October 15: Trust = health + strength

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths. Don’t consider yourself to be wise; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.  (Proverbs 3:5-8 — Holman Christian Standard Bible)

Trust is not a feeling, it’s a conscious decision to depend on God — a decision of our minds. Trust involves intelligent faith, a faith that reasons, thinks things through, and decides that God is worthy of trust based on His promises, what He’s done in other people’s lives, and what He’s done in our lives. This passage tells us not to rely on our own understanding. Like a person would lean on a tree, or a child rely on his parents, we are to consciously depend on God instead of our own understanding. This always involves being tough with our emotions. And though this passage tells us to trust in God “with all your heart”, in this context “heart” would mean the core of our being instead of the center of our emotions. Emotions do not give rise to trust. 

It’s so easy to consider ourselves wise, and to rely on our own understanding. Because we’ve lived through certain situations it’s easy to think that we are experts on how things work, and can even dismiss the promises of God in favor of our experiences. If some people could put their experiences on one side of a scale and God’s Word on the other, the side of their experiences would weigh more. But we need to remember that God and His Word are always right, unlike our experiences. If anything is faulty, it would have to be our experience and memory rather than the Word of God.

Trust in God = healing to our bodies + strength to our bones. I wonder how many people are in bad health as a direct result of their lack of trust in God. Heart problems, ulcers, strokes, high blood pressure, insomnia… it’s fairly easy to link these and other health problems to a person’s lack of trust in God. But just like Jesus came healing the sick and setting people free, God’s will is for us not even to get to the point of being sick. Trust in God is crucial not only for salvation, but for a quality life on earth.