8 September 2013 - give us wisdom

8 September 2013 - give us wisdom

Who can know God’s counsel,
or who can conceive what the LORD intends?
For the deliberations of mortals are timid,
and unsure are our plans.

Our plans are certainly timid and unsure.  With these kinds of strategies we won't be able to reason our way to God's plan for us.  So let's not attempt it.  Instead, let us receive the wisdom that he wants to give us.

Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?

The wisdom that God gives put this world in its proper perspective.  It is good but temporary.

You make an end of them in their sleep;
the next morning they are like the changing grass,
Which at dawn springs up anew,
but by evening wilts and fades.

Nothing, therefore, must take precedence over our relationship with the LORD.

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.

We need to put to death in ourselves all of the attachments that we place before God.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.

And this is a big deal.  We need to recognize just how massively impossible it is so that we make an informed choice.

Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? 

In fact, we will see that it is impossible without Jesus.  And so we will surrender and let him win the battle in us.

But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. 

But neither does the LORD win this battle apart from us.  Again, he wins it _within us_ just as Paul tries to do for Philemon.

but I did not want to do anything without your consent,
so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.

He raises us up, little by little.

And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.