Author: Bob

Is there anything more frustrating than desperately wanting to please someone and not being able to light the spark within them? Then someone else comes and does something, and they light up like a Christmas tree. The same thing can happen to your spouse, children, friends, and yes, God.

It is like trying to get your computer printer to work, and after trying everything you remember has worked before, it just sits there on the desk as still as a dark night. You call a computer expert and bingo; they hit the right buttons, and the printer comes alive.

Perhaps I’ve identified an issue that’s hindering God’s response to my efforts. Reflecting on it, I realize I try to predict God’s next action. I can become so distracted with His last assignment that I miss a turn when He makes it. The prayer I need the most is for the Holy Spirit to protect me from myself!!

Could it be that the idea that we cannot please God is mistaken? Perhaps our human perspective on pleasing God is so clouded by self-interest and expectations that we cannot see how simple it truly is.

We often try to get God’s attention or approval by doing what we think He desires, yet receive no response. What does it take to ‘wake God up’ and get Him to respond? David shared his frustration with God when he wrote, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Psalm 22:1-2 (NIV) I wonder if God has similar frustrations with us at times.

I’m reminded of Moses’ words when he prayed, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” Exodus 33:13a (NIV) I’ve found things go much better when I’m on the same page God is on. He knows we are human and incapable of predicting Him. In contrast, we tend to think too highly of ourselves and believe we are solely responsible for success. That’s exactly the source of our difficulty. Rather than striving to do more, He desires that we humbly acknowledge our inability and desperation. He knows we need to lean completely on Him to cultivate the character, love, values, and ways of the Godhead. He wants us to give up our pride and need for control so He can mold us into His image. We will only be transformed into His image through reliance on Him.

Our immersion in present pleasures can blind us to coming developments. Our absorption in His previous assignment can lead to being blindsided when divine attention changes and we miss the curve in the road. We lay in the ditch in a daze, frustrated that He left us. Typically, when I am close to Him, I find great delight in serving others in His name. My enjoyment of this becomes so great that I assume He desires me to persist, causing me to not see when He shifts to address a different issue. While God wants us to find joy in our work with Him, we cannot allow our earthly assignment to become more important than our focus on Him. I, for one, must be more attentive to His moves, not my expectations.

The lyrics of an old gospel song went, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey. Can Christianity be summarized by just being obedient? Is all obedience the same? We just have to obey?

Is obedience done out of fear, love, obligation, or legalism the same in God’s eyes? Do you prefer a person obeys you because they fear or feel obligated to you, or because they love you?

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15 (ESV) 5 But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him. 6 Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did. 1 John 2:5-6 (NLT2) 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3 (NLT2)

Could it be possible for obedience to become a ‘god’ in our mind rather than Jehovah God?

So, obedience itself is not the main thing; love is. As John wrote, obedience flows out of love. Love doesn’t come out of fear or legalistically checking off a list each day that they fulfilled their responsibility to love God.

This then leads to the question, how can we come to love God if it is not out of fearing Him first? It has fascinated me that the Old Testament focuses more on fearing God than loving Him, albeit, what they relate to fearing Him is about the same, if not the same, as how the New Testament uses the term loving Him. If they are not the same, they are like two sides of the same coin.

Whatever the case, we humans cannot make ourselves love God. Love is an involuntary result of experiencing an awe of Him and what He says or does. This awe can come to us in different ways, but the most common way it happens for me is when I position myself to encounter Him. More often than not, I experience an encounter with Him when I read and wrestle with a challenging thought triggered when reading a thought-provoking statement or series of statements in the Bible. It would appear that is when the Holy Spirit directs me to another passage in the Bible that resolves the question I was wrestling with. I have come to the conclusion (right or wrong) that He genuinely likes it when I’m seeking an answer that leads to revealing more of his character, values, or ways.

I don’t experience fear or love of Him if I am sitting static in my thoughts or letting my mind wander meander about situations around me. I frequently have had a sense of His presence when I’m driving the car, and my mind is not focused on anything in particular.

Bottom line: I can’t believe obeying God means much of anything to Him if what I am thinking or doing is out of obligation or some form of legalist requirement that I am doing just to coheres Him to do something. He is not much into bartering or bargaining with me. I have found He knows when I am doing or saying something out of ritualistic or pietistic in my behavior. When have you encountered his presence most often? Have you obeyed Him out of obligation of some sort?

I honestly want to hear God’s whispers. I ask, I pray, I read the Bible, but I hear nothing. I heard a very sincere person say that just a few weeks ago.

As a preteen, I was irritated because although I had asked the Holy Spirit to fill me, nothing happened. When praying at a youth event, in frustration, I decided to just start speaking what some might call gibberish. I then sensed God’s Spirit and began speaking in another language. I soon realized God wasn’t holding out on me; the problem was my false expectations. Like Peter, I had to lift my legs to ‘get out of the boat’ before I could walk on the water. My expectation was for Him to deliver something sensational, not for me to advance in a relaxed and unhurried manner. Elijah expected God to be in the strong wind, earthquake, and fire, but he didn’t see or hear God. After the sensational experience passed, there was a low whisper, and he instantly knew it was God. (1 Kings 19:11-13)

My problem had been my false expectations. When we hear testimonies of God doing something dynamic in someone’s life, our minds conjure up something sensational rather than very natural or casual. More often than not, God uses very natural people or natural events to accomplish His plan. It may be a donkey (Numbers 22:28-30), or a “great fish” simply swimming in the sea (Jonah 1:17). He may speak through a child in a normal conversation, or through a friend, or even an enemy or stranger we meet. God rarely says how or through whom He will speak to us.

On one occasion when I had people to forward in church to receive prayer from a spiritual leader for healing, one of our deacons came forward to pray for those who came forward. He prayed for a lady who was going to the city the next day to receive treatment for stage 4 lung cancer. Nothing sensational occurred, but when the couple went to the doctor to run tests before surgery, to everyone’s surprise, the tests came back with only scar tissue where previous tests by local doctors had clearly revealed a large cancer. When we heard the report, the deacon who prayed for her was shocked as well. He had experienced nothing sensational occurring when he prayed, so he didn’t expect a miracle.

God is not a sensationalist, even though He can do very sensational things. If we expect to hear God’s voice or encounter Him, we must remember His ways are not our ways. He will work the plans He has for us or through us when we are not even aware anything dynamic is happening.

This is a very formidable truth. We must not allow our minds to put faith in sensational experiences. Our faith must be totally focused on God, the miracle worker. Jesus told the parable, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” Mark 4:26-28 (ESV) That is a great picture of one of God’s ways. The fact is, while we are to ask and trust, unless we are specifically told to do something, that is where it must stop our actions. If we attempt to imagine or take any initiative on our part to help Him, we typically will end up subconsciously taking the credit for what He has done. God insists on getting the honor and glory for what He does. He will wait until we relax and walk normally while trusting only in Him. When we get ahead of God and try too hard to get something to happen, we get frustrated thinking He isn’t holding up His end of the task.

I value each person who reads this blog. Therefore, I thought it might be insightful to you if I shared how I process thoughts or questions as they come to me as I read scripture.

I was reading Romans 1:18-29 “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. … 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity …”  (NIV)

The thought then occurred to me, beyond God’s infinite love, as it relates to us, it seems love is a two-way street. Jesus said, “And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” Mark 12:30 (NLT2). The above passage teaches we are the ones who limit how much love we receive from God.

It brought to my mind the Detachment Disorder, a condition where a traumatic experience leaves a child incapable of loving, or narcissists who are so self-focused they cannot genuinely love others. Could it be that God longs to love us far more, but we are so caught up with ourselves, our worries, dreams, rationalism, pleasures of life, etc. to receive of His infinite love.

By giving our utmost to Him, we unlock our capacity to experience His endless affection. This works the same in a marriage. A spouse’s ability to give love is ultimately constrained by how much their partner is capable of receiving it. In other words, if we know a spouse or friend genuinely and deeply loves or cherishes us, we are much more able to selflessly do far more things for and with them. If we sense a person does not cherish us, it limits how we can express our love to them.

In principle, to the point we experientially receive God’s love and totally cast ourselves upon Him, to that point, God will be able to express His love to us. The more we discover of His infinite love and respond to it, the deeper and more intimate our relationship will be. The point is, if we want to experience God’s love, we must express our unselfish love for Him by seeking to know what the Bible teaches us about Him and His love and care for us.

My takeaway from this concept is a stronger motivation to express the selfless love in my heart for God in my daily life. I have experientially found that the more I have unselfishly devoted my worship and dependence upon Him, the more delight and gratification I have experienced. Reflecting on this concept compels me to increase my love and devotion to Him. How might pondering this concept affect you?

Have you ever learned something new about a subject you thought you understood well? A sense of energy comes from uncovering a new truth, whether it’s an entirely fresh manifestation of God’s truth or a deeper insight into something you were already aware of. This provides a more thorough grasp of my existing knowledge.

Knowing Jesus Christ created everything is like being in the shallow end of a pool. You enter the knee-high part when you process, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. Colossians 1:16 (ESV) Think of what He created.  1) He created ALL things, both good and bad dominions, or principalities or powers. That is mind-bending! Isaiah the prophet wrote, “I (God) form the light and create darkness, I make peace [national well-being] and I create [physical] evil (calamity); I am the Lord, Who does all these things. Isaiah 45:7 (AMP). The text then states, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17 (ESV) Additionally, the text says, “… through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross.” Colossians 1:20 (ESV)

This sounds like before creation, the Trinitarian God desired to show amazing grace and mercy. So, they strategized to create humans who would separate from Himself. One of them would limit Himself and become fully human and be crucified in order to give grace and mercy that would reconcile fallen humanity to Himself. Try to imagine yourself in Jesus’ humanity position, discovering as He matured, this redemption plan and His role in it. As He grew in understanding, He understood enough that He had to learn how to deny His mind, will, and emotions and follow His spirit, through which the Spirit would empower Him to develop. Jesus clarified how He had learned to function by saying, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing.” John 5:19 (NLT2)” John 5:19 (TEV) Honestly, I highly admire Jesus’ humanity. If He could learn to live that way, the Spirit can help me to do it too.

The Spirit planted in Jesus’ spirit a passion to reconcile all humanity to Himself. While He had done absolutely nothing wrong, He loved us as His Father loved us. That is so amazing! He also was made to understand that not all humanity would accept His unbelievable, sacrificial gift. Imagine paying the supreme sacrifice, knowing that most would not receive your gift.

If understanding all this doesn’t give you a sense of the awe of Jesus Christ, you are missing out on a most profound Bible truth. It would be like not having a sense of awe when you try to count the stars in the night sky and ponder just how much fun God was having when He created the Big and Little Dipper. Awe is often an overwhelming emotion of stunning admiration.

Frankly, I am in awe of the humanity of Jesus learning and living out such a profound God-given assignment. It makes me know if I seek to have more encounters with Him and cooperate with Him, He will transform my humanity and keep transforming me until I am in His full stature. Paul wrote, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:29 (ESV) I eagerly rejoice as He reshapes me into thinking, behaving, responding and living as the humanity of Jesus walked on this earth. How about you?

I was recently invited to be part of a research project by a person with a PhD. The person who gave me more guidelines about the project repeatedly wrote, “If I don’t hear from you within a certain amount of time, I will assume you don’t want to take part in the project.” I understood that statement to be setting the boundary for participating in the project—fair enough. Its repetition implied I hadn’t caught it the first time. I questioned the reason behind the frequent repetition. I assumed they believed I might initially miss it or that my comprehension wasn’t sharp enough to get it right away. In any case, it seemed condescending. We’re both adults, so unlike children who often need repeated instructions to remember, parents and teachers don’t typically have to repeat things multiple times.

Occasionally, my words or actions don’t reflect what I meant. It’s a great help when someone shows me my mistakes by mirroring my actions or words, so I can stop myself from making them again. Therefore, I tried to respond in a kind way that, while the person probably didn’t intend it to come out that way, their repetition felt condescending.

However, after I had done so, I second guessed myself and felt I had maybe violated Paul’s admonition of “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2 (ESV) He again wrote, “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Colossians 3:13 (ESV) Should I have ‘held my tongue’ and absorbed the unnecessary repetition?

“Bearing” doesn’t mean that we learn to “put up” with people while resentment festers under a forced smile. Our collaboration with God enables us to develop affection for people, idiosyncrasies included. To bear the burden of another person means to accept and even affirm it, and in bearing with it, breaking through to the point where we take it simply as an idiosyncrasy. In other words, one way to bear one another well is to love one another well enough to hold our tongues. After all, for the most part, a bitten tongue beats a loose one.

This raises the question, could it be that the health of a Christian community hangs on the lips of those within the community? Thoughtless words spoken can be misunderstood and damage trust. But we can also be too soft-hearted to stand up to other believers in certain circumstances. (Mattew 18:15-17; Galatians 6:1) We need to love enough to confront. There is a fine line between another person’s statement simply being offensive and it being totally out of line with Christlikeness. Discretion and seeking the Spirit’s guidance must be a significant part of the equation.

In my case, I’m unsure how the other person perceived my attempt to reflect their feelings, but my good intentions with my ‘loose lips’ may have compromised their sense of security or offended them. I hope that’s not the case, but if it is, when I talk to them again, I will apologize. From my perspective, a clear conscience maintained through humility is preferable to pride that prevents the correction of inappropriate words. Where do you draw the line between constructively being a mirror and speaking the truth in love?

God’s grace is the most impacting gift a person can receive. We might say His ‘gracelets’ (small droplets of His grace) come in innumerable ways. It’s likely I receive more than I’m conscious of.

As for me, I am most grateful for each and every pack of grace I receive. I’m sure that is true for each of us. This makes it more interesting to read that Moses was interested in receiving even more of His grace. He requested of God, ^“Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”  Exodus 33:13 ESV.

Knowing God as well as he did, he understood that the path to receiving more grace (favor) from Him was to discover more of His ways. His ways refer to how He deals with us. His ways entail what he wants to do. The ways of God are the choices He makes concerning us. His ways are higher than our ways. (Isaiah55:9) He deals with this person one way and with another person a different way. His ways are what He deems best in each situation. We will never be able to learn all His ways, but we can learn more of them. Why is that so important?

Moses believed that understanding God’s actions was the quickest route to a deeper relationship with Him. Experiential knowledge of Him, as described by Paul, leads to spiritual maturity, which is the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13) Experiential knowledge of Him is the pipeline through which we receive the most possible gracelets from God! Furthermore, each such encounter with Him changes us on the inside.

How, then, might we learn more of God’s ways? We must first experience His presence, which gives us a fresh revelation of Him (another gracelet). According to Ezekiel 36:25-27, this would look like what we experienced in our salvation or regeneration. Saul/Paul’s salvation experience on the road to Damascus offers the most vivid effect of a fresh revelation or an encounter with God. It is transforming. An encounter with God, no matter how intense it might be, is transforming! The more we gaze upon Him, the more we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

I have found the most consistent time I experience an encounter with Him is when I deeply reflect on verses in the Bible, especially when I have to wrestle with the Spirit to seek to find answers to better understand something it says. When He reveals a meaning to me, it normally discloses or at least reminds me of one of His ways. That is why I am such an advocate of asking God hard questions about what He has inspired to be written in scripture. There is absolutely nothing I thrive more on than encounters with Him, no matter when or through what means they may occur. Each experience reminds me of the request Moses made of God—PLEASE God, show me more and more of Your ways so that I can know You more intimately. The shadow effect of those times is receiving more of His grace!

I honestly want each and every person I know whether, it be in person or through something I write, to encounter God in their own personal way. I know it will to some degree literally transform whoever leans hard into seeking an authentic encounter with the Almighty God! I am certain from what the Bible teaches, He is more passionate about meeting with each of us than we are about meeting with Him. It is our level of seriousness to encounter Him that limits meeting with Him. He knows when we have surrendered it all just to connect with Him.

I used to think integrity was primarily truth-telling, but I discovered truth-telling is only the tip of the iceberg. Integrity involves the entirety of a person, wholeness. We would have to be hard-pressed to eat a fruit that has bruises or has a worm in it. Integrity includes internal consistency of honesty as well as moral and ethical character. Enron and other prominent figures in sports or religion have failed due to a lack of integrity. Trust is quickly destroyed by a flaw that was tolerated in some aspect of a person’s inner being.

Each of our lives includes all of who we are in our workplace, home, church, privately or publicly.

How can we become people of integrity? It naturally happens as we give the Holy Spirit full access to every part of our lives. If the soul were a house, this would mean allowing Him into every room. It’s possible to happily give Jesus access to some rooms but put little Do Not Enter signs on others. Do we ask Him to supervise our finances, political views, family room, or where we do our devotions? We must remind ourselves Jesus’ original audience identified themselves as God’s people, yet Jesus described them as “… so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness!” Luke 11:39 (NLT2) Groups of Christians can do this too, posting “Keep Out” signs to block Jesus from entering culturally cherished beliefs, practices, and goals.

While I am certain I have blind areas in my life, I try repeatedly to scrutinize my life to see if I am tolerating a wrong attitude, contempt, deception, unhealthy manipulation, unforgiveness, covetousness of any sort to embed itself in my thinking or motivations. Believe me, it keeps me humble, and I am not so foolish as to think I don’t have blind spots that I inadvertently overlook. Yet it is my desire to work with the Spirit to root out my flaws. I must depend on the Sanctifier to purify me. The most recent area He and I have been working on is trusting in myself rather than fully trusting in God. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5 (NLT2) I have been astonished at how often I default to leaning on my own understanding instead of His guidance and oversight.

On the night of his betrayal, Jesus held up his cup and said, “Drink ye all of it…” That word “all” can be translated as whole. I don’t know if by “all” Jesus meant “all of you drink” or “drink it all.” But I do know he drank his cup to the last drop. He is our model of integrity.

If I ever hope to be like Jesus, I must take the entire cup He offers, whether it is bitter (like Connie’s death) or sweet. I want to freely trust Him in every nook and cranny of my personal and public way of thinking. I have recently learned from experience the incredible peace of God that resulted when I cast all my cares upon Him. His way is always better than mine in every dimension of my life. His way is wholeness, not fragmentation.

If you are not experiencing all the peace of God in your life, I highly recommend that you invite Him into every area of your life, so your integrity is in more areas than truth telling.

The humbling aspects of looking back, both good and bad, become apparent when one reaches my age. I am more aware of the grace and mercy that God has bestowed upon me. I have been a part of Him working literal miracles through me. My self-awareness of my own limitations makes me feel humbled by these achievements.

 

I am also able to see when I foolishly leaned on my own understanding and regretfully brought pain and suffering. I’m also sure I unknowingly limited what God wanted to do in and through me. I’ve often said, I wish I had known about this 50 years ago!!

I recently did some Bible reflection on the book Isaiah the prophet wrote. Chapter 48 seems to reflect sad grief on God’s part. Notice with me; “16 Come closer and listen to this. From the beginning, I have told you plainly what would happen. And now the Sovereign Lord and his Spirit have sent me with this message.  17 This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is good for you and leads you along the paths you should follow [alt: for you to profit or do what is best for you]. 18 Oh, that you had listened to my commands! Then you would have had peace flowing like a gentle river and righteousness rolling over you like waves in the sea. 19 Your descendants would have been like the sands along the seashore— too many to count! There would have been no need for your destruction, or for cutting off your family name.’” Isaiah 48:16–19 NLT.

I have been in the Philippines for the last 3 months. When I arrived on January 1, I was stunned by the level of peace of God I sensed.

To me, although Connie and I have faced countless serious life difficulties, I have also consciously found and felt God’s peace throughout our lives.  His peace has served as my primary guide for many years. It allowed me to experience a multitude of divine interventions. Yet, my recent Philippine experience was notably more extreme. If God’s peace on Earth can be this powerful, I pondered how much greater it must be in Heaven. When I pondered the above passage, it messed with my thinking. It made me wonder just how much more of God’s gifts I had missed out on in my earlier decades of my efforts to follow God.

It then struck me how much those less committed to finding God have missed and continue to do so. I grieved for their losses, and mine, as God was mourning for the people of Israel. Could it be that you may very well have also missed out on so many blessings you could have had if you had been more intimate with God through the years? Does it also make you regretful?

But let’s remind ourselves, our life is not over. All of us may have missed out on so many blessings God wanted to give us. However, by altering our daily lives to more closely align with God’s word, we can still experience more of what Paul was inspired to write. “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20 NLT. We can’t change our past, but we can improve our future. How? By taking initiative to better align ourselves with what God has already told us.

After serving as a youth pastor in Oregon, wonderful friends and youth group sponsors had a bright son who, after graduation, attended a very reputable, conservative seminary, one I certainly would have recommended. But to my surprise and chagrin, before graduating, he became very cynical about God, and after graduation ended up turning away from God instead of growing closer to him.

While pastoring, a promising teenage couple committed to serving Christ were very careful to have their obvious devotions in the church parking lot. They married and both went to a very reputable Bible college in a nearby state to pursue ministry. After 3 years, they became antagonistic to the Christian faith and walked away from serving God. How can this be??

I recently volunteered to serve as a pastor-at-large in an international seminary. With a faculty of PhD-holding missionaries, the seminary focused on the selfless love and service of students aiming for careers in ministry unto God. The seminary’s student-body president publicly asked me, how can a student with the high stress of studying theology and writing papers also maintain a passionate heart for God? That was a legitimate question!! Could a person get so lost in studying the Bible he or she overlooks its intended message? Jesus said that had happened to the Pharisees. (John 5.39) It all depends upon the motive for searching it.

Solomon wrote an interesting verse. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she will promote you; she will bring you honor when you embrace her. She will place on your head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory she will deliver to you.” Prov. 4:7-9 ESV. Could it be Solomon had actually put wisdom above his love for God? The way he writes in the following verses, it certainly would appear so. If so, this could have been a major contributor to him turning away from God’s laws and bringing demise on himself and Israel.

It appears that the overwhelming power of our sinful nature creates a significant mental split between wisdom and God. This is a deep and meaningful concept that deserves consideration.  Unless a person is diligent to maintain prayerful meditation on the Word, seeking to find out how it reveals more of who God is and how we must respond to that revelation, the sin nature will distort wisdom and God, just as appears to have happened to Solomon. The moment we put priority of whatever sort—Bible study, ministry to others, family, finances, and the like—above intimacy with God, it is only a matter of time before our relationship with Him begins the fossilizing process.

We need to consider if anything has diverted us from giving God our full devotion. It’s possible we won’t be able to eliminate that ‘something’. Let’s re-evaluate our diminishing values and focus on seeking His kingdom instead of those well-intentioned “little foxes” that are harming our close relationship with our King. “Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming!” (Song of Solomon 2:15 NLT)

It prompts me to ask if my participation in righteous actions might be inadvertently consuming the precious time I dedicate to spiritual wrestling and discerning God’s word. I’ve noticed that these grappling times are the times I most clearly perceive His whispers to my spirit.