One of my dad’s favorite verses of Scripture was Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  The idea behind a straight path comes from plowing a furrow. If you keep your eye on one set thing in the distance, your furrow will be straight. If you take your eye off of that one thing, your furrow will continue to curve. If we keep, our eyes of Jesus we will have a straight path.

The reason we do not always walk the straight path is evident from this passage of scripture, and it is because we do not follow its prescription. To walk the straight path, we must trust God only when we make our choices in life. I watched the movie, Red One, this week. In the movie Nick says life is made up of choices and every choice we make will determine if we are a good person or a bad one. There is truth to that, but to make the right choices we must trust God’s understanding revealed in His word rather than our own or anyone else’s understanding.

Not only that we must follow God’s understanding in every decision. The Proverb tells us that in all our ways, in every choice we must acknowledge him. Sometimes we think that there are only big decisions to make, but our path is made up of small everyday choices that we must choose to follow His way and not our own. That is why the Proverb tells us to also trust him with all our heart.

If we are honest, we know that we will not walk the line perfectly. We do not trust him completely and we go our own way. Thankfully, God gives us a means to have a course correction. 1 John 1:9 says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Confession is to agree with God that we went our own way. When we do so, he puts us right back on the path again so that we can follow Him.