The Acknowledgement Factor

Edie was a beautiful lady in my Sunday School class who taught this verse all her life. She recently died of cancer. Her testimony is remembered for her love for Christ Jesus and others, her family and the beautiful music she played/sang...She taught me the importance of Proverbs 3.

For me it means looking for the hand of God in every situation. It also means that if I am in a situation where I do not understand what is going on, I can rely on God and rest with Him. I remind myself that life is like a tapestry or cross stitch. God is making something beautiful with the threads of my life, and He alone has the total picture in His mind.

For me it would be in my thought life. So many times my mind gets the best of me and I try to figure everything and everyone out. Instead I need to think about whether I am pleasing God and if I am trust God to keep my paths straight and work the situation out. I think sometimes I get frustrated when life is hard and wonder where I went wrong. Realizing that God said there would be trials in this life and seeking God to help me walk through them. Remembering that it is God that takes care of us ultimately. God gives us everything we have.

We need to acknowleg him in riasing and our lying down and our going out and coming in, in all that we done acknowledg that God is the one that give us the breath and stregnth,curage and health to do all these things.We also need to be as Christ like as posiable in all our daily activities,even when time are hard,unjust,and cruel and just not going our way. We need to let God Shine thru us in all situations.Give God the Glory at all times!!!!!

As you said the advice in Proverbs 3:5,6 is powerful! Reading the verses is one thing but putting them into practice is another. We need to recognize and acknowledge His Lordship and embrace only His will (and not our own). I think these verses portray a battle of the wills.

I am guilty of leaning on my own understanding as well, I tend to over analyse and use my own wisdom to discern what is happening and to make decisions. It is something that I am praying constantly about. Case on point, some new development happen at work recently and I was tempted to contact a senior and give my personal views. However, I was apprehensive because I feared how I would be viewed. I prayed about it seeking God's leading. Within the hour of praying the senior I wanted to speak with called seeking my views. This only confirms that God is concerned with every aspect of our lives and if we let Him He will make our crooked paths straight.

To trust, you have to have a relationship and the central part of my relationship with the Father is to acknowledge Him in all things. The more I pray and read God's word the more I trust & acknowledge Him- taking all my cares, concerns and joys to Him. When I drift from God and don't take the time to meditate with Jesus, I falter.

Another part of acknowledging Him is to have a thankful heart for all that He's blessed us with. So often in our society we are rushed here and there, doing this and that without taking the time to stop and just thank Him. Thank You Lord for giving me this day, thank you for my family/friends, the freedom to read Your word. Thank You for Your profound grace and teach me to walk in Your ways.

Finally, to acknowledge Him is to see God as a Father, Teacher, Son, Holy Spirit, Creator, etc. He is our everything and He should be everything to us.

Proverbs 3:5-6 is a tough scripture for me as well as all who commented. You basically have to give up what you have been doing, believing, and following for however many years you have been alive. Totally, strip yourself of what you know to be you.

There was a quote from Charles Spurgeon that says something like this, "It is easy to speak the words we say but to understand and live the meaning of those words is a whole other animal." That can also be applied to the scriptures especially Proverbs 3:5-6.

We have in the church I belong a Sunday School mission and it says, To help students UNDERSTAND the word so they can APPYLY the word and then better enable them to LIVE the word. Which also is based out of Proverbs. So Tami, you ask, "How do we get there?," well we must Understand, Apply, and Live. In order to do this we must Ask, Seek and Knock by our diligent study of the word of God. This requires us to acknowledge that we need God to teach us, fill us, heal us, mold us, shape us, make us. He is potter we are the clay, says Jeremiah! Humility which comes from the word humiliation is where it all begins if we are not willing to be humiliated for God then we have absolutely no chance at the deeper things of God.

To acknowledge God in all my ways, I've found it beneficial to be introspective, inviting the Holy Spirit to help me examine my life, where I've come from, to see how God has been there and moved in every situation, the good and the very much less than good, to understand what brought me to the place I'm now in. Acknowledging God for me is to begin to see and accept the person (personality, temperament, physical make-up, emotions) that He created me to be from Day 0. Acknowledging God is when I totally rely on His grace through what Jesus did on the cross for the unending life He has prepared & is preparing for me. There is more to acknowledging God and His ways than can be expressed in a few sentences. It is an on-going process. I'm grateful to have the life He's given me here on earth to continue in that and then eternity to fully acknowledge Him as He IS.

Fully trusting in god is a hard thing. But because I want to, the lesson continues. Example: I had the opportunity to purchase some thing for my business but did not have the money. I turned the offer down. but the man insisted and would not leave. At one point I believe I heard the lord say "go ahead I will provide the money you need." Know its due and I haven't got the money. Am I worried?oh yea!!! do I believe his word is true? yes. so I do understand and am at this time learning proverbs 3:

I believe that acknowledging Him in all our ways means that when we read His Word we must not form our own opinion of what we think the Scripture is saying. We are told in Proverbs to seek Wisdom and understanding and God knows why He tells us to do so. Some of us are proud and think we can discern on our own. That is so far from the truth because we have to depend on God for everything. Without Him we are nothing. He is our Creator and the laws are His "rules" by which we should live. When we accept Him, then He will send the His Spirit to dwell in us and the Spirit will guide our understanding and His light will shine in us. The more we read and accept His Word then the more we will be able to fully acknowledge Him and grown in faith.

I think God's Inspired Word was written in a way that it would not be easily understood. I think it is written this way so we would want to know more and delve more so we can learn more. God knows our heart because we are easily bored. He really wants to to be fully equipped when Satan comes to tempt us. What an awesome Father we have! Let us praise Him for His mercies endure forever.

On top of the personal guidance this verse has always given me, I find it a conclusive argument for those who (in increasing numbers!) have adopted the fascinating habit of making everything intensely intellectual. While I find this sort of exercize exciting as well, yet it has often become the final judge of truth in a given person's life, so that basic truths of God's Word cannot be taken for what they obviously say. They have to be put in doubt or intellectualized, and even then you can never really know whether this is basic truth! Yet the wisest man of all time said that you should not depend on your understanding - thereby replacing God's authority. It's strange - and frightening - how ANY sideroad can become so fascinating that God's simple and revealed truth can be ignored.

I really connect to these posts -

From Jessica "The more I pray and read God's word the more I trust & acknowledge Him- taking all my cares, concerns and joys to Him. When I drift from God and don't take the time to meditate with Jesus, I falter."

and

From Deloree "I am guilty of leaning on my own understanding as well, I tend to over analyse and use my own wisdom to discern what is happening and to make decisions."

I'm sitting here wondering what is the key to staying in God's presence and how do we stop automatically trying to figure things out on our own? I struggle with this.