventional wisdom over and over again.

‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.’ (PROVERBS 3:5-6)

Proverbs tells us to not lean on our own understanding. How is that possible? We must distinguish between using it and leaning on it. We need to be careful of reducing God to predictable inevitabilities. Usually when we reduce God to a predictable set of expectancies, He will break out of them because we’ve become reliant on the predictable and not on God Himself.

Throughout Scripture, God uses people who are discounted by conventional wisdom. When Samuel was to find a king for Israel, God told him to go to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem, who had 7 fine sons. Jesse introduced Samuel to his oldest son, a strapping young man. Samuel was impressed, but God said, ‘This is not the man.’ In fact, none of the brothers were sufficient. Lastly they brought David, the artistic musician, the shepherd boy who was absent because his father didn’t consider him worthy. He had been dismissed from the selection, but God said, ‘Rise and anoint him; this is the one’ (1 Samuel 16:12).

Instead of leaning on our understanding, we need to trust in God and lean on Him. It may not be conventional in human terms, but there we find God’s wisdom.

Are you simply putting human pieces in place, or are you leaving room for God?