When you consider your plans for the future, do you wonder if you'll be able to stay on track for the long run? Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah has some words of encouragement. for bringing focus, purpose, and significance to your life. As he wraps up the series, Powerful Principles from Proverbs, here's David to introduce his message.
Power up your future. Proverbs for planning. Yeah, that's right. Did you know the book of Proverbs will help you get organized? That it will help you plan for the future?
The wise man who wrote these Proverbs governed great, great, vast material things. He was not only the wisest man who ever lived, he was the richest man who ever lived.
So he knows something about planning. He knows something about organization. And from a godly perspective, he shares those principles with us in this book we know as Proverbs. And so today we're going to open our Bibles together and we're going to glean everything we can from the wisdom of Solomon and how to plan. I hope you're ready to do this.
Hey, I've been talking a lot this month about our study guide, and I hope that you know this study guide is just one of many that we have. We have a study guide for every series that's been on the air. And this study guide, it's 140 pages long. It will give you all the information you need to review this series. If you get the seat.
Package, you can just relive the series and have the printed material in front of you. Go to davidjeremiah.org, you can get it there and find out all about the The series on Proverbs and the other things that are available in Bible study from davidjeremiah.org. We want to take these last few moments that we have to tell you about our book of the month. It's God's Heart for Israel. It's our resource for the month of August.
And we have just a couple of days left to tell you about it.
So, if you haven't already ordered your copy, be sure to ask for your copy when you send a gift of any size to Turning Point to help us do what we're doing in sharing the word of God. It's our way of saying thank you for your support, and the book will be on its way to you just as soon as we get your request. Here is Power up. Your future. These are proverbs for planning.
How many of you know that when you lose focus? You can lose games. And when you lose focus, You can lose Life. I need to confess that for this preacher, staying on focus. Is one of the great battles that I fight every day of my life.
How to stay focused. with everything that's going on around me. I've been thinking a lot about this subject. I've been thinking about what it means to stay focused. And I want you to know that I'm preaching to my own heart as well.
Because more than anything else, I want to be a focused Christian. I want to know that God is in control of my life and that He is guiding and directing my life no matter what happens, no matter what the impact may be. And I believe with all of my heart that it's possible to stay focused. and to face the future with confidence and assurance. And I believe that there's one passage of Scripture that has all of the key elements in it.
One passage that tells us that God wants to help us stay on focus all the way through our lives and bring us safely through to the destination He has planned for us. Even though we are confronted on every hand by diversions and confusion and misdirection and major events, we can still have a sense of focus and purpose each day. What God promises to give to us is what He has provided for all of His children of every age. At every turn, we have to make decisions, don't we? At every corner, there are choices to be made, and without some sense of focus and direction, we simply do not know what to do or which way to turn.
We cannot count on our own wisdom and our own sense of direction. Jeremiah the prophet said in Jeremiah 10:23, O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps. How many of you know that's true? You know, you can't find the answer in yourself often.
And even when we're sure we're right, Even when we think we know what we're doing, Proverbs tells us that there is a way that seems right unto a man. But the end of it is the way of death. How many of you have been in a situation where you thought you had it figured out, you knew what to do, and it was all from your own reasoning and sources, and then all of a sudden you realized it was the wrong answer. No, there is a way to stay focused. But we have to follow God's plan.
And the promise that He gives to us in these two verses, which are favorite verses of many of God's people. is a promise to take us all the way through life. Focused. and finally delivered to our intended destination. Yeah.
Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him. And he shall direct.
your paths. He will keep you focused. And I've learned as I've studied that focus is the result of priorities. How many of you know that? And priorities are the result of purpose.
And purpose is the result of a personal relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Focus is the result of priorities. Priorities are the result of purpose, and purpose is the result of a personal relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ.
So, if you don't have a personal relationship with your Creator, if you don't know Almighty God through Jesus Christ, His Son, it's going to be hard for you to stay focused because you don't have a center in your life. Romans 8:28 tells us that we know all things work together for good to those who are called. How? According to His purpose. How many of you know that God has a purpose for every one of His children?
He has a purpose for you and for me. God knows what that purpose is, and His desire is that we find the purpose and that we stay on focus with that purpose through our priorities. God knew what He was doing from the outset. How many of you know that God had a blueprint for your life and for my life before we were ever born? He knows what His purpose is for us, what He wants us to do.
Now, how do we stay focused on that? Let's begin. First of all, principle number one: focus requires dependence. Focus requires dependence. Notice what the writer of Proverbs says.
He says, trust in the Lord. Trust, depend, commit. The word trust means to lean on, to be confident of. And the Hebrew word for trust had originally the idea of laying helplessly face downward. The word trust meant to totally and completely and absolutely and without reservation and without conditions and without stipulations put your faith in something.
And the word trust is found in the book of Proverbs many times. Proverbs 16, 20 says, Whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he. 22:19 says, So that your trust may be in the Lord, I have instructed you today, even you. Proverbs 28, 25 says, He who is of a proud heart stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will be prospered. And Proverbs 35 says, Every word of God is pure, He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.
When you get to the book of Psalms, you find the same truth over and over again. Psalm 115:11 says, You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. Psalm 62.8 says, Trust in Him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before Him.
God is a refuge for us. Psalm 125, verse 1 says, They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. And the key text, which Is a commentary on trusting the Lord is Psalm 37, verses 5 through 7. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him. And he shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked schemes to pass. And I went back through my Bible and underlined these five phrases, which are all about trusting the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in the Lord.
Rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for the Lord. And then fret not. Say that. Fret not.
When you trust, you don't fret. How many of you know what the word threat means? It means the worry. When you put your trust in the Lord, you depend on Him. And the writer of Proverbs says that the first step to getting focus in your life is to come to the place where you're willing to depend on God, to trust in Him, to believe that God knows what's best for you, and to rest yourself entirely on Him.
Trust in God. Then secondly, Focusing requires dedication. The next phrase in these two verses says, Trust in the Lord. How's it going? With all your heart.
That has this picture of surrender. What does it mean, to trust with all your heart?
Well, let me tell you what it doesn't mean. There's an interesting little commentary about what it doesn't mean in James chapter 1. where James is encouraging God's people to pray. And he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. who gives to all men liberally without reproach.
and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith. With no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways.
What does that have to do with fully trusting the Lord with all of your heart? Listen again to Eugene Peterson's rendition of this verse. If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You won't be condescended to when you ask for it.
Ask boldly. Ask believingly without a second thought.
Now watch. People who worry their prayers. Are like wind-whipped waves. Don't think you're going to get anything from the master that way, adrift at sea. keeping all your options open.
How many of you have ever prayed like that, keeping all your options open? You haven't committed to the Lord with all of your heart. You've committed to the Lord and left your options open. That doesn't get you focused. That gets you unfocused.
That gets your life all fuzzy. You have to get rid of all of your options and say, Almighty God, I'm trusting in you. How? With my whole heart. In the book of Psalms, in the 119th Psalm, which is sometimes referred to as the Psalm of the whole heart.
Over and over again in that psalm, it talks about what we're doing with the Lord. We're to be doing with our whole heart. For instance, in verse 10 of Psalm 119, it says, With my whole heart I have sought you. In verse 34, it says, Give me understanding and I'll keep your law. Indeed, I'll observe it with my whole heart.
I entreated your favor with my whole heart, verse 58. Verse 69 says, I will keep your precepts. With my whole heart. Verse 145 says, I cry out with my whole heart. How many of you know God wants not half-hearted people, He wants whole-hearted people?
And when we trust in Him, if we want His focus in our life, and I have to keep telling myself this: there's no halfway with God. You don't just kind of share the guidance system with God. I'll do what I think part of the time, you do what you think I should do part of the time. No, God says if you want focus in your life, if you want direction in your life, here are the first things you do. First of all, you depend on me, trust in the Lord.
And don't do it partly. Do it fully with your whole heart. That means you don't keep options open. There isn't any such thing as, Lord, I'm going to trust you with this, and then if this doesn't work, here's plan B. How many of you know the Bible doesn't have any plan Bs?
Did you know that? People always ask me. Why isn't there more definitive information about this or about that?
Well, why doesn't God tell us what to do if this doesn't work? God has His perfect will. When we miss His perfect will, He doesn't throw us away. But he doesn't have plan B and plan C. He's got a perfect will for us.
And when we miss that will, when we don't do what God tells us to do, oftentimes we're left kind of on an uncharted sea to figure things out, and oftentimes it doesn't go very well, does it? God wants us to trust Him with our whole heart. Focusing requires dependence and dedication. but it also requires discipline. This may be the hardest part.
This is a qualification in the verse. Notice what the book of Proverbs says, lean not to your own understanding.
Now the word lean isn't a word which means to just kind of rest like this. The word lean means to put your whole weight on something. It's the same concept as the word trust. And the writer of Proverbs says, don't lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3 and verse 7 is a great commentary.
It says, Do not be wise in your own eyes. When you turn to God. in trust. With your whole heart, you automatically turn away from something else, don't you? Here you are going through life, trying to make the best of life, trying to do the best you can, and you feel all unfocused in your life.
You've been making all the decisions based upon. Wall Street and all of the other things that might make input into what you do. God's not been in the picture. All of a sudden, you realize you're unfocused, and you hear a message on how to be focused spiritually. Put all your trust in the Lord.
Trust him with all your heart. And lean not to your own understanding, that doesn't mean you give up all financial information. It means you no longer trust in that. You have a higher source, someone who gives you better information, someone who cares about where that information takes you. You trust in the Lord and you don't lean on your own understanding.
Psalm 146, verse 3 says, Don't put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man in whom there is no help. And I'm reminded that often when we're trying to find our focus, God will instruct us to do things that are the opposite of our inclination. And yet we have to ask ourselves, do we trust the one? that we have trusted. And when he tells us, this is the way, walk in it.
And part of our own human inclination is that that's not the way we should go. Do we follow him? Do we lean out from the mountain so that we're safe, even though it doesn't feel right? Or do we follow our own inclinations? And that's what the writer of Proverbs says.
He says that if you're going to have focus in your life, you have to depend, you have to trust. You have to dedicate yourself in such a way that you do so with all of your heart. And you have to discipline yourself that when your inclinations and the word of God come into conflict, even though you have these human feelings that you can't deny, you do what God tells you to do. And so often, those are the things that come into conflict. Among our singles and among the young people.
They're exposed all the time to the drives and the inclinations that are theirs by virtue of their Creator, and they have the Word of God that says. That marriage is the place for that expression. And you hear them sometimes say, but if I have this inclination and this drive, isn't that from God? Not necessarily. You're to trust in the Lord, His Word, with all of your heart and not lean to your own inclinations.
And then notice. Focusing requires discernment. In all your ways, acknowledge him. This is a great little phrase in this verse. To acknowledge means to recognize.
Notice, we're to acknowledge him in all our ways. The key word here is the word in. We are to acknowledge the Lord just where He places us. In the home. In the business, at school, at work, at play.
We are to acknowledge him in health and in affliction. We are to acknowledge him when we're well and when we're strong, when there are weddings and when there are funerals. In all of our ways, in whatever we do, we're to recognize and acknowledge Him. That means we're to follow him and obey him in all of our daily walk, do what he says, and continue to do that in all that we do. Proverbs 16, 3 says, Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established.
1 Corinthians 10:31 says, Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God. And Colossians 3.17 adds a similar word. That whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when you do all of these things, When you depend, you trust in the Lord, and you dedicate yourself with all your heart. And you discipline yourself.
Not leaning to your own understanding. And you acknowledge him in everything you do, the result will be. You will get direction in your life. Focusing your life results in direction. The end of these verses say, He shall direct your paths.
How many of you know that when God directs your paths, you're focused? When you're getting your signals from Almighty God and you're in His path, you're focused, you know what to do, and nothing can sway you. You're on God's mission, in God's place, in God's way, even as the Lord Jesus who came to give his life for the world. Whenever he was tempted to go in a different direction, he would always say, Mine hour's not yet come, mine hour's not yet come. He never lost his focus.
so that he could stand one day and say, I have done all that you've asked me to do, O God. I have stayed focused all through my life.
Now, none of us probably will be able to say at the end of our lives, I never lost focus even once. I know I won't. But I want to stay focused as much as I can in the pathway that God has directed for me so that I don't miss any of his blessings or any of the things that he wants to do in my life or in the lives of others who are around me.
So I'm going to commit myself to trust. With all my heart, and not lean to my own understanding and acknowledge him in all of my ways, because that's the formula for getting a focused life where God directs your paths. Literally. What it says in the text is, When you do this, he makes your path straight. gives you a straight path.
So you know where to walk, you know what to do. What a thrill. And the Word of God is filled with verses. That impress upon our hearts this truth. Let me just give you a several of them.
Proverbs 16, 9. A man's heart plans his way. But the Lord directs his steps. Psalm 25.8. Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he teaches sinners the way.
Psalm 32, 8, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye. Isaiah 30, 21, your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, This is the way, walk in it. Whatever you turn to the right hand or wherever you turn to the left. Isaiah 48, 17 says, Thus says the Lord your Redeemer.
The Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go. Amen. Thank God for that wonderful promise. I'm not out here on a sea of uncertainty trying to figure out what life is all about. I've got Almighty God directing my path.
You say, well, if I do what God wants me to do, won't I miss out on some of the things I want to do? Listen to me. The word of God says, commit your way to the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. I'm learning finally that everything I think I want to do That may be not in the center of what God wants for me is second best. If I just get over on God's path, He not only gives me what He wants, but He gives me what I want.
He gives me what my desires are. And I could illustrate that from my own life over and over again: that when I focus on God's purpose. I get God's perfect will for my life. What a thrill that is. To know that he's there saying, hey, Jeremiah, turn this way, turn that way.
No, don't go there. Focus requires dependence, trust in the Lord, requires dedication with all your heart. Requires discipline. Lon't lean to your own understanding. Requires discernment.
In all your ways, acknowledge him, and it results in direction. He'll give you the desires. of your heart. This is God's proactive plan. to keep you in the very center of his will.
every single day of your life. from this moment until you get to heaven. And God's providence doesn't work. unless you're willing to trust him. And depend on him and not lean on your own understanding and say, Almighty God, thank you for this wonderful instrument you've given me to direct my life.
And once and for all, right now, I'm going to trust you, and trust it, I'm going to get it hooked up right. And I'm going to put it into operation so I know where I'm going. and my paths can be directed. To God's purpose for my life. You will never be truly happy.
until you're walking in the perfect will of God. And you know for some of you, you don't have Jesus Christ in your life. He hasn't promised to direct everybody. He's promised to direct his own children. And if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Savior, before you get lost, before you get totally out of focus, why don't you give your heart to Christ?
Let Him give to you not only forgiveness for your sin and salvation for your life, but ultimately direction for what He wants you to do in the here and now. And he'll do it. Amen. Plan better with the Lord. That's the nature of today's study.
You know, people say, He's my co-author, or He's my co-business leader. No, He needs to be the head, and you're the assistant. He's the head, you're junior partner. But let Jesus Christ direct your life and help you plan the future. Tomorrow, we are going to move away from this study on Proverbs with a very special message that's all about the way we think.
Here's the title of the message, You Are Not What You Think You Are. But what you think, you are. And that will be our study tomorrow and again on Monday. Be sure to join us then. Don't forget to get your copy of this month's resource, which is God's Heart for Israel.
It's yours for the asking when you send a gift of any size today to help with the outreach of Turning Point in the teaching of the Word of God. Have a great day. I'm David Jeremiah. For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series, Powerful Principles from Proverbs, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly magazine, Turning Points, and our daily email devotional.
Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio. Or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's inspiring new book, God's Heart for Israel. It's yours for a gift of any amount.
You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard New International and New King James Versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for a special message from Dr.
David Jeremiah right here on Turning Point.
