Wise Choices

 Wise Choices

The LORD gives wisdom;

From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

PROVERBS 2.6

Wisdom is more than knowledge. It is knowing what to do with knowledge. The Old Testament promised those who sought the Lord that He would give them wisdom. What an encouragement that must have been to them.

However, the grace walk is even better. You live under a New Covenant, in which your Father doesn’t offer to give you wisdom. Instead, He already has given it to you in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1.30).

You possess divine wisdom because you have Wisdom living in you! Don’t lean on your own understanding. When you face a decision, pray and ask Him to express wisdom in your thoughts.

Then confidently make your decision knowing that you didn’t do it alone. Don’t second-guess the decision you’ve made. Move forward in faith that, just as He expressed wisdom in you as you made the decision, He will guide you to execute the choice you have made. To live this way is to walk in faith.

Numbered Days

 Numbered Days

Teach us to number our days,

That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

PSALM 90.12

Once a day is past, it can never be reclaimed. How you spend the time you have in this world is an important matter. Our days are a commodity that can be spent to bring honor to God and great blessing to the lives of others and us.

We mark the days on a calendar, looking forward to an event. But we are also marking off the days behind. We can never recapture them. How do you want to spend each day? If days were money to be spent, how carefully would you contemplate spending each one?

God’s plan for you is to lead you forward so you don’t leave this world with a multitude of regrets. You have the potential to live the kind of life that will stand as an ongoing tribute to the goodness and grace of God.

We become wise in our approach to life as we realize we won’t be here forever. Don’t allow others to control your time. Decide for yourself how to be a wise steward of the days you have left in this world. Investing them well will leave a legacy that honours Him and blesses others.

God Is For You

 God Is for You

This I know, that God is for me.

PSALM 56.9

Have you ever found yourself in a place where it seems like life is against you? Sometimes it seems like nothing works in our favour. In those moments, we may be tempted to wonder where God is in all that’s going on.

The answer is simple. He is with you. Not only is He with you, but God is for you. This is a fact you need to settle in your mind once and for all time. Unless you have established firmly in your heart and mind that God is for you, you will be an easy target for attack every time things seem to go wrong.

When we can’t see the hand of God at work in our circumstances, then we have the opportunity to exercise our faith. There is no room for faith when there is no room for doubt. So the fact that the situation seems to suggest your Father isn’t involved makes it a perfect time for declaring in faith and faith alone, “This I know, that God is for me!”

God Isn’t Hungry

 God Isn’t Hungry

If I were hungry I would not tell you,

For the world is Mine, and all it contains.

PSALM 50.12

The world of religion puts such an emphasis on what we are to do for God. This mistaken emphasis isn’t benign, because it gives people the impression that there really is something we could do for God. That false understanding easily leads to the notion that He needs us to do His work.

God doesn’t need anything. With divine wit, He spoke through the psalmist, “If I were hungry I wouldn’t tell you.” God has everything that He needs. Our service is His way of allowing us to participate in what He is doing in this world. He certainly could do it without us.

Renounce the idea that God is expecting you to do something for Him. Replace that faulty view with the truth that He allows you to join Him in what He’s doing in this world. God doesn’t need you, but the beauty of grace is that He enjoys it when you partner together with Him in what He is doing in this world. Gain that perspective and you’ll find that service becomes a real joy.

The Desires Of Your Heart

 The Desires of Your Heart

Delight yourself in the LORD;

And He will give you the desires of your heart.

PSALM 37.4

Sometimes you may wonder if the things you want are desires that your Father wants to fulfil or if they are selfish desires. This verse gives assurance that if you delight in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart. Does that mean that God is like a cosmic Santa Claus, who will give us a Rolls-Royce and a mansion with a Jacuzzi simply because we want them?

The key to the meaning of this verse is to understand that God doesn’t simply give us what we desire. He is the one who places our desires within us as we delight ourselves in Him. In other words, He causes us to want what He wants us to want. And then He gives us those things.

Focus on Him, and then trust Him to put the desires in you that are right for you. Don’t overanalyse your motives. Just put your desires in His hands and know that He will deal with them in His way and timing.

Taste And See

 Taste and See

O taste and see that the LORD is good!

PSALM 34.8

Once you have encountered your Lord’s love up close and personal, you become addicted for life. It’s impossible to experience enough of Him. It’s as Jesus reveals Himself to us that we find ourselves hungering to know Him more intimately and to love Him more earnestly.

Speaking from his own experience, St. Augustine said, “You flashed, You shone; and You chased away my blindness. You became fragrant; and I inhaled and sighed for You. I tasted, and now hunger and thirst for You. You touched me; and I burned for Your embrace.”

Spiritual hunger is the result of encountering Christ in our lives. That hunger then becomes the bridge by which we gain a heightened experience of Him with us in our circumstances. An authentic knowledge of Him will cause you to move through life with your spiritual antenna up, looking for signals of His presence nearby.

Ask the Lord to reach into your life like He did with Augustine. Then patiently wait for Him to flash, to shine, and to chase away your own blindness to His presence. He will come to you and do just that.

All Things Sacred

 All Things Sacred

The earth is the LORD’s, and all it contains,

The world, and those who dwell in it.

PSALM 24.1

There is no area of your life that is segregated from your union to God. Because you are in Him, everything is spiritual. The Lord owns everything.

One of the greatest deceptions that has ever slipped into our minds is the idea that there is a difference between secular and sacred. There is no such dualism. Everything is sacred because of Christ’s pervasive presence and He lives in you. The word sacred comes from the Latin word sacer, which denotes something uncommon because of its intimate association with the Divine.

You are one with God through Jesus Christ. Everything in your life is intimately associated with Him through your union with Him, thus making it sacred.

One man told me, “I like to keep my business life and my spiritual life separate from each other.” What a sad thing. Do we leave Christ at home when we go to work? Does He go to our business appointments with us, but do we then politely instruct Him to sit quietly in the background? Our union with Christ defines the sum total of our lives.