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Lean on Me

by Brian Flewelling on August 24, 2021

Trust is the center tent post in life; it holds everything up. I trust that my grocery store is going to have food so I don’t have to grow it myself. It’s even smaller than that. I trust no one put poison in my toothpaste, or nails in my bread. The motorist driving towards me will stay on their side of the road. My secretary will smile at me and not slap me. My car, computer, phone, furnace, the national grid, they will all work without me having the slightest clue how. I depend on them to behave today the way they behaved yesterday. After all, no one knows everything. We are all leaning on someone else’s knowledge and someone else’s expertise. Trust says, “you can lean on me.”

Our relationship with God is built on trust. Time and experience and truth are essential ingredients to us learning more and more how to lean on him; “trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding…” The first serpent’s attack in the garden was to erode mankind’s trust in our Heavenly Father. “Did God really say”—so goes the serpent’s lie. Ground zero of his warfare against us is to disrupt our trusting relationship. To not trust in the Father is to lean on something else for a solution: our own strength, our own ingenuity, our own financial portfolio, others who can make us happy. This is misalignment and a lack of trust in God's sacred order.

God is inviting us back into deepening trust with him, to follow his sacred order. Especially when my mind can’t see through life’s puzzles, I have to trust in God’s solutions, God’s provisions, and God’s methods. I don’t have to take matters into my own hands. I don’t have to manipulate people, or resort to theft or violence to get what I need. I don’t have to live in anxiety or hide secrets. I can pray and ask God to provide solutions. It is better to walk in the pain of truth than to forge my own path that leads to greater consequences.

Listen to a few of these verses from scripture and see how we can grow in trust.

Verse 1: Those who know your name trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you. Psalm 9:10

Principle 1: Learn to call on his name--he does not fail us.

Verse 2: What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web. Job 8:14

Principle 2: Alternatives to God (career, social status) are unreliable.

 Verse 3: Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Psalm 20:7

 Principle 3: We rely on God’s strength to protect us, not our ability, strength, or cunning to protect ourselves.

 Verse 4: Do not put your trust in idols or make metal images of gods for yourselves. Leviticus 19:4

 Principle 4: Do not trust in your made-things, but rather in the power of your Provider.    

Verse 5: But you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him. Deuteronomy 9:23

Principle 5: It requires trust to adhere to God’s way even when we don’t understand, or we think we know a better way.

Verse 6: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. Psalm 28:7a

 Principle 6: Learn to pray, “Lord help me, and teach my heart to learn to lean on you.”

Tags: trust, relationships, trust in the lord

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