In his sermon 'Straight Paths in 2026', Pastor Grant Brown reflects on Proverbs 3:5-6, emphasizing three keys to a life not wasted: trusting in the Lord, not leaning on one's own understanding, and acknowledging God in all ways. He acknowledges the challenges and losses of 2025, comparing them to biblical stories of suffering, yet highlights God's sovereignty and presence in these stories. Pastor Brown underscores the importance of trusting God, who has written all our days and knows our struggles intimately. He encourages believers to rely not on their own understanding but on God's wisdom, as illustrated in the story of Job. Brown stresses the need for continual dependence on Jesus and engagement with Scripture to understand God's will. Prayer is presented as a way to acknowledge God, promising that He will make believers' paths straight. The sermon concludes with a call to trust in God's strength and grace, recognizing human weakness and the sufficiency of Christ's strength.

Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 and 6. I'll ask the congregation to stand now as Almighty God speaks through His perfect and sufficient scriptures. Thus saith the Lord, beginning in verse 5, 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 your paths straight. May God bless the reading and other preaching of this His word.

Amen. You may be seated. Well as we enter into the final Lord's Day of the year of our Lord 2025, it's only fitting that we come to grips with what God would have us do as we enter into a new year. The reality is that many of us look back upon this past year undoubtedly full of gratefulness and full of thankfulness, full of thanksgiving to God. But also, I think probably all of us on some level look back on 2025 with a sense of loss and perhaps remorse.

And So this morning, we turn once more to God's perfect Word to understand how it is we should think about this past year and for wisdom on how to make 2026 count for the glory of Christ and our joy in Him. So here in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, God provides three keys to a life not wasted in 2026. Three keys to a life not wasted as we look back at this past year and towards the year ahead. So key number one, Let us all trust in the Lord. Let us all trust in the Lord.

Verse 5 begins with that simple phrase, trust in the Lord with all your heart. How, pastor? How can I trust in the Lord with all your heart? How, pastor? How can I trust in the Lord with all my heart?

You don't know the darkness that was in 2025. You don't know the shame. You don't know the heartache. You don't know the sin. You don't know the guilt and the loss.

You don't know how hard 2025 was. No I do not think I do. But the Lord does. And it is the Lord who wrote the story of 2025. Your story, story of this church.

It is the Lord who writes stories like Joe, a real story of loss, pain, and not understanding. A whole book of not understanding. Losing all of his family except a very unhelpful wife, losing all of his possessions, losing his own health. Your sovereign God beloved, wrote every detail of that story. A story of feeling alone when everyone and everything around you is giving way.

A story of feeling alone when everyone and everything around you is giving way. A story of feeling alone when even your friends with the best intentions aren't getting any of it right as they talk to me. God writes those stories. It is the Lord who writes real stories like Joseph sold into slavery by his own brothers and then again and again and again forgotten and betrayed in a faraway land the Lord wrote that story. It is the Lord who writes real stories like those of the prophets imprisoned and in agony for doing what is right.

Many of them, most of them put to death, some sawn in two, never seeing in this life the promise of deliverance that they prophesied about with their own mouths. Instead, pain, misery, sorrow, the Lord wrote those stories. It is the Lord who writes stories like Hamor, abused and broken, the rest of her mortal life forever altered by the sin of evil men. It is the Lord who writes stories like Peter, full of great shame and guilt and condemnation as he denies the Savior not once, not twice, but three times. It is the Lord who writes stories of great loss and great agony like Stephen, the martyr, stoned to death.

It is the Lord who writes those stories. Just like the story that He's written for you. But how can you trust Him? Why would you trust this Lord who writes these stories? Well, for one, you can trust Him because we're still talking about those stories that I just listed.

We're still talking about those stories that He wrote. That should tell you something. But even more, you can trust the Lord. You can trust this Lord who wrote these stories and writes your story, because this same Lord who wrote all those stories took on flesh. And He entered into the story and fleshed.

He is the story. And he who knew no sin became sin for you so that in him you might become the very righteousness of God. He who was the unblemished, spotless lamb of God, he who was the author of each and every story became flesh, and he wrote you into his story of redemption, and he died on the cross in your place to sever the penalty and to sever the power of your sin. It was the most unfair story ever to be written that the only perfect man, the only person ever to exist in human history that was without sin, he died so that sinners like you would be forever made new. You want to talk about loss?

You want to talk about a life being unfair? It wasn't fair that the Lord Jesus, the Creator of the universe, went and died on the tree in my place in your place the creator for the creature and He bore the wrath of God for you there on his cross That's not fair That should have been me that should have been you But instead it was Him on the cross. Oh friends, this Lord, this is the one that you may trust. This is the one that you must trust. The Lord Jesus Christ, who according to Psalm 139, has written all of your days in his book before you were ever born, including the pain of 2025 and the unknown of 2026, if you should give it to us.

It's not unknown to him. Friends, as difficult and as troublesome and as full of grief as 2025 may have been, and it was, I think, for many of us. Those days, those moments have come from and are in this Savior's hands. You Christian, you are in His hands. If you name the name of Christ, you are a member of His covenant people.

You are a citizen of His kingdom. His child bought with the price of the eternally begotten Son's life. You are not your own. Your name is graven on His hand, per Isaiah 49, 16. Your name and your years written in His book, per Revelation 21, 27.

And He holds you in His hands as a treasured possession for Exodus 19 verse 5. The guilt and the shame of 2025 dealt with and pardoned and covered by the one who loved you and gave himself for you to make you his own two thousand years ago on his cross. Trust him. He said, it is finished. He said, all authority is mine, Trust Him.

He reigns. In your sadness, in your grief, in your loss of 2025, it is known intimately by the God of Psalm 56-8 who has taken account of them and has put your tears in his bottle and your struggles in his book. The lament and the misery of 2025 perhaps felt acutely this Christmas season. Perhaps felt sharply just days ago around a Christmas tree with one name missing. All of that misery known intimately by the God who knows your frame and remembers that you are but dust, who took on flesh, who is able to sympathize with your weakness.

The Lord, your Lord Christian, He knows loss. He knows pain. He knows grief, but He also knows victory. He also knows triumph, And he also knows who has the final word in every sadness and in every grief and in every loss and in every story. He knows and you know too.

Who has the final word? He does. The Lord Jesus has the final word in every circumstance, and in every story, and in every year. So you can trust Him. You must trust Him.

The one who came on Christmas is the one who reigns over all things, sovereign. It was the year of our Lord in 2025, was it not? It will be the year of our Lord in 2026. And so listen to this proverb, friends. Listen to this proverb.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Why? Because he is the Lord And the Lord is so good to you. The Lord has been so unfairly kind to you. The Lord has been so gracious to you. So much so.

His grace has abounded to you so much so that He gave you a new heart, Christian. He has given you a new heart and He has put His Spirit within you so that the command of Proverbs 3.5, trust him with all your heart, could be obeyed. You came this morning because of his grace towards you. If you are interacting with this text on any level and you are crying out on any level with Lord, yes, yes, help me to trust you. Why is that?

Because of His grace towards you in 2025. If He has been this gracious to you today, How much more in the days ahead? Friends, just think about it. The things of God used to be foolish to you. Obedience to God used to be burdensome and troublesome to you.

But now in Christ, in a new heart, these things are your delight. Now you read our text this morning and you say, yes Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, make this proverb true. That's grace. You may trust in the Lord Jesus with all your heart because He's given you a new heart. And He's given you Himself.

The Lord Jesus has given Himself to you, so how then will He not also give you all things? I want you to think about this. If He's done these miraculous and marvelous things in the days prior, in the years prior of your life, how then will this same Lord not hold you fast and take care of you all the more in 2026. Trust Him with all your heart, and as you do, marvel that you do it. Marvel at the gift of faith.

Marvel at the miracle of being born again. Marvel at the miracle of being kept by the sovereign sustaining grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Marvel. I I mean, do you do that? Did you wake up this morning and marvel?

I believe today you exist by the miraculous sovereign power of God. And even more miraculous and sovereign is that you exist and you believe in Christ this morning. Do You think you wake up and do that yourself? You don't. Marvel at the grace of God and trust in Him with all your heart, it says, and do not lean on your own understanding.

That's key number two to a life not wasted in 2026. Trust in the Lord, and do not trust in yourself. Do not trust in your own understanding. Verse 5 begins with a positive command, trust the Lord. That's a positive command and now verse 5 ends with a negative command.

Don't trust yourself. Don't lean on your own understanding. That phrase do not lean on your own understanding, it could be translated, do not rest upon your own understanding. Do not let your understanding be what supports you. Instead, trust the Lord.

Trust His understanding. Rest in Him. Let His understanding support you. Now isn't that the point of Job's narrative? Remember the book of Job?

I brought it up at the beginning of this sermon. You get to the end of the book of Job, and what do you find? Well, you've just endured chapter after chapter after chapter of all of man's wisdom. All the wisdom that man has to share, all of man's understanding has been discoursed. And yet they are all put to silence when a voice speaks, God's voice speaks.

And God describes Job and his friends' dialogue as, and I quote, Words without knowledge, dark counsel. Where were you, God asks, when the foundations of the world were laid, hey tell me if you have understanding, who set the measurements of the earth? Tell me since you know. Who enclosed the sea? Who formed the deeps?

Who set the boundaries for the waters and said you shall come no further who sends the rain who created the stars where were you and these things took place tell me since you know that's what God asks Job and all his counselors That's what God asks of you. Tell me since you know. What's the answer? We don't know. You don't know.

You weren't there. Our understanding, your understanding of this world, and your understanding of all that takes place in this world is but nothing in comparison to the eternal God who holds all things together by the word of his power. Your understanding of this world, and all that takes place in this world, is but nothing in comparison to the one who created all things and then upholds all things from eternity past to eternity future. It's not even a blip on the radar of knowing. The point at the end of Job is this, as learned and as wise as any man may be, he is not God.

He does not know the mind of God. God is God and you are not. God is God and you are not. And therefore you who are not God, you may trust him. The point at the end of Job is to say with Paul in Romans chapter 11, who has known the mind of the Lord and who can be his counselor?

What's the answer? Nobody. Nobody. But you can trust him. Brothers and sisters, God tells you in Proverbs 3 verse 5, don't live life, don't go into 2026, acting like you're smarter than Job.

Acting like you're somehow in control. Do not lean, do not rely, do not trust in your own understanding, trust God for just as God says in Isaiah 55 verses 8 and 9 his thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways his ways declares the Lord For as the heavens are as higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than your ways, and the Lord's thoughts higher than your thoughts." So beloved, trust not in your own strength, the arm of the flesh will fail you. Trust not in your own strength and trust not in your own understanding, for the understanding of the flesh will fail you just as well." Instead, do as Paul commands in Ephesians 5.17, where he writes, understand the will of the Lord. Understand the will of the Lord. Get wisdom and begin therefore with this.

Fear God. Bow in submission to His perfect knowledge, His perfect understanding. Understand the will of the Lord. Our proverb this morning says, do not trust yourself. That's the gist of it.

Do not lean on your own understanding. But friends, lest you misunderstand this passage, This proverb does not forbid any understanding. No, no, no, no. You must have understanding. This proverb does not forbid understanding.

If it forbid understanding, we couldn't understand the proverb. It'd be a crazy circular thing. No, this proverb simply forbids trusting in any understanding that comes from you Rather than God. Worldly wisdom versus divine wisdom. So let me say this again.

This proverb does not forbid understanding. No, no, you need understanding. Far from forbidding it, God says in his word, get understanding but get it from him. So friends, you're to trust the Lord Jesus who was the Word made flesh. Yes?

How may you then trust the word made flesh you must fly to the word in scripturing you must know you must get understanding from this the word beloved for salvation you must fly to Jesus. But far from then moving on from the Lord Jesus, you must fly to the Lord Jesus again and again and again all the way to glory. And even when you get to glory, you'll not depart from Jesus, but you'll be with Him all the more forever. You'll never outgrow your need for the Lord Jesus. Church, this proverb is telling you one thing, fly to Jesus, trust Jesus, trust Him to save your soul, yes, but far from that being the end of it trust him again and trust him again and trust him again for understanding about how you were to live in his world is one saved Trust Him to make your path straight tomorrow and every day throughout 26 until you step into glory.

Church, far from ever outgrowing your need for Christ, this proverb tells you, you need him every hour. You need him every day. You need him more and more. You needed the Savior. You needed the Word made flesh desperately the day of your conversion.

Amen. And oh, all the more you need him desperately every day thereafter. Children, children please listen to me. Please listen to me. So many of you have come to be baptized.

I rejoice. You know, You want to know something that tickles me pink? Is that a phrase? It's getting really exciting. We like pink a lot in our house.

Children, when you come to be baptized, it makes me so happy. You're coming to trust Jesus. You're professing faith in Christ. You say, God has saved me through faith in Christ. God's done the miracle of saving you and His son Jesus.

I'm marvelous. I rejoice in that, children. But children, hear this. Hear this. The mark of growing strong in the Lord, the mark of being more mature as a Christian, is not that somehow after you confess faith in Jesus that you then become less and less dependent upon the Lord Jesus who saved you.

May it never be. Children, no, no, no. The mark of the maturity of a Christian, the mark of a Christian who is growing strong is that he or she is growing strong in the Lord. He or she is growing strong in the Lord. He or she is growing strong in the strength of his might, not your own.

The mark of a mature Christian is that she realizes day after day, more and more, how much she needs Jesus. How much more she needs Jesus today than she realized yesterday. That's what it means to grow strong in the Lord. Sometimes we play this game in Christianity where we'll get baptized when we're a young child, six or seven, and then you get to be 26 or 27, and you come to your pastor and you say, Oh pastor, my baptism wasn't real because I know how much I need Jesus today, way more than I knew when I was six or seven. And they say, of course you do.

Praise God you do. It doesn't mean six or seven years old wasn't true. Don't play that game. Praise God that you get to be older and you know you need Him more. That's the mark of regeneracy.

That's the mark of being born again. That you would know, I need him more today than I needed him yesterday because I see more of my sin and I see more of his perfection. What a perfect Savior I have. That's what it means to grow strong in the Lord, children. That's what it means to be mature in Jesus.

You need the Savior, the Word made flesh, Jesus desperately every day, which means that you need the Word inscripturated, the word of Christ your Savior desperately every day you need his word you need his word trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Instead, trust, rely upon His understanding. Submit your understanding to His. Which means you need to know God. You need to know God.

And how do you know God? How may you know the mind and the will and the understanding of the Lord Jesus? How may you know the Word made flesh and is will for you? Children, do you know the answer? How can you hear from God every morning when you wake up?

The Bible. Oh, Abby, good job. By reading the Word made scripture. Ephesians 5 17 tells you, understand the will of the Lord. Here is the will of the Lord.

Proverbs 3 5, trust in the Lord and not yourself. How? By knowing God here in. Sometimes people are confused about how to make decisions or how to go through life. Pour your desires.

Pour your questions. Sift your emotions through the filter of God's Word and see how they come out on the other side. You need to take home a Bible reading plan today. How do you know God? How do you know His will?

How can you understand the will of the Lord? Take a Bible reading plan home. And be resolved this year of our Lord 2026 to get into the Word of God and get the Word of God into you. Don't leave here without a Bible reading plan. You don't have to take one of those if you already have one.

But I will tell you this, if you leave and you do not have a plan to read the Bible in 2026, if you do not resolve today, I think you have a plan and your plan is not to read the Bible. Let me tell you something you won't say at the end of 2026. You won't say at the end of 2026, I wish I hadn't read my Bible so much. I mean, I don't know if there's a lot of things you can say like that, but that's one of them. You will not say that.

You may say that a lot about a lot of things in 2026. I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't done this. But this won't be one of them. I wish I hadn't read my Bible all the way through.

You won't say that. I wish I hadn't have gotten a Bible reading plan that last Sunday in 2025. You won't say that at the end of 2026. Dear ones, resolved with Jonathan Edwards in his 28th resolution, resolved to study the scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

Which brings us back to what we've discussed a number of times this past Advent season. Good way to end the 2025. Friend, you may not, you may not, You cannot, you must not, you must not understand this world and your circumstances based on your understanding. You got that? Based on your vantage point.

You don't get to look at the world, You don't get to look at the world, you don't get to look at your life, and make observations about the world and your life in the world as a trump card that you then place on the Bible and say, well that must be what the Bible means. You don't get to do that. Are you God? No. You don't get to do that.

No. Instead, you must go the other way around your vantage point doesn't get to Trump God's vantage point understand that One of my little girls just this week, just a few days ago, we went golfing on Friday, keeping the streak alive. And I took my whole family. Abigail lasted the whole time with me. And so she's, she's, we're finishing our round of golf and out in the golf course there's these ponds and they're still covered with ice you know And from a six-year-old's perspective that ice looks solid.

And so we're walking by all these ponds and there's golf balls on top of ponds. And she's asking me, daddy, I'm gonna go grab that golf ball in the middle of the pond. I mean, that's nice golf balls, multiple golf balls. Wouldn't you like that, Patty? And from her vantage point, it appeared to be solid ice.

From her vantage point and her understanding, the pond looks solid. She could just walk out there on top of the ice, grab the ball, be one golf ball richer. But her father said to her, sweetheart, I know it doesn't make sense to you. I know from your vantage point it's hard to believe, but trust me, that ice will not hold you. It's been warm all week so listen to your father please and she did and wouldn't you know it she didn't trust her own understanding she acknowledged her father and all her ways and by the end of the of the golf outing, she had found more balls.

Not on top of ice. Friends, don't look at the world and place your vantage point on the text of Scripture. In 2026, don't insist that because this is the way the world is, well this is the way the world is, and because this is the way your life is, that the Word of God cannot possibly mean what it says it means. No! Lean not No!

Lean not on your own understanding. Simple. Instead, look at the word of Almighty God and trust what he says herein, however fantastical it might seem. And then look at the world, and look at your life, look at circumstances and say, and so it will be, and so it must be, because God said so. Understand the world and understand 2026 in light of this book and not the other way around.

Can you imagine the scoffers? You know it's day. Rain. A flood. What is this giant boat?

Way too fantastical. They're not laughing now. Be like Noah. Look at the world. Look at your life.

Know God. And that is the final key to a life not wasted in 2026. Know God. Verse six of our passage. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Brothers and sisters, as verse five made clear that you are to understand the world and the years to come through the Word of God. Verse 6 now describes how that Word is going to come out of you through prayer. Through prayer. And Matthew Henry says that exactly and I quote, By prayer, trust in the Lord comes out in prayer. In all thy ways acknowledge God.

We must not only in our judgment believe that there is an overruling hand of God ordering and disposing of us and all our affairs. But we must also solemnly own that and address ourselves to Him accordingly in prayer. We must ask His leave. We must ask His advice and beg direction from Him, not only when the case is difficult, but in every case. For it is promised, He shall direct thy paths.

For those who faithfully follow the pillar of cloud and fire shall find that though it may lead them about, it leads them the right way and it will bring them to Canaan at last." End quote. In all your ways, pray. In all your ways, cast your cares upon the Lord Jesus, for He cares for you. He demonstrated his care for you at his cross. There is no greater love, there is no better display of affection and care in all the world than the God man laying down His life for you when you were His enemy, to make you His friend, to make you His bride.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. Humble yourself. Pray.

Seek His will. And the promise is, He will make your past strength. Or it could be translated, He will carry you through. Dear Saints, in 2026, give yourselves to knowing God. Proverbs 16 3, commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.

Proverbs 16 9, the mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Psalm 37, 4, and 5, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him and He will do it. Brothers and sisters, as you close out this year, and as you anticipate the year to come, trust in the Lord.

Boast in the Lord. Cling to the Lord. Live a life with these precious words from the old Scottish minister, Robert Murray McShane, ringing in your ears as I quote by way of conclusion, When you believe in Jesus for righteousness, you must cast away all your own claims for pardon. Your own righteousness must be filthy rags in your eyes. You must come empty that you may go away full of Jesus.

And just so, when you trust in Jesus for strength, and when you trust in his understandings and not your own, you must cast away all your natural notions of your own strength. You must feel that your own resolutions and vows and promises are as useless to stem the current of your passions as so many straws would be in stemming the mightiest waterfall. You must feel that your own firmness and manliness of disposition, which has so long been the praise of your friends and the boast of your own mind, they are as powerless before the breath of temptation, as a broken reed before a hurricane. You must feel that you wrestled not with flesh and blood, but with spirits of gigantic power, and whose mighty grasp you are feeble as a child, then and only then will you come with all your heart to trust in the Lord your strength. When the believer is weakest, then is he strongest.

The child that knows most its utter feebleness entrusts itself most completely into the mother's arms. The young eagle that knows by many a fall its own inability to fly yields itself to be carried on the mother's mighty wean. When it is weak, then it is strong, and just so the believer. When he has found doubt by repeated falls and repeated failings, his own utter feebleness clings with the simplest faith to the arms of the Savior, leans on his beloved coming up out of the wilderness, and hears with joy the word, my grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness.

May that be true of you today, tomorrow, and forevermore. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for such a truth that thy grace is sufficient for us yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forever more. Lord, we believe. Please help our unbelief.

Thank you for the gospel of your beloved son. Thank you that it's true even for the greatest of sinners that we are. Thank you Father for your faithfulness in 2025, for your sustaining grace and we commit our way we commit our paths in 2026 into your perfect hands help us to remember when storms come and they will surely come Help us to remember that they still know the winds and the waves of our lives. They still know the voice of him who stilled them 2, 000 years ago. Help us to be still and to know that you are God.

Help us to trust you. For Jesus' sake and in His name we pray, amen. Thank you.