Acknowledge Him in all your ways.

Think of acknowledgment in terms of relationship.

Pro 3:5-6 says  Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

         Imagine a relationship that you have with someone in which that person does not acknowledge you. Imagine a marriage in which the husband does not listen to his wife, does not think about her needs, does not compliment her, does not appreciate or validate her. This is not a relationship at all and most likely it won't last long as a marriage.

         The thing that makes a relationship work is acknowledgment; mutual acceptance, respect. It is validation; your opinion matters to me, what you feel matters to me, what you say matters to me. If there is one thing a women detests above all else it is “The Silent Treatment.” If you want to see steam come out of a woman’s ears, shut down on her in the middle of a discussion or an argument, just clam up, turn, and walk away. This affects us men too. Imagine a coworker or a boss that while disusing an important issue at work treats you like anything you might have to say is irrelevant, that your opinion is useless and unwanted.  It is easy to see how we feel when we are not acknowledged, it speaks to the total lack of relationship. It says we are not loved, not wanted, not important. We often feel rejected and useless.

         Now let’s think about our relationship with God in terms of Acknowledgment. If God is in none of our thoughts we are essentially rejecting a relationship with Him. It’s not that God needs our acknowledgment to feel good about himself, but that we can not be who we are created to be without living in relationship to Him.

         Does God want a relationship with us? Yes. To acknowledge someone in all we do speaks to the deepest of relationships. It is a relationship that goes deeper then, “what did you do today?” It searches to the depths of our thoughts and feelings and the intent of our heart. The greatest commandment says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all you soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. So the question before us is; does the degree of our acknowledging God correspond and correlate to a relationship of loving someone with all our heart?