What Does Proverbs 3:5-6 Mean? — Murray on Trusting in the Lord
⏱ 15 min read
You have read the verse so many times that the words have gone faint. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. It is on the fridge magnet your aunt gave you. It is on the church bulletin from a Sunday two springs ago that you have not yet thrown away. It is the verse you said you trusted, then the verse you tried to trust, then the verse you secretly half-stopped trusting around the time the second hard year did not turn around when you had asked it to. Now, after the trying-both — the leaning hard into your own understanding for a season and the lukewarm trusting that followed — you are at the point of asking what the verse actually means. Not the wall-art version. The actual one, the one the older saints lived inside of, the one a tired woman in her forties can stand on for the second half of her life.
This is the slow version. Three substantial passages from Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ, held against Proverbs 3:5-6, for the woman who is no longer pretending she has the energy to figure out her own paths. The Stilling Waves Bible Study Workbook for Women is the daily form of this kind of reading, if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. (For the deeper level of the surrender underneath the verse, what does absolute surrender mean? — Andrew Murray’s plain reading is the closest companion piece. For the practical walking of the Spirit that the directing of the paths describes, what does it mean to walk in the Spirit? — Murray’s plain answer sits beside this one. And for the long silences in which the directing has felt absent, what the old saints knew about God’s silence — Murray on waiting walks that quieter ground.)
For now — read slowly.
The verse is older than almost anything else you read in scripture. Proverbs 3 sits inside the wisdom literature of Israel, traditionally attributed to Solomon, written for a son being instructed in the long shape of a faithful life. The two verses are not a self-help slogan. They are the second of nine sayings in chapter three, each one a small structural piece in a much larger argument about what wisdom is and where it lives. The verse is not about how to make decisions when you are unsure. It is about where the entire centre of your life is located. The decision-making question is downstream. The location question is upstream. And it is the location question that Murray will not let you skip.
The first passage: the resting-place
“It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice what Murray is doing in the small phrase Thy resting-place. He has reversed the metaphor you usually carry into Proverbs 3:5-6. The usual metaphor is that you are tired and He is the resting-place — you trust in Him, and the trusting allows you to rest in His direction. Murray reverses it. May my heart be Thy resting-place. The Lord, in Murray’s vocabulary, is also looking for somewhere to rest, and the heart of the surrendered believer is where He chooses to rest. The trusting is not, then, primarily a transaction in which you offload your tiredness onto Him. It is the offering of your heart as the resting-place He has been wanting all along.
This changes the whole posture of the verse. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart sounds, in the modern reading, like the demand for an emotional effort — summon enough faith, hold it together, do not let yourself doubt. Murray, gently, suggests the trust is something quite different. The trust is the quietening of the heart such that it becomes a resting-place He can enter. The work is not the production of trust by force. The work is the small daily stillness, in which the heart becomes — Murray’s exact phrase — in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, a place He chooses to abide. The trust is not loud. It is, in fact, the opposite of loud.
For the woman who has been trying to muscle her way into trusting God — who has been telling herself to just have more faith, who has been frustrated with herself for the persistent small doubts — this is the part that puts the muscling down. The trust the verse asks for is not muscle. It is quietness. It is the heart slowing enough to become the resting-place the Lord has been seeking. The trust grows out of the stillness. Trying to produce the trust without the stillness first is what has been wearing you out.
Believing that Thou doest all in me. Murray’s next phrase. The trust includes the belief that He is doing the work. The directing of the paths in Proverbs 3:6 is not something He does for you from the outside while you scramble to keep up; it is something He does in you from the inside, while you remain in the stillness that lets Him work. The leaning not on your own understanding is the small daily acceptance that the leaning has never been the engine anyway. The engine is Him. Your part is the heart that has become His resting-place.
What does Proverbs 3:5-6 mean, in Murray’s first reading? It means the trust is the quiet making-room for Him to abide and work inside of you, and the directing of the paths is the slow outworking of His already-present life in the heart that has become still enough for Him to do it.
The second passage: the silence before Him
“If we are to have our whole heart turned towards God, we must have it turned away from the creature, from all that occupies and interests, whether of joy or sorrow. God is a being of such infinite greatness and glory, and our nature has become so estranged from Him, that it needs our whole heart and desires set upon Him, even in some little measure to know and receive Him. Everything that is not God, that excites our fears, or stirs our efforts, or awakens our hopes, or makes us glad, hinders us in our perfect waiting on Him. The message is one of deep meaning: ‘Take heed and be quiet;’ ‘In quietness shall be your strength;’ ‘It is good that a man should quietly wait.’ How the very thought of God in His majesty and holiness should silence us, Scripture abundantly testifies.”
— Andrew Murray, Waiting on God
This is the passage that turns the leaning of Proverbs 3:5 from intellectual problem into a much harder, quieter, more total reorientation. Read it twice.
Murray is naming a state of the soul that the modern Christian woman is not often asked to name. Our whole heart turned towards God. The word whole is doing immense work. Murray is not describing the heart that has some of itself turned toward God and most of itself running the household and the calendar. He is describing the heart turned, in its entirety, toward Him. And the way the heart turns wholly toward Him is, Murray says, by being turned away from the creature, from all that occupies and interests, whether of joy or sorrow. Even the joys must be turned from, in their measure, because the joys also compete for the position God alone is meant to occupy. Even the sorrows. Even the legitimate concerns. The undivided heart turns away from all of it — not by ceasing to love the children, not by abandoning the work, but by stopping its central reliance on any of these as the source of its life.
This is the lean not on your own understanding of Proverbs 3:5, given its full theological depth. The leaning is not, primarily, the leaning of the mind on its own analytical resources — though it includes that. The leaning is the leaning of the whole heart on anything other than God for its centre of gravity. The household has been a leaning. The marriage has been a leaning. The work has been a leaning. The children have been a leaning. The friend group, the church involvement, the small daily competencies you have always counted on — all of them have been leanings. None of them is wicked. All of them have, in some measure, occupied the centre that only God was meant to occupy.
Murray’s correction is the quietness. Take heed and be quiet. In quietness shall be your strength. It is good that a man should quietly wait. Three scriptural commands, stacked together, all describing the small daily practice of the heart that has stopped relying on the leanings and started, instead, quietly waiting. The waiting is not idleness. The waiting is the alert, attentive, undivided posture of the soul that has set its hopes on God alone and is — patiently, without rush — letting Him be the centre of gravity again.
For you, this is the part of Proverbs 3:5-6 that the contemporary church often soft-pedals. The verse is preached as trust God for the next decision. Murray preaches it as let God be the centre of every faculty of your soul, and the next decision will arrive in due course. The two are not the same. The first is downstream. The second is upstream. You can practise the first for a decade and still not have done the second. The second is the slow daily turning of the whole heart away from the things it has been leaning on, into the quietness in which God can be — once again — its only centre.
This is what acknowledging Him in all your ways in verse 6 actually means, in Murray’s reading. The acknowledging is not the addition of a quick prayer at the beginning of each task. The acknowledging is the deep undercurrent of the whole heart turned toward Him, in every faculty, all the time. The directing of the paths is the outworking of that undercurrent. The paths are directed because the heart is centred. The centring is the practice.
A pause, mid-essay. If this kind of slow reading is the pace your soul has been needing — the verse held against the older father, the wall-art line returned to its actual paragraph — the Bible Study Workbook for Women is the daily form of it. One hundred and forty short pages, one passage and one short reflection a day, paced for the woman who is ready to let the quietness become the centre of her week.
The somatic that goes with leaning not on your own understanding
Pause here. The verse has a body, and the body has been doing the leaning the whole time the mind has been reading about it.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let both feet rest flat on the floor. Notice, without changing anything yet, where the leaning is held in your body — the place behind the eyes that has been holding the analysis, the small clench at the back of the jaw, the tightness in the hands that has been gripping the handle of the day. The leaning is physical. The mind is not the only thing that has been doing the work.
Now let one slow inhale come in. On the exhale — slower than the inhale — let the hands rest, palms up, on your knees. Not closed. Not gripping. Open. This small motion is the body’s version of lean not unto thine own understanding. The opened palm is the body saying it is no longer holding the day by force. The opened palm is the whole heart turned — done with the body, the way the heart is being asked to do it with the soul.
Stay there for one more slow inhale and exhale. Notice that nothing has fallen out of the open palms. The day is still there. The week is still there. The unfinished things are still there. The palms are open and the world has not collapsed. That is, in miniature, what the verse has been promising the whole time. The leaning was not, finally, what kept the world running. Something else was. Someone else was.
Close the palms gently again and continue reading.
The third passage: blessed rest
“‘At Thy bidding I take Thy yoke; I undertake the duty without delay; I abide in Thee.’ Let each consciousness of failure only give new urgency to the command, and teach us to listen more earnestly than ever till the Spirit again give us to hear the voice of Jesus saying, with a love and authority that inspire both hope and obedience, ‘Child, abide in me.’ That word, listened to as coming from Himself, will be an end of all doubting — a divine promise of what shall surely be granted. And with ever-increasing simplicity its meaning will be interpreted. Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love. Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God’s own rest! found of them who thus come to Jesus to abide in Him. It is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
This is the most piercing of the three passages, because of the smallness of the verbs Murray uses for the trust the verse is asking for. Read it once at speed, then read it again, slowly.
The giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led. This is what Murray means by trust in the Lord with all thine heart. The trust is not the heroic mustering of certainty. It is the small daily giving-up of the soul to be ruled (His will, not yours), taught (His wisdom, not yours), and led (His direction, not yours). Three small surrenders. None of them dramatic. All of them constant.
You have been treating the trust of Proverbs 3:5 as a single big act — a once-and-done laying down at an altar at a women’s retreat ten years ago. Murray, gently, is correcting you. The trust is the small repeated giving-up of the rule, the teaching, and the leading. The trust is what you do, in miniature, twenty times in a tired Wednesday — when the worry about the child surfaces, when the work email lands, when the difficult conversation goes badly, when the body aches in the late afternoon. Each surface, each small giving-up. Ruled. Taught. Led. The trust is the rhythm of the day, not the height of a moment.
Let each consciousness of failure only give new urgency to the command. This is the line that finally lets the modern Christian woman put down the self-flagellation she has been carrying for years. Every time you have felt yourself fall short of trusting the Lord — every time the worry has won, every time the anxiety has surfaced, every time the leaning on your own understanding has been your reflex — you have used the failure as further evidence against yourself. Murray flips it. The consciousness of failure is the very signal to listen more earnestly. The failure is not the disqualification. The failure is the new urgency. Each fall, instead of confirming the case against you, becomes the renewed occasion of the small giving-up. The trust deepens not in spite of the failures but through them.
Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God’s own rest! This is what the directing of the paths in verse 6 actually feels like, lived inside of. The paths are not, finally, directed in the sense of being externally mapped for you in advance. The paths are directed in the sense that, as you walk them in the blessed rest of the abiding, you find — looking back, after months or years — that the path you walked was the one He was leading you on. The directing is retrospective. The trust is present. The peace of God, the great calm, keeps the heart and mind in the middle of the walking, whether the path is the one you would have chosen or not.
For you, this is what what does Proverbs 3:5-6 mean finally answers to. The verse is not promising that the next decision will be clear. The verse is promising that the whole heart, turned toward Him in quietness, given up to be ruled and taught and led, will be carried along the path He has been walking it down the whole time. The clarity arrives in retrospect. The peace arrives in the meantime. The trust is the rhythm that allows both.
(The sibling articles in this verse-by-verse series sit at what does Romans 8:28 mean? — Augustine on all things working together and what does Jeremiah 29:11 mean? — Spurgeon on plans to prosper.)
What trusting the Lord will actually look like over a year
The verse is not promising that next month the path will be clear. Most of the women who have walked Proverbs 3:5-6 across a long obedience report that the path stayed unclear in many places for many years, and yet they were carried along it nonetheless. The trust is the rhythm; the clarity is — sometimes — the gift on the other side of the rhythm; the directing of the paths is — almost always — visible only afterwards.
What you can do, across a year of small daily abiding, is shift the centre. The first month, the trusting will feel like an effort. The third month, the small giving-up will have started becoming reflexive — the worry surfaces and you find your soul, on its own, returning the rule and the teaching and the leading to Him. The sixth month, you will notice that the blessed rest Murray named is not, after all, a once-a-year experience but a quiet undercurrent of the week — there in the mornings, there in the small evening sittings, there in the middle of the household running, available the moment you turn back to it. By the year, the question what does Proverbs 3:5-6 mean will have stopped being a question and become a description — I have given Him the rule. I have given Him the teaching. I have given Him the leading. The path is the one He is walking me down. The peace keeps the heart and mind.
The path will still be uncertain in places. The peace will hold underneath the uncertainty. That is the promise the verse was making the whole time.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each day a short passage, a slow reflection, room for one honest sentence — the small daily anchor that keeps the heart in the quietness that Proverbs 3:5-6 has been asking for the whole time.
The Stilling Waves Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the resting-place, the whole heart turned, the giving up to be ruled and taught and led — into a daily companion built for the woman who has tried both leaning and trusting, and is ready, at last, for the quietness underneath them.
