Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding….
Proverbs 3:5
The Bible tells us Jesus had the ‘spirit without measure’. Isaiah chapter eleven illustrates the seven Spirits of God as the fulness of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord. As we process our verses today I want to highlight the help we have been given as Spirit filled believers so we will not lean to our own understanding.
Helps Word Study defines lean from the Greek (SN 8172) shāʿan as properly, to lean on, be supported; choosing the means of support (rely on).
From the book of Acts we learn the first disciples to experience the promised outpouring of the Spirit, were ‘all filled with the Spirit’. From Paul’s writings to the church at Corinth we learn the gifts of the Spirit were given to profit and edify the body of Christ.
From 1 Corinthians 14 we learn the manifestations of these Seven Spirits, or the fulness of the Holy Spirit, operate to exhort, comfort and edify the church. Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit to be in us and with us, is to be our help.
1 Corinthians 2:6–16 (ESV):
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord
of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
So when we come back to Proverbs 3 and it tells us ‘to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not to our own understanding’, we find through the help and direction of the Holy Spirit, wisdom from God that gives us the God perspective needed.
In the acknowledging of Him, in all our ways, we find direction. His reproofs and corrections (3:11-12) are proofs of His love and when heeded, set us back on the road to life that verses 16-18 refer to.
The admonition to not be wise in our own eyes, verse 7, is the call to humility. Fear the Lord is our command to submit and obey. The evil we are to turn from is the leaning on of our own understanding. Finding wisdom and gaining understanding (verse 13) is the blessing that comes from acknowledging Him.
I find in my own world, there is always a word God has decreed that can sustain me, if I will trust it. When we continually acknowledge him, his word, his ways, above our understanding, choosing to trust and lean upon Him, he will direct and make straight our paths. I will find His wisdom and hold His understanding.