The Peril of Self-Trust

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; ⁶ in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths."

Proverbs 3:5-6

The tendency for me to trust self is something God has been bringing to my attention lately.  Trusting our own judgments and feelings is as natural to man as breathing - something our bodies do without even having to think about it.  Before the moment of decision we must determine to trust God and have our ways submitted to His will.  God has promised to direct the paths of those who trust Him, but if we do not admit and deal with our sinful habit to lean on our own understanding we will choose wrong.  A.W. Tozer gives good insight in his book The Crucified Life:

Sometimes a trial comes along, and we run to the Bible, pull out a quote and say, "According to this Scripture right here, we got it."  We have certain confidence in ourselves.  We think we know exactly what is going on.  The problem is that we do not know what is happening, and so God will deal with our self-trust.

God certainly knows our feelings.  He knows we are so proud of the way we rightly divide the word of truth and that we can disjoint a text like a butcher getting a chicken ready for the barbecue.  With words are carefully laid out and knowing just where to put your finger on this or just where to put your finger on that, you are too smart for God to bless you.  You know too much.  You can identify everything, but the dear heavenly Father knows you do not really know much at all.  He lets things happen to you until you recognise that you do not know what is happening.  Your friends do not know what is going on either.  And when you go to somebody you feel you can trust, that person will not be able to help you either.  That is actually good news.

It truly would be terrible if we had some holy Saint Francis to whom we all could go to find out where we were, what was happening to us and what life is all about.  God loves us too much for that.  He is trying to teach us to trust Him, not people - to lean on Him, not on people...As a Christian, you know some of the means God uses to teach His people.  As a Christian, you love God, but you are sick of all the nonsense in the world.  Your heart is crying after God just as the doe yearns for the water brooks.  Your heart and flesh cry out for the living God.  Yet in spite of all this, you still trust yourself.  You testify that you love your Bible and that your time of prayer is precious, but still your tendency is to trust yourself. (Tozer, A. W., and James L. Snyder. The Essential Tozer Collection. Bethany House, 2017. The Crucified Life, pages 108-109.)

Knowledge of God and His Word are gifts from God, but let us not lean on our own understanding.  Truth does not change over time, but there remains much truth packed away even in the most familiar verses we do not grasp or practice.  How we need to rely upon God to teach and direct us!  Let us trust the LORD, and when we obey the leading of the Holy Spirit we will begin to mature into the disciples Jesus saved us to be.