Proverbs 3 — Stop Trying to Figure It All Out

Alright, beauties, Proverbs 3 is one of those chapters that we love to quote, but actually living it is a whole different story. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Sounds beautiful on a coffee mug, doesn’t it? 😂 It’s a lot harder when you have absolutely no idea what God is doing.

Because if we’re being honest, we like understanding. We like knowing the plan. We like knowing how this thing is going to turn out. We like answers and timelines, and some of us—I’ll raise my hand 🙋🏻‍♀️—would really prefer it if God would just hand us the itinerary so we could look it over first. But He doesn’t. He says, Trust Me. Not trust Me when it makes sense, when you agree with Me, or when you can see exactly where I’m taking you.

Trust Me with ALL your heart.

And then He comes for the part of me that gets me in trouble: “Lean not on your own understanding.” Well, there it is. 😂 Because I can overthink something to death. I can replay conversations, try to connect dots God never asked me to connect, and come up with seventeen different scenarios for how something might turn out—and then get anxious about all seventeen of them. Meanwhile, God is saying, Would you just trust Me?

Here’s what I’m learning:

You don’t have to understand everything God is doing to trust who God is.

There are going to be seasons when His way makes absolutely no sense to you. Doors will close that you thought He opened. People will leave that you thought would stay. Plans will change. Prayers may seem unanswered. Life will take a turn you never saw coming. And in those moments, you have a choice: lean on what you can see or lean into the God who sees what you can’t.

Proverbs 3 says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Notice it doesn’t say He’ll explain the path. It says He’ll direct it. There’s a difference. Sometimes faith looks like saying, “God, I don’t understand this. I don’t like this. This is NOT how I thought this was going to go. But I trust You more than I trust what I can see right now.”

That is surrender. Not my will, but Yours.

But Proverbs 3 doesn’t stop at trusting God with our own lives. It starts messing with how we treat people too. Verse 27 basically tells us that if it’s within our power to do good, then DO GOOD. Don’t just talk about being kind—be kind. Don’t just say you’re generous—give. Don’t just post about grace—extend it. And that gets uncomfortable because it’s easy to give grace to people we like. It’s a whole different story when God asks us to extend kindness to someone who hurt us, disappointed us, misunderstood us, or didn’t give us the same grace.

That’s because wisdom isn’t just supposed to change what we know.

Wisdom changes how we live.

It changes how we talk, how we respond, how we treat our neighbors, how tightly we hold our money, how quickly we forgive, and how badly we need to get even when somebody hurts us. God’s wisdom says, You don’t have to become ugly just because someone treated you ugly. Whew. You don’t need revenge. You don’t need to manipulate the outcome. You don’t need to make sure everybody knows your side. You don’t need to force justice with your own hands. You can trust God with that too.

And then Proverbs 3 starts laying out all these beautiful things connected to wisdom—peace, favor, direction, healing, abundance, security, confidence, blessing. Solomon is basically saying, Ladies, there is LIFE attached to the wisdom of God. Does that mean everything will be easy? Absolutely not. Does it mean we’ll never walk through storms? Nope. It means when the storm comes, we don’t have to lose ourselves in it. We can walk through things we don’t understand with a God we trust.

Maybe that’s the word for somebody today:

Stop trying to figure everything out. You don’t have to.

God already sees the part of the road you can’t see. Loosen your grip. Stop rehearsing every possible outcome. Stop demanding an explanation before you’ll trust Him. Open your hands and say, “Not my will, but Yours, God. I don’t understand it, but I trust You.” And then go live like someone who trusts Him. Love people. Do good. Be generous. Choose mercy. Forgive. Walk humbly. And leave the outcome with God.

Proverbs 3 makes me wanna SHOUT!! 🙌🏻 Because there is so much freedom in finally realizing, I DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT.

I just have to trust the One who does.