Let the responsibility for success roll off your back and onto His

Proverbs 16:3

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.  NIV

A friend and I were looking at this verse last night.  We looked at several translations, and we agreed that we liked the New Living Translation the best, “Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.” NLT

While we weren’t discussing the verse in the context of my project, it occurred to me when I got up this morning, that this really is a reminder not to worry, so I went back to it.  Often my worries stem from plans … I do worry that they won’t succeed, so, I wanted to dig into this verse a bit more.

Interestingly, when I consulted my concordance, it appears that this verse is the only time that the word “commit” is used in all of Proverbs.  My Hebrew to English dictionary says that the Hebrew word means “‘to commit, trust,’ is a figure of rolling care or responsibility onto the Lord.”

Wow.

When I am working to achieve a goal, I often picture myself rolling a large boulder up an incline, or, if it is a task that involves many subtasks or many other people, the image is of a big grocery cart, filled with those subtasks or team members.  I’ve found that in every project, there is a tipping point.  If the thing can get pushed against whatever resistance is in the system to the peak … it will then gain momentum and take hold. I then see the boulder or the cart rolling down the other side of the peak on its own.  My job is then done … that task or project is off and running and I can go back down to the bottom and start pushing the next one.

So, having held this viewpoint for more than a decade, I find myself in awe of this verse.

It never occurred to me to roll the responsibility onto God.  I’ve earnestly asked him to bless my efforts, but, I still saw myself as the force behind the rock.  In my head, His blessings would take the form of lessening the incline, or allowing the peak to be reached sooner, or keeping the thing from rolling back down over me and crushing me and my efforts.  But, that’s not what this verse says — commit to the Lord whatever you do — roll the care or the responsibility of it onto Him …

There is a tremendous measure of relief as I think about rolling care or responsibility onto the Lord.

This is a significant discovery … one that I will need to think much more about today.