Proverbs 3:5-7 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
What do we do when a big problem arises? I think that most of us have a subconcious strategy that we use. I always go to my husband, He is very wise, and is not merely the man that I married. He is my best friend, my confidant, my partner in life, and I trust his wisdom. I also go to my Daddy. He is a very godly man and also full of much wisdom. I’ve entrusted my problems to my mother-in-law. I love and respect her very much, and I recognize the wisdom that she embodies. I also rely on the wisdom of my sisters and my friends, my pastor, and my church family. It seems that after I have exhausted all of these avenues, I bring out the big guns. I go to God, and I tell Him about the problem. I think it’s human nature to want to talk about a problem, but it should be our Christian nature to go straight to the problem solver of all creation.
We often try to fix our problems on our own. Oh yes, we call on friends and family to get their input, but still, we try to solve the problem by ourselves. We tend to wait and bring out our secret weapon when we realize that our strategies aren’t working. Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” A whole lot of the problems that we are trying to solve were created by our own mistakes in life, and try as we may, we can’t solve the problems using the same line of thinking that caused the problems. We need to call on the Master.
We always try to lean on our own understanding, but folks, our understanding is not always enough. Solomon shares the secret to problem solving in Proverbs chapter 3, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” We must learn to trust in the Lord with all of our hearts and not depend on our own understanding. We have to learn to give it all to God. Trust that He knows best. Trust that He always has our best interests at heart, and know that He understands the situation much better than we do. He even knows how everything is going to work out before we even know that there was a problem. That thought always amazes me.
Whether there is a problem at hand or not, we must be seeking the will of God in all things. Don’t get me wrong, it is wonderful to have godly spouses, friends, family, and church members to turn to in time of need, but the first one we should go to with our problems is God. We need to seek His will in everything. God doesn’t want us merely coming to Him daily with a prepared punch list of items we want Him to handle for us. He wants us to bring everything to Him, and He wants us to seek His direction in all situations and circumstances. When we do this, He will show us the path to take. He will show us the solution to the problem.
Solomon also tells us to not be impressed by our own wisdom. Now, that is something that we can’t take too lightly as it was written by the wisest man in the world. Solomon asked God for wisdom, and He was granted this gift. When the wisest man in the world tells us not to be impressed with our own wisdom, we should probably listen. We tend to get all puffed up and think that we know it all. We know what is going on in our lives, and we tend to think that we are the best ones to solve the problems. This way of thinking usually brings us to emptiness when we run out of fuel. We must learn to trust the wisdom of our all knowing Creator, and we must recognize that we don’t know it all.
We all have problems. Some are really big problems, and some are teeny tiny problems, but I’m quite sure that we all have at least one problem. Yet, it doesn’t matter how big or little our problems are, we know the Master problem solver. Our Master created the heavens and the earth. He is all knowing, all seeing and always present. He knows every single hair on our heads, and He knows what we are going through. He knows the troubles of our hearts. He also knows the solution. Why don’t you bring your problems to the foot of the cross today? Jesus tells us to give our burdens to Him. “For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:30) Let Him lighten your load today. Just give your problems to the Master problem solver, and get out of the way and watch Him work! Stop saying, “I got this.” Instead, learn to say and fully trust that “God’s got this!”
Inspirations from the Funny Farm 