“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6
I recently went to one of my son’s cross country meets to watch him run. To my amazement at the starting line, besides him were what I could only estimate close to 200 other guys in his category lined up. There must have been a million dollars alone on the feet of all those runners! The chatter among parents and coaches before the race revolved around the mere numbers and the difficulty the runners may find in spreading out early enough in the race before the path narrows. Some 17 minutes later the first runner crossed the finish line — challenged, but not phased by the course. He owned it. What caught my attention were the runners crossing the finish line near the 33 minute marker. The last 100 yards was clearly nothing they wanted any part of. It brought new meaning to … “press on!” I watched as these athletes crossed the line — the end — the final moment of the race for them and staggered to keep themselves upright. Many of them would fall to the left, get up only to fall to the right. Their bodies were refusing to listen to their mind and exhaustion had sapped every ounce of ability to stand on their own. Without hesitation, helpers would get on both sides of them and lend their own bodies to work on their behalf. The athlete had no choice but to lean on their person of rescue.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that with God? Wouldn’t it be the best if we could actually “have no choice but to” lean. Instead, we look at ourselves and say, “My legs are working — I’m gonna take it from here.” And this is how we tend to go about our lives — training ourselves to lean unto our own reality, lean on our own perceptions, lean on our own knowledge and then we wonder why our “legs” don’t work, or our “minds” won’t stop and our behavior won’t change. When our eyes are fixed only on ourselves, our hope in life becomes unstable. It becomes a brick used in the construction of our life. It appears pretty strong, feels pretty durable, but even the strongest brick placed on a foundation set on sand will crumble.
We train our soul to lean one of two directions. Unlike natural reality where there is a North, South, East and West to determine direction, in our spiritual reality there is only two directions . . . He and Me! The magnet of our soul turns the compass of our hearts to trust in one or the other. Unfortunately, many of us choose throughout our every day to follow the arrow on our compass to follow Me! When we move in this direction and place our trust in the ways of this world, absent Christ in our daily walk, our lives are filled with hopelessness. But when we follow the compass of our hearts to follow Him — to trust completely upon Him in EVERYTHING, our soul begins to learn to habitually lean on Him. He came so that we might have Hope! (Romans 15:4)
I don’t know about you, but this is where I want to be every minute of everyday. Like the athlete who on his own barely crosses the finish line, I want Christ to become my “legs,” my “arms,” my ALL! I want the magnet of my soul to, without question, habitually lean toward He every time! When this happens, God says, “thank you!” Because until we surrender ourselves to Him completely our needle will still be pointing to Me and not He. I’ve got to let Him every minute!
Let He, not Me . . . that’s the meaning of leaning!
“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” Psalm 125:1