Lean Not On Your Own Understanding and It May Improve Your Health

Welcome to another post on the Still in the Storm Substack.

Today, I want to talk to you about the impact of wisdom and the path you take in life on your health and wellbeing.

We humans were wonderfully created by God to bear His image.

As such, we are the highest life form on the planet, just a little lower than angels.

Humans are tripartite beings similar to the Godhead.

We have a spirit, soul, and body.

Our spirit is that which interacts with God’s Spirit when it comes to dwell within us.

So, the spirit is the part of the human which interacts with the Spiritual world.

The spirit is within the soul, which is the mind, will and emotions.

The soul is the self-life. It wants to feed itself from the Tree of Knowledge.

And then the body is the part that interacts with the physical world.

As is the case for many of us before coming to the Lord, it is our soul that drives our will and in turn what we do with our bodies.

However, God intended that we would yield our will to Him and that His Spirit would provide the driving force for our lives.

The fall has done a lot to damage that but, thank God we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior; who by the sacrifice of His life put us back into good standing with the Father.

When we think of health, we often limit it to just the body.

I believe this is a mistake.

We should not ignore the impact that the spirit and soul have on the overall health of the body. After all, it is one whole being.

This is revealed in one of my favorite passages of scripture, Proverbs 3, specifically versus 5-10.

I think there is an incredibly valuable message to be found within it so, that is what drove me to write this today.

Let’s look at the passage.

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'Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with good wine. '

Proverbs 3:5-10 NLT

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Most people believe that the author of the Book of Proverbs is Solomon since he was one of the wisest men who ever lived. That is until, the person who is wisdom personified came to dwell in the flesh.

For now, let’s assume that Solomon is the author and he starts by telling us that we should trust the Lord with all our heart and to not depend at all on our own wisdom or understanding.

Because of the finished work of Jesus Christ and since His Spirit now indwells us, we have access to Him.

This in turn means that since He is wisdom, then we can take Him as our wisdom.

But, why should we do that? Don’t we seem to be able to figure out things pretty well ourselves?

Not quite, especially if you look at the state of the world today.

You see when we lean into our own understanding and try to discern the difference between good and evil ourselves then we are right back eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

Not only does this end up leading us wrong more often than not, it doesn’t satisfy the Lord since we are more focused on what we think and what we want instead of Him.

The great thing about fully trusting the Lord and taking Him to be our wisdom is that when we do that He will guide our paths; we will not be led astray.

Now that path may not be what we want but, that is quite the point.

The reality of the Christian life, the life we were created for, is that we are not to live for ourselves but for God and now we can live by Christ’s life in us.

Unfortunately, we spend most of our lives striving to make a name for ourselves instead of doing work by the Lord’s name.

It really isn’t surprising though since we’ve been indoctrinated to the world system since birth and our culture in the west only reinforces it.

Still, I’ve come to realize that the problem is one largely of perspective.

It is the difference between viewing things from an earthly vs a heavenly perspective.

Do you see what happens each day through the eyes of the world or the eyes God?

You might be wondering at this point if I’m crazy and perhaps I am but you are nonetheless able to see through the eyes of the Lord, that much I know.

This isn’t a seeing through your physical eyes, but rather spiritual ones.

When we consider how God sees us and why He created us, it completely changes how we look at life.

More on that in another post but, the point I want to make here is that we truly can trust in and depend on the Lord.

And amazingly what Solomon goes on to tell us in verse 8 is that if we do trust in the Lord and take Him as our wisdom, not only will He show us which path to take but, that we will have healing for our bodies and strength for our bones.

Wow! What a Christ!

He truly is our great Shepherd and will care for all of our needs if we put all of our trust in Him and this includes nourishing and strengthening our bodies.

How does this happen?

If we really and truly trust in Him with all our hearts then that removes a lot of weight and anxiety that we tend to carry around in our everyday lives.

Do you remember when Jesus said to take His yoke, that His burden is light?

Well that’s one way that this Proverb is played out in the New Testament and continues to play out in our lives today.

The yoke that we have inherited from the fall is a very heavy burden indeed.

When we try to live for the world and trust in our own understanding then that too puts a great burden on us.

However, we can now take Jesus and His yoke. We can cast all our anxieties on Him and He will gladly take them.

Again, what a Christ!

In case you aren’t aware, our thoughts and emotions including stress and anxiety absolutely play a significant role in our physical health.

I believe that is what Solomon is alluding to here.

When we exchange our lives for the Lord’s life everything falls into place.

This is God’s deepest desire from before the foundation of the earth when He created us in Christ.

If you’ve taken any science classes you might remember that an organism always thrives when it’s in its natural habitat and doesn’t do so well if you take it out of it.

Think of a fish out of water. That doesn’t work so well for the fish if it goes for more than a minute or so.

The same is true with us humans. The world is not our natural habitat and we suffer because of that.

We were created for God and in Christ. Our natural habitat is thus the body of Christ or the ekkelsia.

It’s not even an individual life, despite how much we promote independence and individualism in the west.

Our natural habitat is a shared life with others, a family if you will, built up together by Christ with Him at the head and functioning as His body.

In order to do that you have to surrender to the Lord’s will and accept His desires over yours.

As I talked about in last week’s article, if you receive a mind-blowing revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ and all we have been given in Him then you will see why its easy to surrender to Him.

It won’t always be easy though because the ekklesia is completely opposed to the world but, you will have Christ at with you always even to the end of the earth to guide and defend you.

Oh, and it may just improve your health and well-being too.

Let me know what you think in the discussion below.

Talk soon,

Mike

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