Wednesday, January 21, 2015

God’s Wisdom - Part 1


 Pastor Kyle continued his Sunday Sermon series through the book of James with more practical life-application from the first chapter of this great epistle written to the fledgling churches and individual believers in the earliest church.

James 1:5-8 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

In life, we are bombarded with opportunities to live according to divine wisdom when our human senses scream to do the opposite. Often times, what "feels" like wisdom (according to our human instincts) is the very thing that gets us in trouble. God’s wisdom, though, comes to us with unlimited free refills … sometimes whether we need it or not or when we least expect it. God is generous in His dispensation of wisdom. Two things are for sure: (1) the only true source of wisdom is from God, and (2) we are partly responsible for our own moral development for our growth and maturity. Wisdom gives us a clear view from 30,000 feet of our situation … a bird’s eye view from God’s perspective, so that we get a sense of where we are at. When we ask God for wisdom, we are viewing our situation from God’s view and angle from up above. Sometimes, we don’t know where we are or where we are going. Sometimes there are roadblocks or we don’t have a map. Sometimes we don’t know anyone who has been where we are trying to get to. Wisdom is more than just having the right information - it's knowing what to do and how to respond with the knowledge we already have. A wise person is not someone who knows the right thing to do, but the one who knows and does the right thing to do.

Colossians 1:9-12For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.



To be double-minded is knowing what to do and then doing the exact opposite. The word “oxymoron”, which is derived from two Latin words (1) Oxy meaning “wise” & (2) Moron meaning “fool”, literally forming the seemingly contradictory term a “wise fool". To know what God, His holy Word says and what to do then doesn't do it, let alone the opposite is not wise, but is foolish. The ultimate situation is when we hear from the Lord and His Scriptures, that we had no internal doubts. How many of us live there every moment of our life? It is the goal, but we are human and sometimes struggle with what God calls us to do. There is good doubt and there is bad  doubt. Bad doubts questions and disobeys God, saying “God I know what you are asking, but I’m going to do it my way because it feel more comfortable. Good doubt says: “God, I do not understand this and it doesn't make sense to me right now, but I’ll do it your way anyway because that is what I am hearing and I trust and believe you; help me with my unbelief. Good doubt obeys God through the struggle. 

Let's hold the completion of Pastor Kyle's great message for tomorrow's post.
In Christ, Brian

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