Wise guys (Proverbs 3.7): What to do when God doesn’t make sense!
➣What you acknowledge will govern you. It shapes your values. It determines or limits your actions.
What governs our lives? Pleasure? Guilt? Entertainment? Money?
- Truth wants to govern our lives and make them potent.
- Truth applied = Wisdom...when birthed out of reverence for God
- This is counter-intuitive
➣Adam & Eve lost wisdom in the Garden.
- Their intel became internal and sensory-based
- It wasn’t until the arrival of the holy spirit that we were enabled to be filled inwardly with God’s Holy Presence & power.
Acknowledge = YADA: to perceive, understand, acquire, knowledge, discern, sexual intercourse, to appoint. To know by reflecting and revelation.
"I knew (Yada) you before I formed (Yatsar) you in your mother's womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you... Jeremiah 1:5-7
Do we see God? Potential purpose
➣Acknowledge (beyond casual acquaintance): Follow~Assimilate into God’s plans
Association: Guild, coalition, volunteers who enter into agreements
Acquiesce: Accept reluctantly but without protest
Acquaint: Knowledge or experience of something, make familiar, firsthand experience
Acknowledge Admit or accept the truth of something, allow, roger that (telecommunications), concede, give someone a preferred or recognized status, make known the receipt of
Assimilate: Absorb, incorporate
They that wait (serve) the Lord....When it was counter-intuitive
➣Joseph The Carpenter: Matt 1.20; Matt 1.24; Matt 2.13; Matt 2.19; Matt 2.22
(Emotions: Anger/Embarrassment/Resentment/Pride/Fear/Helplessness/Homelessness/Marginalized/Inconvenienced)
- Samuel: Speak...I’m waiting for instruction
- Jehoshaphat...We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are one you
- Moses...if you don’t go with me, I won’t go
- Jesus...I do what I see the Father do
So What?
➣Purpose is God-ordained/ That message of purpose is conveyed to us via scripture, the voice of the Spirit and community/ The response to the intel is wisdom or folly.
- Wisdom is the path to purpose, authority, fulfillment and powerful/meaning living.
Our purposes are short-lived and thwarted when we live from our own limited perspectives rather than God’s perspective.
- We are mortal: weak, self-centered, fickle
- We are limited by our own experience or the experiences of others
- As mortals we are driven by our need for relevance (connected) & significance (meaning)
- We can NEVER see things the way God does unless the are revealed
- Following that revelation is an act of wisdom and begins with respect for God.
➣God has been God forever and human for 33 years. Why wouldn’t we want to benefit from that experience?
Next Steps: Make a Wise Move
➣You’re worth too much to merely be a loose canon. You were created to be a dangerously strategic part of God’s plan for healing, loving and transforming the world.