In All Our Ways

"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 (NASB)


These verses are, no doubt, as familiar to you as they are to me. I memorized them as a child, claimed them as a teenager, taught them to my children. I sometimes even refer to them as "default verses"...those verses someone will quickly quote when asked their favorite verse. They are easy to remember, and easy to relate to. Follow God, believe him, and he will take care of you.

This week, as he is so faithful and loving to do, God taught me something brand new in these verses. He showed me that these verses, like everything else in his Word, are even more personal than I had imagined.

My firstborn will begin her junior year in high school in a few weeks. It is a weird time. How can I be old enough to have a child that old? What happened to my baby girl? I wonder if I feel it even more acutely because I homeschool. I have had her with me for everything her whole life. Can our schooling journey really be coming to an end? And she is feeling some of those same things. More and more, people are asking her those questions that everyone asks kids as high school draws to an end. "Where are you going to college?" "What are you going to major in?" "What are you going to do?"

These questions are really beginning to frustrate her. The other day she said, "Mom, I'm 15! How in the world am I supposed to know what I want to do?" She was right. But that's where these verses come in. God reminded me that he is intimately interested in ALL her ways. He is interested in ALL our ways. And his only desire is for her (and me, and you) to trust him, to depend on him, to seek him and follow him. He will direct the rest. It is a day by day trusting. There is nothing wrong with making plans and nothing wrong with preparing for the future. In fact, we should be prepared. But we should be prepared spiritually, and we should be prepared for WHATEVER he calls us to, not just for what we think we might do. And as we follow him day by day, step by step, he will reveal those plans as he is ready, as we need to know.