“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). The Hebrew word translated “trust” is batach. It carries the idea of confidence, security, and reliance—placing the weight of yourself upon someone or something strong enough to support you.

When I was a wee boy, my mother made sure I went to every Vacation Bible School in our community. I’m still not sure whether she needed the relief, I needed more of Jesus, or both. One of the crafts I remember making at the Presbyterian church involved braiding yarn around a metal coat hanger. Yarn by itself doesn’t have enough strength to hold up very much. But when that yarn was wrapped around the metal hanger, it took on the strength of what was supporting it. The strength wasn’t in the yarn. The strength was in what the yarn was resting upon. That is a pretty good picture of trust.

God never asks us to be strong enough to carry everything ourselves. He asks us to trust Him. Our security is not found in our ability to understand or control everything that is happening around us. It is found in the strength of the One upon whom we are leaning. At the end of a long workday, there is something refreshing about entrusting my tired body to the comfort of my recliner. I don’t stand in front of it wondering whether I can support me. I sit down. I lean back. I let the chair hold what I have been carrying all day. Trust works much the same way.

We often say that we trust God while continuing to carry the full weight of the situation ourselves. We pray about it, but keep worrying about it. We give it to God, then pick it back up. We tell Him that we trust Him, while desperately trying to figure out every detail ourselves. Solomon says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” Notice the contrast. We are going to lean somewhere. We will either lean upon our understanding or lean upon the Lord.

Our understanding is limited. We cannot see tomorrow. We do not know what is happening behind the scenes. We cannot always understand why God permits certain circumstances or where a particular road is leading. But God sees what we cannot see, knows what we cannot know, and possesses strength we do not possess. Faith does not mean that I understand everything. Faith means that I know the One upon whom I am leaning.

Like yarn wrapped around a metal hanger, my strength is not found in myself. My security comes from the One to whom I am attached. And like a tired man settling into his recliner at the end of the day, sometimes trusting God simply means letting go and relying on Him to carry the weight I was never strong enough to carry in the first place.

You do not have to be strong enough for everything you are facing. You only have to lean upon the One who is.