Is God’s wisdom your shield?

Do you find your strength in God’s power?

Most days of our lives are manageable and easy to navigate. We seek God’s word and his will for the day. We pray for his Presence and can sense his peace. God’s Spirit provides our direction and our sense of God’s favor and strength. There may be a momentary need that causes us to pray quickly for his advice, his words, and his thoughts. While most of our days are manageable, every life has days, even seasons, that wash over us and cause us to feel overwhelmed. I heard a preacher say one time that the best time to get ready for the hard times was now, during the easier times. This life is a road trip to heaven and at some point we will be required to face a mountain. Isaiah the prophet offers great words of encouragement for every day that we will need to remember in the hard days. Isaiah said we should hear his words and know that these words are truth. Then he told the people about the perfect character of God. God is everlasting. God is the Creator of the ends of the earth. God never grows faint or weary and his understanding of you and your need is unsearchable. In other words, whatever you face in life, God can and will handle it for you, perfectly. God is incapable of wanting anything less than his perfect will for you. The time to prepare for the mountains of life is right now. Know God and all that he is and all that he can do. You will never fully understand God because his understanding is unsearchable.  Don’t worry that you might face a difficult time in this life; expect that you will and get ready. A strong person isn’t afraid to pick up a heavy object because he knows he is able. A strong ship can handle storms.  There are some moments in this life that seem overwhelming and impossible to face. Those are the times we pray like someone caught in a violent storm. During those times, Isaiah assures us that God “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.” I’ve been in ministry for a long time and I have witnessed Isaiah’s words time after time. I’ve seen people endure the impossible because of the miraculous strength of God in their lives. Watching them made me want to seek that strength for my own life. Yielding to God’s wisdom is spiritual strength. The time to yield and the time to become strong in the Lord is now. Then, when the storm comes, you will find God’s strength and power to be sufficient for all things. You will know how to yield to the everlasting God, the Creator, who never grows weary of caring for his children. You can say with the Apostle Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

Do you yield your priorities to God?

Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness to do good things that would have shown the world he was capable of miraculous works. Studying the temptations of Christ is important for our spiritual lives because they are examples of the way Christians are tempted today. If you have a strong walk with the Lord, you are probably not going to be tempted to commit an awful crime or willingly do an evil thing. Instead, Satan often tempts those of us who are close to God to fill our lives with good things instead of things God most needs us to accomplish. Jesus taught his disciples to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” God wants to be our King, the Ruler of our lives. When our lives are governed by God, then our choices are about obedience to his commands rather than just making good personal choices. We are made “righteous,” meaning “right with God,” when we live submitted and obedient to God’s leadership in our lives. How does God lead? Our Bibles teach us how to know God and therefore recognize his will and his voice in our lives. The Holy Spirit is our gift of the Lord’s Presence to guide us and strengthen us to accomplish his will. Our job is to remain so close to God that his voice is easily discernible from all others. As a disciple, we are not called to simply choose good things to do for ourselves. We are called to know God and discern his will, choosing to obey the “God-things” that we are assigned to accomplish by his directives.  Jesus said that if we will seek God’s priorities in our lives and desire to live a righteous life “all things will be added” as a result. Our first priority is to know God’s will, his plan for our days. God’s blessings are the result of obeying all that he has called us to accomplish. When we stand before our Father one day, our eternal rewards will be the results of our earthly submission and our choice to obey his calling in our lives. Yielding to God’s wisdom is spiritual strength. Let’s not settle for the good things the world applauds. Instead, let’s seek God’s will, God’s calling, and choose to do those things that make us right with him as our King. Then can the promise of his blessings be added to our lives now and eternally.

Is God’s wisdom your shield?

We can be faithful to God because he is always faithful to us. From Genesis to the book of Revelation, we see God present in the lives of those who trusted in him. Even when the nation of Israel was taken into captivity, we saw the Lord’s faithfulness to Daniel and his friends. Even when King David sinned, we saw the Lord’s faithfulness to redeem his life.  Paul had likely caused the murder of innocent people before he became a Christian, but God was faithful to him and faithful to use his life after his salvation. God is always faithful to his children, especially when the Evil One, Satan, is attacking. Satan is real and so are his demons. We can see Satan at work in people’s lives who commit horrible crimes we cannot imagine doing ourselves. We must acknowledge Satan’s existence because Jesus and the disciples spoke of his reality. We are wrong to ignore Satan’s presence, but we are also wrong to give him too much power in our lives. The Apostle Paul said the Lord is faithful: “He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.” The next time darkness seems to be closing in, ask God for a hedge of angels to bring protection and light.  The next time your thoughts shift to the worst possibilities, ask the Lord to guard your thoughts and author his own. Hear him speak his promises to your heart and mind, then allow the Holy Spirit to remind you of God’s truth from Scripture. When you feel overwhelmed by a circumstance in your life, ask God for spiritual eyes to discern his angelic presence and hedge of protection. God has “established you” as a member of his eternal family; you are his child. He will guard you and help you defeat the work of the Evil One in your life. The Lord is faithful to guard our earthly lives until he can bring us safely and eternally to our heavenly homes. Yielding to God’s wisdom is spiritual strength. Allow him to guard your thoughts and your life against the Evil One.

Yielding to God’s wisdom means yielding our ideas to God’s.

You have probably heard someone invite a person to church saying, “Your life will be so much better if you just get involved.” Maybe you’ve heard someone say something like, “God wants you to have the best life possible. You need to come to church with me.”  Truthfully, I’ve probably said things like that to people in the past. Sometimes our good intentions or personal experience stand against the truth of God’s promises. I often use John 16:33 to teach people that the actual promise of Scripture is that our earthly lives will have troubles—tribulation. Those words were spoken by Jesus to his disciples, and they are just as true for his disciples today. Sometimes our faith brings trouble to our earthly lives, with children, spouses, and friends. I’ve known people whose friends said, “I liked you better before the whole church thing.” There are two great truths of John 16:33 that are sometimes missed in the reading. Jesus taught his disciples some hard truth in the upper room. He told them he would die, but that a Helper would come. He told them one of them would be his betrayer, and he said many other things about what would happen to their lives after his death. Then he told them, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.”  John is the only Apostle believed to have lived a long life and to have died a natural death. His life was full and blessed, but it was also very difficult at times. When John authored the gospel that bears his name, he made certain we would have these important words from Christ. John knew the truth. Jesus came so that we could have peace in this world because we could live our lives “in Christ.” Jesus came to be the sacrifice for our sins so that we could live each day confident of our forgiveness. The Spirit of Christ came to indwell our lives so that we could know we had been saved; we are “in Christ.” John wanted us to know and have great hope, even during the trials of life. If we are in Christ, we have hope eternal because Jesus promised, “I have overcome the world.” We can offer people the great hope of eternal life if they are “in Christ.” We need to be cautious about offering them anything but “the peace that is ours in Christ” and the eternal hope that is ours when we leave this life.  The best earthly life is a blessed earthly life, whatever those blessings turn out to be. Our ideas and experience may not be someone else’s story. The most profound comfort is found in the truth of Christ’s words to his disciples in the upper room. Jesus said we would have troubles in our lives but that we can always trust the promise of our lives eternal.  Yielding to God’s wisdom is our spiritual strength. Yielding our words to God’s biblical wisdom will equip you to share his truth with others.

Will you yield the wait to God’s timing?

One Sunday my husband, Jim, was preaching a sermon on patience and I was teaching my Sunday School lesson on the topic of grace. He and I laughed about that and decided we should both be calling in sick! Jim has a lot of grace, but neither of us is very good at waiting. In fact, few people are.  Waiting on the Lord is the most difficult wait of all. I’ve rarely known God to hurry things along. As I’ve often said, “Waiting is often the most important part of God’s answer.”  When you have been waiting on God for something you know would be his will to answer, be encouraged. One of the best ways to recognize the hand of God is at work is the wait. We need to become spiritually patient because that is a great strength in our lives. It shouts to the world, “I trust God’s plan and I’m willing to wait for it.” Waiting gives us the chance and the inclination to seek after God and his thoughts. The more we learn about God in his word, the more likely we are to trust his perfection. The psalmist could have said, “Enjoy the wait because you will grow stronger and your heart will be encouraged by all you learn during that time.” Even as I consider my own words, I realize explaining God’s word is much easier than following God’s word in my own life. We are human beings and we want what we want as soon as we want it. God often makes us wait until we are willing to want what he wants and wait for his work in our lives. Yielding to God is spiritual wisdom. Yielding to the wait of God’s perfect timing is wise. His solution is about our salvation, our eternal reward, and quite possibly about the eternal lives of others as well. Wanting his answers makes it well worth our wait.