Don't Lean on Your OWN Understanding
© "God Goggles"
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 ESV
I understand lots of people have heard this verse before, probably thousands of times. Have you truly thought about what it means though? I sure have, hundreds of times over the years. Everyone all my life has preached this to me. I kept wondering why someone did not just tell me what it was altogether.
Well, of course it means do not lean on your own understanding. That is a given. But, the Bible also tells us to test the spirits, to discern, to use the Bible as our playbook. Don't doing those types of things require us leaning on our understanding? Don't doing those types of things require us to use our brain, our noggin, our minds? Of course they do. I think that we can take this verse a little further. I have prayed about this much. In my time over the years of trying to use my God Goggles I have gotten it right at times and I have gotten it wrong at times.
First, why would we need understanding to begin with? - We need understanding in just about everything in life. Little things are easy of course. We all must daily wash, clothe ourselves, manage our affairs but even those things have hidden agendas and motives attached to them. Every decision we make in life is driven by a need, a goal, a desire, or by fulfilling one of those for someone else. When we know our own motives, we can see why we need understanding. Our motives are human driven unless we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us, giving us God motives.
So, because we are human we are in what seems a never ending vicious cycle of my wants, God's wants, my wants, God's wants. We don't have to be a slave to our motives though. We CAN learn how to lean on God's understanding by tuning into our own thoughts, thought processes, and learning how to then tune them out and only hearing God speak. We still need to hear ourselves, yes most definitely, but at the same time we need to learn to filter out ourselves.... then we can learn to filter out the enemy as well.
So, How do We do This?
When I lean on all of the information that I have learned in life via the Bible, experiences, pastor's sermons, etc., I get a rough estimate of how to react to situations. When we react to a situation we have to use the information at hand.
Using my past experiences, knowledge, and God's word as a playbook, I get a short glimpse of what is needed to react and transmit more knowledge in situations. Only when I let the Holy Spirit also lead me in life do I get the FULL scope of the situation at hand. We will study reacting to stimuli and situations more later in the OODA loop section but for now I want you to get the jest of this idea of not leaning on your own understanding. Sometimes if we do not allow the Holy Spirit to lead us we can miss the boat altogether.
I have missed SO many opportunities because I went with my gut instinct, my human instinct, and was wrong. I could have served the Lord or even just had a wonderful humanly material blessing. There is the fact that you are human. Yes. But remember that God did not mean for us to have all this knowledge. We ate from the 'tree'. He wanted us to lean on Him to begin with. When you do so, your God Goggles will work ever more brilliantly! Keep reading to see how to hear the Holy Spirit more as the project goes on...
© "God Goggles"
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 ESV
I understand lots of people have heard this verse before, probably thousands of times. Have you truly thought about what it means though? I sure have, hundreds of times over the years. Everyone all my life has preached this to me. I kept wondering why someone did not just tell me what it was altogether.
Well, of course it means do not lean on your own understanding. That is a given. But, the Bible also tells us to test the spirits, to discern, to use the Bible as our playbook. Don't doing those types of things require us leaning on our understanding? Don't doing those types of things require us to use our brain, our noggin, our minds? Of course they do. I think that we can take this verse a little further. I have prayed about this much. In my time over the years of trying to use my God Goggles I have gotten it right at times and I have gotten it wrong at times.
First, why would we need understanding to begin with? - We need understanding in just about everything in life. Little things are easy of course. We all must daily wash, clothe ourselves, manage our affairs but even those things have hidden agendas and motives attached to them. Every decision we make in life is driven by a need, a goal, a desire, or by fulfilling one of those for someone else. When we know our own motives, we can see why we need understanding. Our motives are human driven unless we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us, giving us God motives.
So, because we are human we are in what seems a never ending vicious cycle of my wants, God's wants, my wants, God's wants. We don't have to be a slave to our motives though. We CAN learn how to lean on God's understanding by tuning into our own thoughts, thought processes, and learning how to then tune them out and only hearing God speak. We still need to hear ourselves, yes most definitely, but at the same time we need to learn to filter out ourselves.... then we can learn to filter out the enemy as well.
So, How do We do This?
When I lean on all of the information that I have learned in life via the Bible, experiences, pastor's sermons, etc., I get a rough estimate of how to react to situations. When we react to a situation we have to use the information at hand.
Using my past experiences, knowledge, and God's word as a playbook, I get a short glimpse of what is needed to react and transmit more knowledge in situations. Only when I let the Holy Spirit also lead me in life do I get the FULL scope of the situation at hand. We will study reacting to stimuli and situations more later in the OODA loop section but for now I want you to get the jest of this idea of not leaning on your own understanding. Sometimes if we do not allow the Holy Spirit to lead us we can miss the boat altogether.
I have missed SO many opportunities because I went with my gut instinct, my human instinct, and was wrong. I could have served the Lord or even just had a wonderful humanly material blessing. There is the fact that you are human. Yes. But remember that God did not mean for us to have all this knowledge. We ate from the 'tree'. He wanted us to lean on Him to begin with. When you do so, your God Goggles will work ever more brilliantly! Keep reading to see how to hear the Holy Spirit more as the project goes on...
