words of wisdom

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JESUS IS THE SOURCE OF WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE

(Colossians 2:8-10 MSG) Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk.  They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything.  They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spiritual beings.  But that’s not the way of Christ.  Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly.  You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him.  When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too.  His power extends over everything. 

It is very common for people to intellectualize Christianity.  But no amount of study or discussion can give a person what Christ has to offer.  When you come to him, when you open yourself to him, then you’re on the road to understanding how God planned your redemption, and from that premise, you have the foundation to study and discuss the wonders of God’s world. 

No matter how intelligent a person considers himself or herself to be, their reasoning is flawed in comparison to the one who created the universe and all it contains.  It makes sense to first seek- out this all powerful and loving being we call God.  For knowing God is the beginning of wisdom (see Proverbs 9:10).  I began to make sense of this life when I surrendered my will to God and received Jesus as my savior.  I was given understanding that was unavailable before God gave me his Holy Spirit.  Then the words of the Bible became illuminated. The Holy Spirit guided me as I read , and I began to understand God’s truth. 

(1 Corinthians 1:20)  Where is the wise person?  Where is the teacher of the law?  Where is the philosopher of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

Jesus is the source of wisdom and knowledge. It all begins with him.  Clear thinking isn’t found in the words of man, but it is found in the words of God’s son. For those who desire to have wisdom and knowledge, you will find them in Jesus.

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GOD WALKING AMONG US

(John 1:1-4) In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all thing were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

Imagine that God came and sat down with you and explained how best to live the life he has given you.  What an amazing advantage that would be.  Well this really happened some 2000 years ago, and Matthew recorded the event in his Gospel.  He starts out with these words, (Matthew 5:1&2) “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside and sat down.  His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.”  Matthew continues on and shares the words Jesus spoke that day found in chapters 5-7.

Probably most of the people there that day did not know they were listening to the one through whom all things were created.  At the end though, Matthew tells us they were amazed by Jesus’ teaching.  They also didn’t know that Jesus was going to die for their sins; he was offering them a fresh start, and an opportunity to live a new life in the way he taught them.

Today, there are still many who don’t recognize that Jesus is God, that he died for their sins, and that he offers them a fresh start.  They may be amazed by Jesus’ teaching, but they don’t realize that to have the power to live by them they must receive him as their savior.  For those of us who do know that Jesus is God, and that he died for our sins, when we receive him, he gives us his Holy Spirit (see John 16:13) to empower us on our quest to live by his teaching.

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WALKING NOT RUNNING WITH GOD

(Micah 6:8) He has showed you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you? To do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8 is one of my favorite scriptures.  It puts the requirements of walking with God in a nut shell.  It teaches us the basics in a clear and simple way.  In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates the last part of verse 8 in these words, “It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.” 

Notice the word “walk”; this scripture talks about walking with God – not running with God.  This is a “me” thing.  I like to think of my life as a quiet and peaceful walk with God.  I don’t believe that we are asked to be constantly out of breath while running with God. 

Walking humbly with God teaches us how to relate to God.  In our walk with God (not a run), we should assume a humble place.  Remember Jesus said, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (see Matthew 11:30).  I think it’s acceptable to relax and enjoy our walk with God.  Don’t you think that the work of the Kingdom comes from a relationship born out of our quiet and peaceful walk with the Father God?

Jesus also said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (see Matthew 28:20).  Those who have received salvation through Jesus the Christ have become the children of God.  He is always with his children.  When we mess up, and fail to follow his teaching, he is with us.  When we take the wrong path, he is with us.  Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus (see Romans 8:37-39).  He will never abandon his children.

Micah 6:8 gives us clear directions, but we have the handicap of being sinners.  We have a tendency to fail when it comes to following those directions.  Therefore, we always need Jesus.  We need to remember that he is always with us, and he will never leave us.  Jesus is always teaching us, and he is always saving us.  He loves us!  In walking humbly with him, we learn to rely on him.  So, not taking ourselves too seriously, but taking God seriously seems to be good advice. 

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REFLECTIONS ON PSALM 86

Psalm 86 is attributed to King David.  This week I’ve been renewing my appreciation of this Psalm.  One of the fascinating features of this psalm is that David reveals his perception of God.  In these verses we see the Attributes of God as David came to know him.

Verse 5: You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.

Verse 8: Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours.

Verse 10: For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.

Verse 13: For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the

realm of the dead.

Verse 15: But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in

love and faithfulness.

So I ask myself, “Is this the God I know?”  I am compelled to answer with an emphatic,” yes”!  During the time I have walk with the Lord; I have found David’s words increasingly describe who God is to me.  David asked God to teach him; so that he might understand his ways (see verse 11).  God has taught me much over the years, and I have grown in my understanding of his ways. 

David has left us with a carrot of expectation.  If we want to know God as he did, we just have to call on the Lord.   As he said in verse 5, “You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you”.

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PLEASING GOD

(1Corinthians 5:9 MSG) But neither exile nor homecoming is the main thing.  Cheerfully pleasing God is the main thing, and that’s what we aim to do, regardless of our conditions.

A couple of days ago I read the devotional for March 17th from “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. For his words of that day he used the above scripture, and he pointed out that the first aim of every child of God is to please God.  It made me think again of the father child relationship, and yes, it should be the goal of every child to please their father.  But what happens when that is not the child’s goal?  What happens when the child wants to do their own thing against the father’s wishes? 

From the father’s perspective it is painful when a child goes beyond our instructions, steps out on their own, and gets them self in trouble.  You tried to warn them, but they did it anyway.  At first you’re angry with them, but as time passes your love for them causes you to forgive them, and you are always motivated to make a way for them to get through the consequences and be restored.

(Psalm 103:8-13) The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.  He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgressions from us.  As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

Our Heavenly Father is the perfect Father.  I imagine that he feels pain when we sin against him, but as this passage from Psalm 103 tells us, he forgives his children and removes our sins from us.  He wants to restore us to himself.  How does he get us through the consequences of our sins?  He sent his only begotten Son to pay the consequences for all of us for all of time.

(Hebrews 11:6) And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

I want to please God; I’m a sinner.  I can’t always please him, but I do my best.  When I fall, he is always there to pick me up.  So, faith is the key to pleasing God.  I believe in God, I trust in God, and through faith I know he will always be my Father. 

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FEARING GOD?

 (Ecclesiastes 12:13)  Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

Have you ever wondered about what it actually means to fear God?  Imagine that you got in trouble at school, and your mother had to come and pick you up.  You’d have fear of your mother, but then your mother would say these dreaded words, “wait till your father gets home”.  These words would strike a deeper fear.  Well, if you had a good loving relationship with your father, you might be afraid of what punishment was coming, but you’d also have a hurt in your heart because you had let your father down.  God calls himself our Father, and that helps us understand what the fear of God is like.  For those who didn’t have the perfect father experience, this might present us with a somewhat confused understanding of what it means to fear God.

Last Sunday, our pastor used electricity as an example for fearing God.  Electricity is all around us, and we depend on it greatly.  However we also know that if we stick a fork in an outlet we’re going to get electrocuted.  So we respect electricity and have a healthy fear of it. 

The sun is another power source that we respect and maintain a healthy fear toward.  Not only does the sun provide heat for us, but through the process of photosynthesis it also provides directly or indirectly all the food eaten by us and the other living creatures on the earth.  The sun is a life sustaining power that we can’t live without.  Now put on your bathing suit and go lay in direct summer sunlight for 5 or 6 hours and you will experience another aspect of the sun’s power by developing a painful sun burn.  My worse sun burn was obtained in the tropics in a period of one hour.  The pain was excruciating. I became nauseous and could hardly move.  I definitely have a healthy fear of the sun’s power.

God is the ultimate power and the creator of all other sources of power known to man.  He has power over the physical world and the spiritual world.  Fearing God is an intelligent decision, yet there is so much more to God then raw power.  God is also a being filled with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness. In my years of knowing God, I’ve come to love him, and I feel very close to him. I desire to please God because he loves me, and I love him. He is like the perfect father to me.  So let me then close with this scripture.

(1 John 4:16-18)  So we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement: In this world we are like Jesus.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with judgment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

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PRAYER FOR THE NATION

This prayer, attributed to Paul Harvey and Billy Graham, was first penned by Bob Russell in 1995.  It has been modified somewhat over the years, but its message exposes the dialogue of the day and highlights how far we have gone astray.

“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says ‘Woe to those who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We confess that.

We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism.

We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

We have endorsed perversion and called it alternative lifestyle.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.

We have abused power and called it politics.

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

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A DEPRAVED MIND

In my concern for our country, I would like to spark some Biblical insight about what is happening to America.  Last week I shared that countries will be judged for their wickedness.  Today I’d like to give some thoughts on what is wrong with our thinking.  Have you noticed that our leaders seem especially irrational in their thinking?

In Romans chapter one the Apostle Paul explains how rejecting God affected our thinking.  Romans 1:21, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

If you think there isn’t a God, you fit in well with the liberal thinking of our times.  However, America was founded with the idea that there is a God who is identified in the Bible.  There is certainly still enough evidence to this conjecture to be convincing.  No doubt there are many who would like to destroy this evidence, but let’s get back to our investigation of the problem with our thinking.

Romans 1:28-30, Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.  They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents.

In God we find the source of wisdom.  We think we’re intelligent, but without God we falter in our use of knowledge.  Sin gets in the way of our ability to think rationally.  We need God!  He is our only hope!  Unless we repent and turn to God, we are doomed to continue in our futility and irrational sin driven thinking.

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THE NATIONS WILL BE JUDGED

Is anyone concerned?  Is anyone fearful?  I’ve been reading in the Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  They speak of Israel’s sin against God, and the pending doom that awaited them.  Jeremiah 9:3 states,

“They make ready their tongue like a bow, to shoot lies; it is not by truth that they triumph in the land.  They go from one sin to another; they do not acknowledge me,” declares the Lord.

We are not Israel, but we are a blessed nation.  Did the blessings come from our own hand, or did they come from God?  Can we escape the doom of Israel as we continue to reject God? Are we exempt?  Though it reads on our coins “In God we trust”, we as a nation do not.  We have gone our own way, and we refuse to acknowledge God.  When Israel strayed and turned its back on God, the surrounding nations, the descendants of Ishmael, harassed them.  I find it most interesting that the eyes of Ishmael’s descendants are now turned to the U.S.  We have now become the great evil.  Ishmael is against us.  Is it by accident that this has happened?

If indeed God does not exist, as many now declare, then we have nothing to worry about.  I believe God does exist, and he created us. We as a people belong to him.  I also believe that God has the right to and will judge nations.  Individuals are judged after death, but nations are judged here and now.  If this is true, the people of the U.S. should be concerned; we should be fearful.  I close with this warning from Hebrews 10:30-31,

For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”  It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

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A GOOD LIFE

Most people would say, “My overall goal is to have a good life”.  If you asked them what that means or what does that look like, you’d get a human answer.

Planning for a good life requires many assumptions because our lives are terminal and of an unknown number of years.  This is a precarious platform on which to plan.  We don’t know what is going to happen five minutes from now, or if we will be alive five minutes from now.  Statistically, we’re pretty confident that we’ll be living five minutes from now, but you know statistics aren’t that reliable.

We have only one sure way to plan a good life.  I found that way in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” The longer I live, the more I appreciate the wisdom of this proverb.  Since we have no clue about the future, how can we plan for it?  The Lord alone knows what the future holds.  Trusting him provides a great life plan.  I’d like to add this amazing truth that comes with trusting the Lord, “in Christ Jesus death is no longer part of the equation.”