wisdom

What’s Your “Must Have” ?

/ Jana / 2 Comments

Proverbs 2: 9-11
9 Then you will understand what is right and just
   and fair—every good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
   and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 Discretion will protect you,
   and understanding will guard you.

Sometime we get so caught up in keeping the rules, or avoiding them, that we forget to engage our hearts with God. God is the good path. His wisdom changes our lives and the course of our lives. So to grow in wisdom is to see it as a “must have.” More than hair color, or latest fashions, understanding God’s way of doing what is right and just and fair becomes our greatest gain. He promises when we adjust our lives to that end, we will experience great benefit.

Are You Complacent?

/ Jana / 1 Comment

Proverbs 1 :32
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
   and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
   and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

Complacency is a scary word. It means: A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy.

When it comes to spiritual blindness, numbness or ignorance, those three things being distinct, complacency is toxic. We don’t look or ask or pursue the things of God because we are content with our own perspective. Yet our perspective is “unaware” of pending danger.

Proverbs is meant for one thing, making one wise. Listen to the way of God. View things through His lenses. Be actively engaged in your world through the power of Christ.  Then you will live without fear of harm.

Groping in the Dark

/ Jana / 1 Comment

I get in the middle of drama sometimes. Do you? I mean the kind of drama that swirls around you like a spring thunderstorm. Out of nowhere, before you know it, you are frantically searching left and right, conversation blowing around you from all directions. And you ask: How the heck did I get here??

My most recent of these whirlwinds has kept me in distress. I think and pray about it when I go to bed. I wake up in the night distressed. I rise in the morning with it still in my heart and mind. And I finally concluded that the only solution to the drama, the trauma and heartache is this: Godly wisdom.

In this particular case, the folks are doing the best they know. But that is the problem, what they know  is not enough. They need God’s wisdom, His ways of doing life, reconciling, forgiving. Living in Him. They need to know what He knows.

If they don’t have Him, they only have their wants, desires, and demands to lead them. It’s a scary place. And the destruction is painful to watch. As I was praying for this desperate situation, the Lord reminded me of this passage:

       I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
       along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
       I will turn the darkness into light before them
       and make the rough places smooth.
       These are the things I will do;
       I will not forsake them. Isaiah 42:16

What a promise, that He knows we need light, knows that we are groping, hands out in front of us, in the dark. Now to wait. Now to pray for tender, surrendered hearts before the Lord.

This is a powerful passage to pray over people and situations. Change out the word “they” for the person your are interceding for. And then claim the last two lines: “God do what You promised and thank You that You will not forsake them.”

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. James 1:5