“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5, ESV)

It is an easy error to take a passage like this one, and turn it into something it is not. All one need do, is take the first word “trust” and make it bear the entire weight of the thought. But that is to miss the point entirely. In other words, our author’s exhortation is NOT to merely be a trusting person, to be a “person of faith” or to have some sort of generic trust that everything will work out OK. What we are being called to here is to trust in God Himself. To trust His character, His promises. We cannot trust our own perceptions of circumstances and their imagined meanings. But we can and MUST trust God’s revelation of Himself in His word, and in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This takes us off of the futile task of trying always attach specific meaning to very little event in life – to instead find the meaning of everything in the Author of Life Himself. Trust Him Believer. Trust the God who cannot lie. Trust the God who cannot sin. Trust His promises. Trust His descriptions of reality in the Word. Trust His Gospel. Trust Him above everybody and everything else. But then again – do not forget the underlying presupposition here: You cannot trust anyone you do not know – not really. So – do you know Him? Do you know Him in the person of Jesus Christ? Do you know Him as your Lord and Savior? As your sin-bearer? When you do – then you can trust Him fully.