Understanding God
Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths."
This passage was the first scripture I intentionally memorized. It's been an influence on all of my faith development since I was a teenager.
God's has revealed himself so that we might obtain his understanding and cultivate his wisdom.
This Proverb is not advice to turn off your brain, but to devote yourself to understanding the Scriptures, in communion with the Holy Spirit and Christ's body, so that you might be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Beware the people who insist you believe what they teach without understanding it. They are asking you to trust their understanding, not the Lord's.
God wants you to replace your understanding with his. As you reflect on the scriptures, seek his kingdom, apply his truths and grow in the mutual support and encouragement of his people, you will find yourself being "transformed by the renewing of your mind." The Word will confirm some things you already know, and convict you about some falsehoods you believe. Your views will be tested against your experience, the wisdom of others, the witness of Scripture and the examination of both the Holy Spirit and reason.
"Trusting in the Lord" is not possible without knowing or understanding anything. This is not the trust that God desires of us. Without understanding trust becomes largely passive and fatalistic: 'Life" happens to you, you may experience good things or suffering, you may act morally or immorally, but you trust God is doing whatever God does. You don't know good from evil, you don't know whether suffering or peace means anything. No, this is not what God means by Trusting Him.
Instead we often trust God based on our own understanding of God and ethics. We might trust that God doesn't care what we do. We might trust that God wants us to be selfish. That would be "our (poor) understanding of God." We might think that God is an impatient, angry and impossible to please person - That would be "our own understanding." Even people who diligently study Scripture might only confirm their own understanding. Jesus warned the Pharisees, "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." John 5:39-40.
As we humbly seek God, and allow him to convince us of who he really is, our understanding becomes more and more like His understanding. We trust the God who IS instead of the God we imagined.
And this is the God we can trust - we can trust that He is good! Kind! quick to forgive and low to anger! He is eager to bless us, NOT eager to smite us! This is the God who loved us while we were still sinners, and who died for us when we were rebelling against him. This is the God who will direct us when we pay attention to him, and will "restore our souls and lead us in the right paths, for his name's sake" Psalm 23:3.
Oddly we can't escape from the fact that we are always acting on OUR understanding. Even if we think we should ignore everything we know, that is still OUR idea! So the key is to submit OUR ideas to the scrutiny of God's Word, the Holy Spirit, and the wisdom of fellow Christians. The new understanding that we develop will be closer to God's understanding, but it will still be ours, and probably need further experience and learning to bring our understanding into line with God's wisdom.
Looking at the history of the church, and seeing how many mistakes our predecessors have made should not discourage us, but it should humble us: God appears to be more than willing to let this process take time, to put up with his people rushing ahead with only partially formed understanding. We will make mistakes - not because we want to - but one of the understandings we gain from scripture is that God can be trusted to do great things through fallible people. And we can trust him to complete the work he has begun in us, even as we trust that he wants us to eagerly seek his transforming love.