THE WELLSPRING OF WISDOM

THE WELLSPRING OF WISDOM

Father, You have loved me and called me to be Your loyal follower, and to find my true pleasure in Your revealed will. You have given all humanity great personal worth and have called us to a high and holy life of other-centered love. As I pursue You, may I also pursue the best interests of the people You have sovereignly placed in my life, so that I will be an agent of reconciliation and of Your grace. You are the eternal wellspring of wisdom, and I want to drink from the water of Your Word and be satisfied. Keep me from being a stumbling block to others and empower me to treat people according to their true dignity in Your image rather than according to the world's distorted view of status and worth. Let my love and service of others be an expression of my love and service to You.

THE PROMISES OF GOD

What About Him?  John 21:19-22

For any family with more than one child, the dispensing of chores on Saturday morning tests the mettle of the most skilled of parents. Children await their as-signments with lower lips ready to pout, hands poised to become fists on hips, and brows ready to furrow-IF there is a shade of inequity evident in the choice of chores per child. "What about Billy!? He never has to clean the bathroom?" and on and on. Parents put on the diplomat hat and attempt to negotiate an equi-table distribution based on skill, mood, yuckiness of the task, and resistance lev-els. After the jockeying and positioning has reached the boiling point, the paren-tal foot comes down hard, all debate stops, and the minions are sent to their as-signments. Overstated? Perhaps a bit; but if you're a parent, you know the drill.

What is hard for children to understand is that often parents have reasons for the choices they make among "equals." And they are reasons it takes a parent to un-derstand. Maybe a child needs a challenge. Perhaps another one has had a dis-couraging week and needs a taste of success. And yet another may need to learn to obey even when it's not easy. But these are reasons that make little sense to young children, and are therefore best left unexpressed. They serve only to pro-long the debate-er, discussion-and delay the chores getting done.

Often spiritual children don't understand the Heavenly Father's reasons either; just like in a family. Once, Jesus was about to "go out of town on a trip," and he gathered some of his spiritual children together. He gave Peter an ominous sounding assignment to accomplish while he was gone, and Peter immediately said, "Well, what about my brother, John? What does he have to do?" Jesus' an-swer: "You have your assignment, Peter. Don't worry about John." Peter's swal-low was his only reply.

Our main responsibility is to discern the purpose in God's words for us; not his words for us compared to his words for everyone else. If we will do that, the kingdom chores will get done much more quickly.

God's Promise to You: "If you listen you will hear my words for you."

THE PURSUIT OF GOD-PART 4

Following Hard After God

Although David's life was full of spiritual passion, he was sometimes passionate about the wrong things. Yet God did not characterize him according to his sins, but according to his heart. He was " a man after God's own heart." And the reason David's heart was patterned after God's heart was because David's heart was in pursuit (following hard af-ter) of God's heart.  
 
The Apostle Paul evidences the same pattern. His great prayer in Philippians 2 was, "That I may know Him." The knowledge Paul sought was not simply cerebral but intimately personal. And that is what the pursuit of God is - drawing near to God's heart with our heart. Being able " . . . to taste, to touch with our hearts, to see with our inner eyes the wonder that is God."
 
But this seeking cannot be done apart from a very genuine and deep commitment on the part of every person who longs to see his face. Someone else cannot do it for us. Some-one else cannot make the decision for us. There is no other way but to embark of our own personal quest for God's heart, with all of our heart. Any lack of what Tozer calls "holydesire" is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Without it, he will not come to us nor allow us to come to him. Like a good lover, he doesn't waste time whining about being wanted, he simply waits to be wanted. And this is really the language of intimacy; he waits to be wanted. He waits while we tire of substituting our slick programs, trendy methods, streamlined organizations, and frantic activities for the sublime ecstasy of his presence alone.
 

Seeking God-and or God-only

To pursue God with a "holy desire" requires us to simplify our lives. We must learn to approach him as children, with the sense of wonder and awe that is characteristic of chil-dren. As Jesus said in Matthew 11:25, "I praise you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children." We are encouraged to approach our heavenly Father with the simplicity of child-like trust. I remember that whenever my father invited me to take a trip with him, I never concerned myself with where my next meal would come from or even if I was go-ing to eat the next day. I never squirreled away food for fear that I would have nothing to eat the next day. I had an implicit child-like trust in my father and knew he had my best interests at heart.
 
And that's what it comes down to regarding you and God. Does he or doesn't he have your best interests at the heart of his heart? You must wrestle with that question, both parts. First, do you believe that he's in control and you're not? And secondly, does he have your best interests at heart? Clearly faith is involved here, for you don't even know what your best interests are. Therefore, when you pray, your prayers ought to be modified by what he wants for you rather than what you want from him. If he always gave you what you wanted, you'd be destroyed. Better to simply make your needs known and trust him to do what is best.
 
Simplifying our approach to God means stripping down to the essentials. And when all is said and done the only thing essential is God himself. This requires us to do away with the evil habit of seeking God-and. For it is in that and that great woe lurks. To seek God- and not only prevents us from finding God in any intimate way, but also from finding any lasting satisfaction in any of the ands we attain. However, if we eliminate the God-and mentality, then we will soon find God, and in Him we will find all that we have longed for all our lives. 
 
What kind of ands are you tempted to attach to God? Do you struggle with getting God to approve your personal agenda? Do you reason that if you give God what he wants then perhaps he will anoint your plans? Or, perhaps if you couch your plans in religious sounding language then maybe God will rubber-stamp them? In short, you might be tempted to think that because "reverse psychology" works well on young children, im-pressionable students, codependent spouses, gullible friends, and naïve parents, surely it will work on God. 
 
Or perhaps your and is happiness. You expect God to make you happy, because you have the right to be happy, don't you - the right to pursue happiness? That's in the Bible, isn't it? No that's in the Constitution, not the Bible. God is not committed to your happiness; he is committed to your holiness. And there is a big difference between the two.
 
Or perhaps your and is knowledge. Perhaps you are someone who forever lusts after some deep, sophisticated knowledge about God. Your pursuit of him is reduced to an academic exercise that consumes, but does not quench. It only ends in a thimble full of data about God -- his resume, his curriculum vitae, his biography. 
 
But, if you have exhausted yourself on the God-and treadmill, always running after spiritual nourishment, but never getting any close, then you should heed Tozer's admonition. Pursue God-alone. For if you travel that path you will begin to see him with the eyes of your soul, and hear him with the ears of your heart, and feel the gentle way he takes up residence deep in your spirit.
 

Choosing God's Presents Over His Presence

I once watched a NOVA produced special on "The Mysterious Universe." Among the many interesting topics explored were some edgy hypotheses, such as "string theory." It was some very intriguing stuff. But it seemed strange that these brilliant scientists would expend so much energy in a search for the answers to the big questions of life in our uni-verse, yet never search out the bigger question concerning the meaning of life in our uni-verse. They found amazing examples of beauty in the natural world, but never really raised the larger question of where the beauty came from. It is quite remarkable that peo-ple who spend their whole professional lives getting a first-hand look at the intricate wonder of creation, never wonder who brought it into existence. Just so, a Christian who is not careful can also miss God in their quest for spiritual truth about him.
 
I've seen this happen in Seminary. A person is trained to study the Bible. But after a while they treat it as simply another textbook, forgetting that it is alive and active and able to bring them to the very throne of God. If we're not careful, even biblical education can be a dangerous thing. 
 
Here's a paraphrase of how Larry Crabb puts it in his book Shattered Dreams: Most be-lievers really are more desirous of the better life of God's blessings than they are of the better hope of God's presence. Do you catch that difference? Like greedy little children on Christmas morning, we run past the presence of God to get at the presents from God. We begin to view God as a sanctified Santa Claus who is only good for stuffing our lives full of goodies. Or we treat him as a religious genie who, if we rub him the right way with our prayers and promises, will grant us our fondest wishes. Eventually, we loose sight of God's presence altogether and only pursue the and stuff. 
 
But Tozer uncovers the insanity of this approach. He says, "We need not fear that inseek-ing God only we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many for the One." To pursue the and things of God before the person of God him-self, is to insure that we will receive neither. To pursue the person of God, and him alone, is to insure that we will get the one thing our hearts long for most - Him, and
with him, comes all the riches of heaven. 

A CLEARER VISION

God, I ask for a clearer vision of the blessings of obedience and the pain of disobedience so that I will fear You, hope in You and depend on You. Most of all, I want to grow in trust so that I will take the risks of obedience that run contrary to the world system with its temporal values. May I develop a clearer upward perspective so that I realize in my thinking and practice that only the transcendent can give ultimate meaning to life on earth. Without You I am wretched and hopeless, but when I abide in Your loving presence I enjoy the fruit of love, joy and peace. Grant me wisdom from the Word and the desire to renew my mind in Your timeless truth. Then I will walk in the way of life-giving trust and dependence, and then I will learn the blessings of obedience to what You proclaim for my good.