And treasure my commandments within you,
Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
Incline your heart to understanding;
For if you cry for discernment,
Lift your voice for understanding;
If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the Lord
And discover the knowledge of God.”
Proverbs 2:1-5
That’s a pretty good if-then statement! If you will listen, receive, treasure God’s
commandments, hear wisdom, be pliable to understand, seek wisdom, THEN you will discern the fear of the
Lord (the beginning of wisdom) and discover the knowledge of God.
These are all active verbs.
In other words, we are to be about doing them consistently and
constantly – with diligence and purpose.
We do this through reading God’s word and praying for the Holy Spirit to
teach us. It means time with God. It means trust and reliance and sincere
searching. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will
be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened to
you.” (Matthew 7:7) Notice that even in
this verse, the verbs are active. You
must be about asking, seeking, and knocking.
I was in a Sunday school class with older ladies one day and
expected to be sitting among mature Christians who knew their Bibles and had
spent much time with God. I was
surprised to realize that I knew a whole lot more Bible than they did, and that
most were really babies in their faith walk with Jesus even though most had
been Christians for 30 years of more. I
began to pray and ask God “Why?”. As I
listened and asked questions it became very clear to me that these women had
not spent time seeking and searching.
Their time had been spent on careers, raising their children, and
getting more stuff. There is nothing
wrong with a career or raising of children or having stuff, but if that is what
you spend the majority of your time on to the exclusion of being in God’s word
and prayer, then you will not grow in grace, mercy, knowledge, wisdom, joy,
love, etc…
If – Then.
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