Day 248: Trust Me

Today’s Scripture: Proverbs 22:17-19

Central Thought: We should seek wisdom and knowledge to trust in God alone.

I have always enjoyed the Peanuts comic strips. I think most people can identify with the characters created by Charles M. Schulz, whether it be Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, or Snoopy. One thing that always bothered me, though, is why Charlie Brown continued to trust Lucy to hold the football for him to kick. She always pulled it away; and he always ended up looking foolish, usually on his back. In my mind, trust and Lucy are two words that do not go together.

When we think about trust and spiritual leaders, they should go together. Proverbs 22:17-19 gives us an idea of what should engender our trust in a spiritual leader: that the person guides us to put our trust in God. Two New Testament examples help us understand this principle.

The first is the incident involving the healing of a lame man outside the temple. When questions arose about what had taken place, Peter and John answered, ‘Why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus . . . And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all” (Acts 3:12-16).

In the second example, the apostle Paul declared to believers in Corinth, ‘What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:5-7). Paul wanted believers to understand their faith was to be in God, not in any human leader.

Devotional Prayer: Lord, help our spiritual leaders to always point us to trust in You alone and not in any mere human.

Today’s Bible Reading: Ecclesiastes 7:1-9:18; 2 Corinthians 7:8-16; Psalm 48:1-14; Proverbs 22:17-19