Be Confident in God’s Perfect Insight

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Be Confident in God’s Perfect Insight

Proverbs 3:5-12

Speaker: Pastor
Series:

Stop Trusting Your Own GPS: Why God’s Navigation System Never Fails

Have you ever been absolutely certain you knew the right way to go, only to end up completely lost? We’ve all been there – confidently following our own directions while ignoring the GPS, convinced we know a “better route.” Life decisions work the same way. We think we can navigate on our own, but what if there’s a better way?

This morning, I want to talk about something that could change how you approach every decision in 2026: being confident in God’s perfect insight instead of trusting your own understanding.

The Heart vs. The Eyes: Two Ways to Navigate Life

We’re looking at Proverbs 3:1-12 this morning, and if you don’t know who I am, I’m Pastor Dan. I’m the family pastor here. Before we dive deep, let me remind you that “Proverbs, believe it or not, is a book of Proverbs. And so what are Proverbs? Proverbs are, quite simply, they’re wisdom sayings. What’s interesting, and one of the things we have to be careful of when we read through Proverbs, is that Proverbs are generally true statements. And that word generally makes a big difference.”

The passage begins with Solomon writing to his son, saying in Proverbs 3:1-4: “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and years of life and peace, they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.”

But then in verse 5, “we’re gonna see, what does this look like, how does this happen?” The answer comes in Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Instead, in all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

Notice something crucial here. “We have your heart, and then we have your eyes. And what he’s saying is he’s setting up this diametrically opposed way of thinking.” The heart represents our deepest motivations – “almost always in the Bible, it’s used in a metaphorical terminology and it’s talking about our most inner being. For me, it’s helpful to remember it’s the motivation factory. It’s what drives everything else in our lives.”

The Default Setting We All Share

Here’s the reality: “The natural man, the natural way we all can live. This doesn’t take any outside effort. This doesn’t take any purpose in our hearts. This literally is just the way we work. We naturally all want to affect our hearts for our good, and we all want to see or discern life in our own understanding, right? That’s easy. We all can do that. And honestly, that’s our default.”

“Unless by faith, God does something in our hearts and by the power of His Word, he changes the way we think. He changes the way we make decisions, and he changes then our actions and the things that work out from our hearts.”

Before we go further, let me ask you two critical questions: “First, am I confident before God? Not before Dan. Doesn’t matter what I think about you. Am I confident before God that the decisions I am making and the actions I am taking are firmly grounded in God’s plan for my life, not the plan for my own life?”

“Second, if that’s true, am I confident before God that I know how to make decisions and take action grounded in God’s plan for my life? Do I even know how to do that? What does that look like?”

Be Confident in God’s Perfect Insight When Making Decisions

TRUST GOD WITH EVERYTHING, NOT JUST THE BIG THINGS

Proverbs 3:5 tells us to “trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Notice “he doesn’t say, trust God with, you know, the big things in our lives. We’re a little bit better at that. At least in my life. I’ll speak for myself. I think I always say this. I like to think I’m normal. Maybe I’m not. But we often. I find in our marriage, in our family, in our church, even as we make decisions as pastors, as deacons, I find it in my own life that it’s easier for me to go to God, search scripture, pray to him, ask for his wisdom on the big things. But sometimes, just through the normal working of life, I tend to depend on myself on what I think are smaller things.”

“There’s two problems with that. One, by nature, my tendency is always influenced to some degree by my own sinful flesh. God wants us to be faithful in all things, in the small things as well as the bigger decisions in our lives. And sometimes we don’t always know whether a thing is big or small because our vision is limited. We might think a small little decision I make doesn’t really matter either way. But we don’t know what that might lead to down the road. God does.”

BRING GOD INTO YOUR MIND’S CONVERSATIONS

Here’s where Proverbs 3:6 gets practical: “In all your ways, acknowledge him.” That word acknowledge “just means to know him. That’s it. What is it saying there? He’s saying, in all your ways, as you’re going throughout your life, as you’re making decisions, know God. The way I worded it that would help me is being or bring God into your mind’s conversations.”

“Do you ever have conversations in your own brain with yourself? You’re thinking of a decision you have to make, and you’re like, well, I could do this or I could do that. And some of you, maybe you write it down. You like writing, right? So you have your pros and cons list. I tend to do that more in my brain than I do it on a piece of paper. And you’re like, well, if I do this, this might happen. And we use our wisdom, right? In those mind conversations that we’re having mostly with ourselves, bring God into that conversation, acknowledge him.”

“Often in our lives, we’re having this conversation, and it’s in our heads, and we’re thinking and we’re thinking and we’re thinking. And we might talk to other people, but how often do we just say, God, what do you want me to do? Could you show me in Scripture?”

THE PROMISE OF STRAIGHT PATHS

When we acknowledge God this way, Proverbs 3:6 promises “he will make straight your paths.” This means God will smooth out and straighten the route of our lives. “The illustration I get in my mind, this is a silly one. This is like totally a first world problem. But Carter, my oldest, got us into fishing several years ago.”

I learned about baitcaster reels that “can get horrible, horrible tangles. Like if you don’t know what you’re doing, which most of the time I did not. And so there would be these horrible tangles. And for like 30 minutes, you would just try to get this tangle of fishing line out. And honestly, the best thing you can do is just don’t be patient. Just cut it off and put new line on.”

“That’s the picture I get. When our life feels like it’s just one tangled mess, we don’t go, okay, I’m gonna get myself in deeper by following the same wisdom that probably got me here, right? I’m not gonna lean on my own understanding. I’m gonna say, God, what do I need to do?”

Don’t Trust Your Own Eyesight

Proverbs 3:7 warns us: “Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” Why? Because “we naturally think we’re pretty smart. We naturally think that we see things the way they’re actually going to happen or the way they’re happening, right? We’re discerning life, we’re viewing it, interpreting and then making some application about what life is gonna happen.”

But here’s the problem: “Even when we think we’re super smart and we’re super wise, we’re not as wise as we think we are. Because evil is still, it’s still there trying to push its head up in our lives and in our decisions.”

The result of following God’s wisdom instead of our own? Proverbs 3:8 promises “it will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” This is powerful imagery – “that word flesh literally is just the word for umbilical cord. What is our umbilical cord? It’s the part of us that when we were still dependent on our mother as preborn children, it is what brought all of life into our being.”

Be Confident in God’s Perfect Insight When Taking Action

START WITH YOUR WALLET

Proverbs 3:9-10 gets specific about how this looks in real life: “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.”

“Now you’re like, oh, Pastor Dan, you went from preaching to meddling now, right? Like talking about my money, like the things that God’s blessed me with.” But “I don’t think it’s an accident that he tells us how to live, confident in God and his wisdom. And then the first thing he talks about is finances, right? We know this. Matthew 6:21 tells us, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

“You wanna know what you really believe and what you really depend on, what you’re leaning on. Don’t have to show me. Show God where you spend your money. All of us spend money on things that are important to us.”

EMBRACE GOD’S DISCIPLINE

Finally, Proverbs 3:11-12 addresses something we all face: “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him who he loves as a father, the Son in whom he delights.”

“When you go through difficult times, and instead of trying to get out of it or solve it your own way, in your own wisdom, and you just say, God, would you have your way in my life?” Remember, “difficulty as a child of God is not on accident. It’s given by our Father and it’s done for our good.”

“Notice he uses the word discipline. This is not a punishment, right? We always think of like, is God punishing me? No. A discipline is a hard thing that God puts in order to make you a better disciple, to make you a stronger disciple, a disciple that is closer to him. And the closer we are to him, the more joy we have in him.”

Putting It Into Practice

As we start 2026, here are your next steps:

Daily Decision Check: “It’s a question that we should ask every morning, maybe a couple times throughout the day as we make decisions and as we take action in our life. Is my life grounded in God’s plan or is this about me?”

Include God in Every Conversation: Before making any decision, big or small, “bring God into your mind’s conversations. Invite him in. Don’t just go through life. I don’t think any of us do it on purpose, but I think we do it by default.”

Trust the Process: “Don’t loathe it. Don’t hate it. Say, God, I don’t enjoy this, but I’m excited about what it will bring out in me. As you work through me.”

The choice is yours: “Am I gonna be confident in myself, how I feel, what I see, how I view life? Or am I gonna be confident in what God says and take that first step to say, God, I don’t know how this is gonna work out. But God is not human. God is perfect. He is all powerful and all knowing and all wise. And he can step in and do things that you never thought possible. Will you trust him or are you gonna trust yourself?”

Stop trusting your own navigation system. God’s GPS never fails, never leads you astray, and always gets you where you need to go – even when the route doesn’t make sense to you.

We hope you enjoyed the sermon and would love to see you in person. Plan your visit to Community Baptist Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee today!

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