Does that make sense???

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord

with all your heart and mind and do not rely

on your own insight or understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

 

If you are going to walk in everything God has

for you there is something you need to do.

You will need to throw what you know out of the

window!!!

The word says, we must trust in the Lord with

ALL of our heart and mind….that’s clear.

Then it says, “and do not rely on your own

insight and understanding“…not so clear???

Let me share another scripture with you:

 

“Men, I can see that our voyage is going to

be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and

cargo, and to our own lives also.”

But the centurion, instead of listening to what

Paul said, followed the advise of the pilot and

of the owner of the ship. Acts 27:10, 11

 

It’s very clear why the centurion listened to

the pilot and the owner of the ship. The pilot

who I am guessing is the captain had sailed

these seas numerous times. He had years

and years of experience. Wasn’t that

enough? Let me rephrase that, it should

have been enough! But it wasn’t!!

There is a time when experience and insight

play their part but we must be must know

when that time is.

Our own understanding gets in the way of

what God wants to do at times. A lot of the

time our own insight and understanding

excludes God from the equation!

The centurion was not about to listen to a

man who knew nothing about the sea. Paul

was not a sailor so why listen to him???

 

God’s word a lot of the time doesn’t make sense

and calls us to believe in the impossible!

Your destiny doesn’t make sense.

God’s blessing in your life does not make sense.

You are not supposed to be standing but you are

because of God.

Trust in Him with all of your heart and mind.

 

Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear

and worship the Lord and turn [entirely] away

from evil. Proverbs 3:7

 

There it is again. Don’t rely on your own wisdom!

 

As you walk the road God has called you to don’t

lean on your own understanding and insight but trust

in Him with all of your heart and mind!

A truly difficult word to live by…….

Rolain

 

 

A note to the busy…….

Do you hear Lady Wisdom calling?

Can you hear Madame Insight raising her voice?

She’s taken her stand at First and Main,

at the busiest intersection.

Right in the city square

where the traffic is the thickest, she shouts,  Proverbs 8:1-3

 

This is a very interesting scripture. Interesting not because she makes a call but where she makes the call. She could of gone to any place and made the call to anyone but the scripture says,

 

“She has taken her stand at First and Main,

at the busiest intersection.

Right in the city square

where the traffic is the thickest, she shouts,

 

It’s so busy that she has to raise her voice. She actually has to shout to get the people’s attention! That got me to think. What were the people doing that she had to shout??? Were they really that busy? I started bringing up possible scenarios……

– A man had to get to the other part of town so he could deliver a package and get paid.

– A mom had to take her kids to school and was running late

– A young man had to meet someone who would fund his business

– A parent had to  rush to the hospital because his child was involved in an accident

– A family had to rush to the airport or they would miss their flight

and so on and so on………… Whatever the reason is for the busyness, they forgot about wisdom because she had to make the call. If they were operating in wisdom in their busyness wisdom would of kept silent but that was not the case.

Doesn’t that describe the kind of world we live in today? Everyone is just so busy today. Too busy to form real relationships. Too busy to stop and care for someone. Too busy to love. Too busy to stop and take time with their children. Too busy to stop and look at their lives and make changes. Too busy to stop and reflect.

Stop! Take some time to listen, someone pretty important is calling. And she is calling you! Will you heed her call or are you just too busy? It’s not wrong to be busy but when that busyness stops you from listening to the voice of wisdom then you have a problem. That is my challenge!

Rolain

 

An Introduction on faith…..

 

Do we really understand all we need to understand about faith? I don’t think so. And as I read Hebrews 11 I was more convinced of that fact. There is so much we don’t understand about faith, so much we need to learn. As we begin to understand more of what faith is the deeper we can walk in it. The men and women of old had a different view of faith and we see it in the stories we read. Let me not get ahead of myself….

As we begin let us look at the definition of faith according to scripture.

Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses].

That is the way the Amplified Version puts it. I like this definition a lot because I understand a little about title deeds. An individual doesn’t need to take people to his house to convince them he owns the house. All he has to do is show them the title deeds. Even though the house can’t be seen the title deed is the person’s proof. And so it is with faith. Your faith is the “title deed” you carry around. We can’t see the house, the car, the career or whatever it is you are trusting God for but the faith you have in God is your proof! It is the tangible proof that God will give you what He promised. But with that being said, how does faith work? To answer that question let us look at another passage of scripture.

The Message bibles says it like this,

By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see. Hebrews 11:3

This is the essence of faith. “What we see created by what we don’t see”. God didn’t wait to see, feel, touch, taste for Him to create. Let us learn from Him. Your life may look like nothing is happening but have faith.  Your life seems meaningless but it’s not. You need to speak and act upon what God has shown you. It may seem out of this world but you need to speak it out. Faith doesn’t wait for things to take shape and happen before it acts, no! In the darkness, in the bareness faith works!

To drive this point home let us look at another scripture:

By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved. Hebrews 11:7

Let us imagine this because I think it’s pretty amazing. Noah was warned by God about a flood. He had never experienced a flood before. So because he feared God he built an ark. How crazy must he have looked by everyone! The word says, “He built a ship in the middle of dry land”! Wow. Did he have to struggle with doubts? Did he ever stop and think, what the heck am I doing? We don’t know all that but what we know is he built a ship on dry land. God wants us to start building our ships. It may not make sense, it may sound like the craziest thing in the world, people will mock you, but that is not what matters, believing what God tells you is what is important. Having faith in Him is the most important thing.

As I conclude this post let us look at one more scripture:

By an act of faith, Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians tried it and drowned. Hebrews 11:29

Faith will let you go places other people can’t. Faith will sustain you in situations that would kill other people in normal circumstances. Who has ever walked through the Red Sea or any sea for that matter?? But because the Israelites had faith God parted the Red Sea so they could walk through it. The Egyptians thought it would be an easy task but how wrong they were. If we rely on our flesh we will fail. If we think we are strong enough or clever enough we will fail. The best of flesh is still flesh. Faith is the only thing that will allow us to do the impossible. Faith is the only thing that will get God’s attention.  So let’s picture this scenario,

The Israelites had faith and they walked through the Red Sea

The Egyptians didn’t have faith in God but thought because they were the strongest and fiercest, they could walk through the Red Sea. They were wrong, dead wrong!

As I end this post I would like to share another scripture:

But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out]. Hebrews 11:6

Faith is so much more than we imagine. Without faith we will not be able to connect to God. Without faith we are like two people trying to communicate to each other in two different languages. It’s impossible! God responds to faith. God is pleased with our faith. Faith in God is what moves mountains! I am not talking about a faith in self or something like that. I have been talking about faith in God. This is just the introduction. In the next post I will continue sharing insights I got from Hebrews 11. It is really a powerful chapter on faith……..God bless

Rolain

To be continued…….

 

 

The different faces of Wisdom.

If you have been following my blog for a while you will know that one of my deepest desires is to walk in true wisdom. You will know how much I love wisdom and you will also know I believe it is the key to real living. If you didn’t know all that now you do.   🙂

But now I want to go deeper. The wisdom of God is deep. There is no argument there but what I would like to do is show you a few more faces of wisdom. We may know them but just ignored them because we didn’t know what they were or who they belonged to.                                 Proverbs 2 (Message) gives us some insight into what these other faces are.

“Tune your ears to the world of Wisdom; set your heart on a life of understanding.                                                                                                                        That’s right – if you make Insight your priority, and won’t take no for an answer, searching for it like                                                                                        a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt, Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours;”

With wisdom comes understanding – another face of wisdom. Understanding or in other words Insight. (please note, these two words, understanding and insight have different meanings but still similar in a lot of ways. I would love to hear what you understand about those two words).When you have Understanding, Insight then you are walking in wisdom! Do you have Insight?

“Believe me, before you know it Fear-of-God will be yours; you’ll have come upon the Knowledge of God.                                                                                  And here’s why: God gives out Wisdom free, is plainspoken in Knowledge and Understanding.                                                                                                      He’s a rich mine of Common Sense for those who live well, “

Another face of wisdom is Common Sense. Just because you have the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean you should throw common sense out of the window. Common Sense is a form of wisdom. There will be times when you won’t know which path to take and when that time comes use common sense. Common sense is very practical and it will save you from a whole lot of confusion. Read this,

Lady Wisdom will be your close friend, and Brother Knowledge your pleasant companion. Good sense will scout ahead for danger, Insight will keep an eye out for you. They’ll keep you from making wrong turns, or following the bad directions”

Let’s just recap on the different faces of Wisdom that we have looked at.

– Understanding/Insight

– Common Sense

– Knowledge (I didn’t expound on it because I think it’s self explanatory)

Like I said in the beginning,Wisdom is the key to a successful life but we need to walk in the different facets of wisdom. We need to learn what they are and my hope is this post has helped in that regard.

“It’s through me, Lady Wisdom, that your life deepens, and the years of your life ripen. Proverbs 9. (Message)

Rolain

Let Your Words Follow Faith!

It has been said that pressure in life helps us to become stronger. Our faith gets refined when we are in trials. I would agree with that. But at the same time it is hard when you going through the pressure. It is very well and good to say we need pressure to become stronger but it’s something entirely different when you going THROUGH the pressure! It is in that time and in that time alone that you see what you really believe. Some people will break under pressure. I remember breaking so many times under intense pressure. I would want to trust God but somewhere down the line I would abandon Him and take matters into my own hands. This is not pleasing to God. Trusting Him is.

We have a responsibility to trust God no matter how bad things seem to be. God wants us to trust Him. He knows no one else can help us.
I love what Psalm 116:10 says:
I believed (trusted in, relied on, and clung to my God), and therefore have I spoken [even when I said], I am greatly afflicted.

There are some very deep insights in this scripture. The first one I got is:
– What you say or confess can tell where your faith is at. A lot of us say we trust God but we are speaking wrong. We are speaking negatively. We are speaking about everything that could go wrong. We are talking about all the bad things.
The fact is simple, if you trust God that is what will come out of your mouth. You will speak of how your prayers being answered. You will praise the Lord and worship Him.
– The writer spoke about his pressure but ended by trusting in God and speaking what he believed. Like I said in one of my other posts, it’s ok to speak about what you facing. We do need to be realistic but we can’t end there. We need to end in trust.

So where are you? Do you have faith? Do your words confirm your faith?

Rolain.P