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Home > Grace Message > Personal Growth > God's Wisdom Is Always Higher Than Ours
by Grace Bellingham.
Christian, our lives are not our own; we were bought with the precious price of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, we were born with a specific purpose in mind and labeled God’s elect. We have been gifted with unique gifts given to us before the world began and assigned specific work to do with them. God in His divine omniscience planned our lives from beginning to end, working in all things after the counsel of His own will. He knew what we would need to experience throughout our lifetimes in order to add to us the wisdom and understanding necessary to accomplish His will for us. Putting His heart in us is no easy task. Every experience and circumstance, relationship and acquaintance has significant value according to God and His plan. Ours are not secular lives.
He is the great Creator and worthy of all of the glory in every area and accomplishment of our lives. He has been and is leading us every day to fulfill the plans and purposes of God. Everything is a setup. This is significant to remember as we look back at the trial and error of living. God knew from the beginning what knowledge and understanding He required us to have; this takes life experiences way beyond what any of us could ever have imagined.
There are a few things that we know for certain: God works in all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11) and works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). His Word teaches us that He will show Himself strong on behalf of those who will fully rely on Him for everything that they face in life (2 Chro. 16:9). This goes way beyond doing everything right, and fully involves all that we do wrong. Jesus Christ did everything right on our behalf; He already won that battle, so it is no longer significant for me in assessing my life. I rely on His righteousness, not my own.
The Bible also teaches us that we are to serve the Most High God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, or we will serve our enemies (Deut. 28:47,48). This means plainly that no matter what I face or what circumstances are before me, I am required by God Himself to face them with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything that I will gain as a result of them. This includes what I do right and what I do wrong, what someone else does right and what someone else does wrong, and their effect on me personally or the effect on what belongs to me.
We give the devil too much credit by holding on to situations or experiences and carrying with us the pain and regret of some of our decisions. For those who are following hard after God, every situation and experience is of great value to Him. He directs and uses it all to mold us into the servant/child of God that He has designed to give Himself glory. My life is not the sum total of my bad choices or my good ones; my life is held by the plans and purposes of God. I died and my life is hid with Christ in God. To God be all of the glory!
If we carry with us the regrets of our past, they will define our future—worse, they will weaken us, and we will not have the boldness of the lion that God says is significant for the righteous. Instead, we will always be looking to others for the need of approval because of how badly we may have messed up in the past. This is wrong thinking. It is unscriptural and leaves the door wide open for the devil to play with our minds. Regret takes the power of living by the easy leadership of the Holy Spirit out of our hands and puts it into his, causing us to second-guess everything that we think, feel and do. In time this will turn us into negative people. Furthermore, we will become less than bold about the forgiveness, mercy and grace of God in case it sets us too free and we somehow forget how badly we messed up in the past. We must not minimize God’s Word; He says that through repentance our sins are removed (completely taken away) as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12)! What in heaven’s name are we doing thinking such hellish thoughts filled with regret over what God has already taken care of for us on the cross? All He requires us to do is learn the lessons that He was teaching us through them, forgetting the experiences themselves, or they will become our master, and not Christ’s grace.
We must recognize that our mistakes and bad choices have been catered for in the plans and purposes of God, and that He has used them to teach and train our hands for what lies in front of us. The preparation work of God in our lives is in His hands first, and then ours. Get this the wrong way around, and you will not only put unnecessary pressure on yourself, but you will also rob God of His glory. Thank God, He knows what He is doing. Our part in the process is to love Him and trust Him with all of our hearts, leaning not to our own understanding, but rather acknowledging Him and His leadership in our lives. Anything else detracts from the sovereignty of God.
I have great news for you, my friends: God is never unaware of what is happening in your life and is using it all to prepare you for the work that He planned for you to do before time began. Trust in God goes way beyond human precept and will release us to serving Him with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of His goodness through everything we face and live. The Bible also teaches us that we become oppressed and broken in our judgments when we willingly walk by human precepts. God does not want nor does He need our human reasoning in the matter or our lives or the lives of others. What He does require is that we live by faith in Him and His constant leadership in our lives. He does require that we give Him glory, all the glory, which includes the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the victories and the failures, when we used wisdom and when we were completely foolish. We cannot pick and choose what to embrace as powerful learning experiences and what to live regretting for the rest of our lives.
We need to be careful not to indict God with our wisdom, the way Job’s three friends did, eventually convincing him to do the same. God knows what He is doing, and He expects us to believe in His good hand upon us through it all. His ways are higher than ours. We need to line up our thinking with God’s thoughts and not our own. He ended up having to say some pretty stern things to Job about his negative conclusions that didn’t reflect the trust he should have had in a good and kind God whose love never fails regardless of who is to blame.
“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”
Job 38:2
“Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it.”
“Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn Me that you may be justified?”
Job 40:2,8
“I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.
You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.
Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42:2-6
Too much of Christianity is carrying the weight of their lives and the lives of others. God alone is able to carry such weight, and as we all know, the weight of any situation is the glory of that situation, and all the glory belongs to God! |
