Wise guys (Proverbs 3.7): What to do when God doesn’t make sense to us!

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.