Guest Post - Lean Not On Your Own Understanding, by Grace Stevenson

As promised, here is a guest post from my daughter, Grace.  I am very proud of her.  I also really needed to hear what she is saying here, today.  

Grace's blog is called Undivided Heart, and this is how she describes what she does there -" The thoughts and ponderings of a young woman who is enjoying the presence of God and becoming wholeheartedly devoted to King & Kingdom."  

You can reach Grace's blog here ~ Undivided Heart.   Please feel free to stop by and let her know what you think.  Tell her that her mommy sent you.   

Enjoy.

Lean Not On Your Own Understanding

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and  lean not on your own understanding” Proverbs 3:5

It’s really hard to do this. I’ve known this verse since I was a child, but I’m only getting it now. If I could go back in time and say something to myself, I would say this verse. I wish I could have grasped the principle of genuinely trusting God earlier. But I think it’s one of those lessons that has to be learned through experience  Because, even now that I understand the meaning of this verse and it’s importance, it’s still incredibly hard to put it into practice.

I think the key to learning to trust God is to detach God’s trustworthiness from how you feel. I rarely feel like God is backing me up, or like he’s working everything out for my good. But he is. Regardless of how I feel. This summer I came to the realization that my feeling are not an accurate representation of reality. Even if I take God out of it for a minute; I often feel lonely, and unloved, but it’s not true. There are several people in my life that love me. I am rarely alone. And when I put God back into it, even if no one loved me, and I lived by myself in a cave, He would love me.

We often look at people of great faith in history, and believe that they had something that we don’t, and that that’s why they were able to trust in Jesus. But they didn’t have this magic ability to trust that we don’t have. They just looked at the Bible and acted upon truth. That Bible says “God works all things together for the good of those who love him”(Romans 8:28). That’s it. So now, our job is to live our lives in the truth of that. We are guided by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, not our feelings. We lean on God instead of our own understanding because the he has told us too, not because we feel like it.   ~ Grace Stevenson, Undivided Heart, February 21, 2013