The truly wise man, as I see it, has one definite characteristic about him.
Listening. In correction, in conversation, in life.
Many people hear the proverbs about how the wise man listens to reproof and they usually think something like...
"Okay...I guess I have to make myself smile whenever someone gets on my case, at least hear them out. Maybe their arguments could be worth
something to me."
I present a slightly tweaked take on it, however. I say this -- the wise man hears a word of truth. Now the foolish may hear the word too, but the difference
between a foolish man and a wise one is that the foolish one will say to himself "Ah yes, I understand perfectly. I will log this away until the day that I may need it."
Keep in mind that this is merely a best-case-scenario. Actually, usually the fool would just say something like... "At last! I know better what is wrong with this world."
In contrast, however, the wise man would hear the same word of truth...and rather than dismissing it, stashing it, repressing it, weaponizing it, the wise man will
actually stop himself for a moment and think "Is this me? Could it be that perhaps I should take this to heart? Perhaps I am not as together as I thought.
Maybe I should think this through before putting it on hold."
So essential I present that loving reproof doesn't mean necessarily that you look forward to getting a brutal lecture about your misbehavior, although it is possible that it
might include such a thing. But I guess what I'm saying is that loving reproof probably means even more so a state of heart in which you daily ask yourself the hard
questions, hold yourself accountable, take a long, difficult, naked, disarming, vulnerable look at who you are and what you do with who you are.
The mortifying nature of it is that we might not like what we see at first. But if we truly love discipline, love reproof, not only will we be willing to listen to others,
we will be willing to be honest with ourselves, to the point that we are willing to reprove ourselves. We will discern that perhaps things are not all they seem to be for us.
That being said, I present each of you with these, difficult, naked, disarming questions. I want you to treat these questions as though they were hand-carved specifically for your life.
Think of the one thing which, more than anything, reaffirms to you that you are where God wants you to be.
Good.
Now imagine if this one thing were taken away. Would you still believe that you are where He wants you to be? If the money stopped coming? If bills stopped being paid?
If you started getting migraines at the most inopportune moments? If the motor falls out of your car? I don't know... whatever it is that you can think of...it could be anything, really.
Alright then, let's say it was taken away. Your life is now an unpredictable cesspool of chaos. The thrill is gone. Now every day just seems to kill your spirits.
Since apparently the things you had before represented God's approval to you, what about now? Does He no longer approve of you? Is His anointing lifted from you? Did you do something wrong? Did you get too faithless, too scared, too eager? I'm sure at this point even the best of us would panic and start checking ourselves manically, wondering if we started worshipping our schedules more than God, wondering if we forgot to confess some sin, wondering if God is finally making us pay the irony-piper for the 18 year old sins that daily guilt us into doing the right thing.
Basically, I am saying this question in long form. When all of the details are stripped away from you, all the false perceptions, all the illusions of self-affirmation, when all the things that make you feel big leave you and now you feel small, who are you then?
Scripture tells us that God is love. Yes, we hear this and think "Of course. I completely believe that God loves, that He could love us unconditionally."
Do you really believe that?
Sometimes when all of the self-assuring things in our lives scatter like roaches, we become confronted with the fact that we don't actually believe in it.
We seem to be more completely immersed in the crippling feeling that God could not possibly approve of any of us.
So what if God stopped providing your physical/monetary needs? Is He still good? Is He still love? Does He approve of you or do you think He has stopped?
Who out there believes that God completely and irrevocably loves you even at your lowest, even in your darkest hour? Anyone? I'm sure there are those who have been there before. I bet there's yet even more who have been there fifteen times before and still don't get it.
It is good to trust God for monetary things. In fact, it is necessary. And there is nothing wrong with hoping for miracles. In fact, I believe more people should hope for them.
But there is something distinctly different about a man when his faith in God moves from His faith in God's provision to more of a faith in God's actual character.
Maybe, just maybe, if you are going through hell today, if you have been going through hell the past five years, it is because God wants to create that same shift in you, that you would see past the sensationalized soup kitchen theology and into His actual heart, His actual character.
Because man doesn't live by bread alone.
Post a Comment