Tag Archives: God

Wisdom to Spare

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Intelligence has a dark side.  The mad scientist, the evil tyrant, the devious-but-brainy bad guys that our favorite super heroes destroy – these illustrate the fact that intellectual abilty can be used for wicked purposes. 

The ability to put whatever knowledge we have to good use is known in the Bible as wisdom.  It’s an acquired skill – the capacity to live life well.  Wisdom helps people stay happily married and to do OK financially.  It helps us raise our children in such a way that they appreciate us more and more as they get older.  Wisdom finds the solution to unexpected problems and makes us a blessing to our friends – and even our enemies when needed. 

Wisdom begins with the fear of God:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
                                               – Proverbs 9:10 (NKJV)

That’s where it starts, but it can’t end there.  Life is just complicated enough that we often need more wisdom than we ever figured.  So how do we get all we need?  We pray for it, ask God for it, and feel free to keep asking.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”   – James 1:5 (NKJV)

And we can know God’s wisdom as we get it, because it tends to look like this:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”  – James 3:17 (NKJV)

Unprofitable Prophets

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God has a lot of people who speak in His name without ever first hearing from Him what to say – and He knows it.  These false prophets lead people astray with messages that they have made up.  They say whatever they want and they serve no useful purpose. Normally, they say what people want to hear in order to gain a following.  This is no recent phenomenon, but has actually long been the case.

So it was in the days of Jeremiah.  He was a bona fide prophet – the real thing – and he was especially unpopular.  Prophets were a shekel a dozen in Jerusalem in those days and each of them had a following.  Things were beginning to go badly in Judah, so it was pretty easy to get listeners if you said something that sounded nice.  People were eager to hear pleasant-sounding messages – and to continue in their evil practices at the same time.  Jeremiah, on the other hand, with his continuously unheeded messages of repentance, found it easy to get discouraged.

So the Lord encouraged Jeremiah, His faithful messenger, by offering His personal commentary on these popular, but unprofitable, prophets.  Here’s what He had to say:

I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran.
I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. 
But if they had stood in My counsel,
And had caused My people to hear My words,
Then they would have turned them from their evil way
And from the evil of their doings.”
               – Jeremiah 23:21-22 (NKJV)

Every Christian should make it a point to stick to God’s counsel as found in His word.  We will be more profitable as a result, when the time comes to open our mouths.

The God Who Keeps On Giving

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I need a lot of God’s grace, His unmerited favor, those unearned blessings that He gives and keeps on giving.  There are times I think I’ve nearly drained the limit of His supply.  Those are the times He gently reminds me of the cross.

The cross of Jesus Christ illustrates just how far God will go on our behalf.  Once we’ve accepted it, the floodgates of grace are now open.  We can’t touch the ceiling; if it’s good He will give it.  We can’t find the edge.  Once we’re inside, having entered through Jesus Christ the Door, the boundaries of His love are unsearchable.  And if there is a need He is readly, willing and able to meet it. 

Let’s give Him the honor and show Him the respect of taking Him at His word.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”
                                                – Romans 8:31-32 (NKJV)

Keeping Secrets

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There is a lot that people don’t know about one another.  That’s not likely to change no matter how much each of us will ever be willing to share.  The sheer volume of data, combined with the emotional energy it would take to process it, would eventually send the most compassionate listener on earth into information overload.  Still, we should always strive to be better at compassionate listening.

God has a real advantage here.  He knows everything already.  Our deepest darkest secrets are as plain and obvious to Him as the bright light of day.  We see this in the New Testament Greek word for “confess” (homologeo), which literally means something like “same say” or “say the same as another”.   When we confess anything to God, we are only admitting what He already knows to be true.  We are finally saying what He has been saying all along.

Which brings us to a deeper problem, namely that of keeping secrets from ourselves.  There can be areas within our lives or beings that we don’t fully understand.  Sometimes that’s a willful ignorance; sometimes it’s more inadvertent.  In either case, the effect is the same:  We don’t know what we’re like or who we are.  It’s not that we won’t admit our fatal flaws or inner conflicts; we don’t even fully understand them.  We’ve yet to accurately identify these concealed culprits that hold back our personal and spiritual growth.

What a blessing to have an all-knowing Helper – a loving know-it-all who truly knows it all!  David came to grips with his self-ignorance and it led him to this useful, yet beautiful, prayer:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties; 
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.”
          – Psalms 139:23-24 (NKJV)

Let’s follow his example by praying it, letting the Lord reveal our secrets to ourselves.