Home for the Holidays - Part 1
December 26, 2021Today's message was the first in a series called Home for the Holidays (two online-only Sundays December 26th and January 2nd). The message is here. Bottomline: Ask God for what He knows you need, not for what you want. It's a teaser for the January 9th start of a series called "Chasing Carrots."
Here's the verse Patrick referenced: "Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (Psalm 37:4). Note there's a process which starts with delighting yourself in the Lord. When you delight/align yourself in the Lord, your wants align with His wants for you.
Here are other instances of God providing appropriately:
"And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them." (Genesis 3:21)
"Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything." (Genesis 9:3)
Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. (Gen. 22:8)
A Psalm of David, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." (Psalm 23:1)
"The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing." (Psalm 34:10)
For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. (Psalm 36:9)
You've heard this: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad." In this case, wisdom is knowing the difference between what you want and what you need in God's eyes.
"It includes the skill of workers who made garments for the high priest and who were able to work with metal, stone and wood (Exod. 28:3; 31:3-5; 36:1-2). It also extends to those who are able to execute a battle plan (Isa. 10:13), lead in government (Deut. 34:9), and shrewdly assess a difficult situation and persuade others to take necessary action (2 Sam. 20:22). It refers to those who speak prudently (Ps. 37:30) and use their time carefully (Ps. 90:12). Thus the Bible affirms (Job 28:28), 'The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.'" (Bible.org, Steven J. Cole, see this PDF)
In the Old Testament (OT), when the word wisdom is used, it generally refers to skills. The OT is focused on wisdom for every day living that focuses on what God wants of us. What we need, according to the OT in large part, is to know what God wants of us. With that firmly in place, God will provide.
You, too, should provide for the needs of others. "But you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks." (Deuteronomy 15:8)
To take this one step further... It's not what we want from God that matters, it's what God wants of us. And so very fortunately He has made known what He wants in scripture. The more you know about what God wants of you from studying scripture, the more the answers as to what you need or should want will be clear to you, even outside of prayer. To put it another way, it's not your feelings that matter or even what you think, it's what God says is right and wrong that matter, and those are spelled out for you already.