I scrolled through every “beach chair” listing I could find.
I compared their height, weight and special features, adding each to the running pro/con list in my mind.
I read a hundred different reviews—most of them negative, of course—and nearly drove my family crazy asking “what do you think about this one?”
If I’m honest, I nearly drove myself crazy, as well. I over-analyzed and over-complicated a decision that should have been easy.
Have you ever struggled with decision-making like this?
Maybe you’ve never wrestled with which beach chair to buy, but what about your bigger decisions—those choices that have the potential to be life-altering for you?
In cases like these, decision-making can be heavy. We feel like it’s all up to us and we put so much pressure on ourselves to “get it right.”
But the wise words we find in Proverbs 3:5-6 offer a better way to make our decisions.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (WEBBE)
These familiar verses urge us to do two things when we face choices of any size: Make sure your trust is in the right place and prioritize relational decision-making.
Make sure your trust is in the right place.
Most of us tend to trust our own minds when it comes to making decisions.
Just like I scoured the internet and analyzed my findings until I was sure I’d found the perfect beach chair, we research, interpret, and draw conclusions with every choice we make. We decide—with our own minds—which path is best.
Sometimes, though, our most thoughtful decisions still end up being poor ones. My beach chair purchase was a prime example of this. Despite the hours I’d spent selecting this “perfect chair,” when I finally lowered myself into it, the seat sagged and one arm creaked over to the right until I was sitting at a precarious tilt.
I had leaned on my own understanding and, as I result, I was now leaning my full weight on a rickety, unreliable chair.
Our understanding of what is right and best is fallible. And every time we make decisions based solely on our thoughts, we are entrusting our valuable, fragile lives to something truly rickety.
Thankfully, there’s a better option. Verse 5 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding.”
It’s not that God doesn’t want us to do our due diligence. He gave us minds and He wants us to use them, which is probably why this verse does not say, “don’t try to understand.” Rather, it simply says, “don’t lean on your own understanding” (emphasis mine).
We should always use our minds, but our understanding of things shouldn’t be calling the shots in our lives. Ultimately, God should be doing that. Our lives (and the choices that make up our lives) should be totally entrusted and surrendered to the Lord. His wisdom makes Him the perfect One to set our direction, after all!
This is what it means to trust in Him with all our hearts: it’s valuing His perspective over our own. It’s being willing to act on His guidance because we know that He Himself is the sturdiest base for our lives.
Unlike our human understanding, God is worthy of trust. We can lean our full weight on Him without fear of collapse. And we can live in freedom knowing that our lives depend on His faithfulness and not on our figuring everything out.
Prioritize relational decision-making over perfect decisions.
Verse 6 says, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
When we begin to truly trust in the Lord with all our hearts, we naturally start turning to Him when we have big decisions to make. We really do want Him to lead us down those straight paths!
But two details in this verse challenge us to go even further.
First, the writer of Proverbs says to acknowledge God in all our ways—not just in the big, weighty decisions.
What if we started inviting God into our little choices? What might happen if we talked to God about our dinner plans and our grocery lists, the movies we stream on weekends and the subjects we broach with neighbors? What if we even talked to him about silly little purchases like beach chairs?
The truth is, I don’t know how these decisions might turn out differently if God was a part of them. Maybe they’d turn out exactly the same way, regardless. But God still tells us to acknowledge and invite Him into these places. Perhaps that’s because—most of all—He is concerned with how intimately we relate to Him.
You know, the second detail I find challenging is what this verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “In all your ways strive for perfection.” It says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him…” (emphasis mine)
Every choice we face is ultimately an opportunity to draw closer to God. The more often we turn and confer with Him, the more familiar we’ll get with His thoughts and ways and, most importantly, with His loving heart.
Of course, the end result of walking this closely with God is that we really do end up on straight paths—paths that, even though they may seem winding from our perspective, align with God’s will and are leading us directly toward His good plans for us.
Making decisions this way is light. With God, it is never “all up to us” and as long as we are going through the process with Him, we’ll be getting the most important thing right—relationship.
May every choice we make today be this kind of decision.
This devotion is based on one of the Scriptures from my reading plan: “Wisdom from Above” which covers Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Job. To receive a copy of the reading plan (and future reading plans), sign up for the email list below. Hope you’ll follow along!
©2024 Paige K. Burhans
Scriptures taken from the World English Bible British Edition. Public Domain.
