Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (Life Application Study Bible)
Jesus Tells Us Learn to trust Me in all situations, the tough ones, as well as the easy ones. Trust Me when you don’t understand what’s going on. Trust Me when everything seems to be spinning out of control. Trust me when you feel like you are all alone and no one understands. I understand. Don’t waste your time thinking about how things should have been. Don’t try to run away. Start right this minute accepting things exactly as they are, and search for My way through your challenges. Learn to look for the blessings and the opportunities I have hidden in those difficulties.
Jesus Concludes Trust me and lean on Me. I love you, and I will never let you down.
Proverbs 3:5-6; Psalm 52:8 Study Notes
Footnotes Proverbs 3:5-6 Leaning has the sense of putting your whole weight on something, resting on and trusting in that person or thing. When we have an important decision to make, we sometimes feel that we3 can’t trust anyone, even God. But God knows the best path for us. He is a better judge of what we need than we are! We must trust him completely in every choice we make. We should not omit careful thinking or belittle our God-given ability to reason, but we should not trust our own ideas to the exclusion of all others. We must not be wise in our own eyes. We should listen to and accept correction from God’s Word and wise counselors. Bring your decisions to God in prayer, use the Bible as your guide, and then follow God’s leading. He will make your paths straight by both guiding and protecting you.
Footnotes Proverbs 3:5-6 To receive God’s guidance, said Solomon, we must submit to God in all our ways. This means turning every area of life over to him. About a thousand years later, Jesus emphasized this same truth (Mathew 6:33). Examine your values and priorities. What is important to you? Where is God on that list? In what areas have you failed to acknowledge him? In many areas of your life, you may already acknowledge God, but the areas where you attempt to restrict or ignore his influence will cause you grief. If you make God a vital part of everything you do, he will guide you, because you will be working to accomplish his purposes.
Passage Psalm 52:8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God, I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.
Footnotes Psalm 52:8 David is contrasting God’s eternal protection of his faithful servants with the sudden destruction of the wicked. With the Lord by his side, David compares himself to an olive tree, flourishing in the house of God. Not only does a flourishing olive tree live for hundreds of years, but it also produces both food for sustenance and olive oil for cooking, light, and dozens of other uses. It represents great productivity and usefulness. This should be our prayer for ourselves.
Jesus Tells Us is from the Jesus Calling 365 devotions for kids.
THE WORLD…we see history
In the Word and the World, we see His Story. THOMAS HOOKER
Choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men from among your tribes, and I will make them heads over you.
Deuteronomy 1:13
Thomas Hooker, the father of Democracy
Thomas Hooker was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1586. He studied theology at Cambridge and became one of the most powerful and popular preachers in England. But he encountered pressure from the government due to his Puritan views and fled, first to Holland and then, by disguising himself for protection, to America as part of the great Puritan migration. In 1633, he became the pastor of a small church near the present site of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His pulpit skills were extraordinary, and he has been called “perhaps the greatest of the seventeenth-century American preachers.”1 Hooker believed in extending the right to vote to more people, and that put him at odds with some of his fellow Puritan leaders. In 1636, Hooker, his wife, his congregation of about a hundred, plus 160 cattle, left Cambridge and Boston, migrating south to establish the city of Hartford. Here on May 31, 1638, Hooker preached a midweek sermon from Deuteronomy 1:13, which has been called “among the most important sermons in colonial New England.”2 Hooker was drawn to this verse because it’s where Moses recounted how he developed a political structure that effectively oversaw the new nation of Israel. As Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness, he was overwhelmed with his responsibility. But he told the Israelites to choose wise, understanding leaders for themselves from among their tribes, and the people did so. The resulting organization provided relief to Moses and accountable leaders for the people. To Hooker, it was a pattern for how nations should be governed. A manuscript of Hooker’s sermon doesn’t exist, but one listener, Henry Wolcott Jr., took notes in shorthand, recording thirteen short paragraphs giving Hooker’s key points, one of which is: The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore must not be exercised according to their humor’s, but according to the blessed will and law of God. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations. The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.3 Hooker’s concept of democracy was considered radical in a world dominated by monarchs and emperors. Many historians believe the ideas he expressed set the stage for Connecticut to adopt a new constitution the following January, which is known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. This is considered the first written constitution to embody a democratic tone, and it became the model for constitutions in other colonies. Ultimately, it paved the way for the Constitution of the United States.
The WORD…we see Jesus, His Story!
That’s why Connecticut is known to this day as the Constitution State. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, inspired by the ideas of Deuteronomy 1:13 as preached by Thomas Hooker, said in its opening preamble, For as much as it hath pleased the Almighty God by the wise disposition of His Divine Providence so to order and dispose of things that we, the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the river of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining, and well knowing where a people are gathered together the Word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affrays of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and connive ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth, and do, for ourselves and our successors . . . enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess.4 The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut represent the beginnings of democracy in America. Some have called Hooker the Father of Democracy, and his ideas were firmly rooted in the priesthood of the believers based on the gospel of Christ.
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