Scripture Reference
Obedience Brings Clarity
Last week, we talked about certain areas of our lives where there should be no doubt that the Lord is speaking to us. These all involved places in our lives where we are pursuing things that are
contrary to God's will and God's design for us. Those things that put distance between us and God, rather than drawing us closer to Him.
If you don't get much farther into this devotional, make sure you get this:
Obedience to God is absolutely critical in drawing closer to Him.
So, as a general statement, if you feel you have a
hard time hearing from God or discerning what you're hearing, a great first step is to look at places in your life that build up a wall or cause friction in your relationship with Him. As you
begin to be more obedient to God, you will be amazed at how much more clarity you have in knowing how God is directing your life.
The good news is that God never bails on us when it comes to pursuing obedience. He wants to help us. It's a win-win. You draw closer to Him, which is why He created you in the first place, and
our lives become more intentional and meaningful.
In James 3:17, we see the eight qualitiies of what James calls "wisdom from above." Wisdom coming from God will usually be characterized with one or more of these qualities. Let's take a look
at each one.
Quality #1 - Pure
James writes that wisdom from above is "first of all pure". I can't help but wonder if he listed "pure" first and put emphasis on it because of its significance. Not saying the other 7 qualities aren't
significant of course. The Greek word translated to pure is "protos". It can mean ordered first or first in rank. But it can also just be a way to start a list of something. How many times have you
started a sentence with "First of all?" I do it all the time and rarely have a "second of all". Let's move forward and take a look at the word "pure".
Pure in the Greek comes from the word "hagnos". It is used in Scripture in four different ways, and I think we can apply all of them to how we hear from God.
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Reverence - God's direction and guidance for us always comes out of God's high character and purest intentions. And His instruction will only deepen the reverence, respect and admiration we
have for who He is and what He is doing. God's wisdom is always consistent with His uncompromising character and integrity.
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God will keep His promises and commitments. God will never lead you down a road that would compromise the promises and commitments He has made. Think about
all of God's promises that we read about in Scripture, including:
- God will never leave you. (Hebrews 13:5).
- God will provide for your needs. (Philippians 4:19)
- God gives strength in hard times. (Isaiah 40:29–31)
- God has a good plan for you. (Jeremiah 29:11)
- God works all things for good. (Romans 8:28)
- God offers peace that calms fear. (John 14:27)
- God forgives sin. (1 John 1:9)
- God provides a way out of temptation. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
- God hears your prayers. (Romans 8:26–27)
- God’s love never ends. (Romans 8:38-29)
As you listen for God to speak to you, if you're hearing something that will break one of God's promises, you know that's not coming from Him.
- God will always be with you. The Lord never leads you down a road or into something where you will have to fend for yourself. Sometimes as we listen for God's wisdom,
we get distracted by the fact that we are being asked to do something we don't have the ability or means to do. Well, think about it. That should be true. If you have the means and the ability,
you could just do it on your own without God's help. He wants to put us in a position where only He can get the glory for whatever is accomplished.
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God will guide us toward treating others well. If you ever wake up one morning thinking God is leading you to exact revenge on someone for something they have done, you
can chalk that up to the Enemy, not God. His wisdom will always be clothed in the principle of loving your neighbor as yourself. Almost everything you will do in serving the
Lord will involve serving and taking care of other people and their needs.
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God is consistent. I'll say this a lot here. God is not a God of disorganizaiton and chaos. He will be consistent about how He communicates with you. This is
awesome, because the more we hear from God and know we've heard from God, the more experience we will how He communicates. Not saying He communicates the exact same way every time, but you
will start to see consistencies in this communication as you continue walking closely with Him.
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Chaste - As a high school teacher, I regularly ask my students if they've ever heard of a word or phrase. Most of the time they look at me like I'm a hundred years old, which in all honesty,
sometimes I feel that old around them. This would be one of those words. We hardly use this word anymore. In our culture, it means sexual purity or modesty. But it also means something that is
clean, plain and simple.
For me personally, when I hear something signficant from God, it almost always comes in the form of a question. I think that's true for lots of people. Jesus often started or ended a converation
with a question. I've listed several examples from the Gospels in the "Scripture Reference" section above.
The questions I hear from God are always very simple but very profound. And I think that's also consistent with how Jesus communicated. When He said, "A new command I give you: love one another."
Not a question, per se, but it couldn't be more simple and straightforward. And couldn't be more profound. How simple is loving your neighbor. Yet how profound the implementation and execution
of that is.
I think about when Jesus sent out the disciples. Just a few statements to them about the life-altering, eternity changing journeys they were about to take. We have to remember that wherever God
is leading us, He's planning to go with us. Proverb 10:19 comes to mind: "When words are many, transgressions is not lacking." Be careful as you listen for God that you're not latching onto
complicated, confusing ideas that circumvent the truth. God speaks clearly, simply and profoundly.
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Immaculate - Another word we don't use much anymore. Jesus being conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb is often referred to as the "Immaculate Conception." It means to be free
from flaws or mistakes and free from sin or moral wrong. This kind of goes back to what we talked about last week. The Lord is never going to lead you to have to sin or do something against His
will or against His truth. He doesn't make mistakes, and doesn't lead us into mistakes.
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Clean - Similar to immaculate, clean can mean to be free from impurities or contamination. But also it can mean well-executed. God's instruction for us is going to lead us to a place where
His plans can be well-executed. Repeating myself again, He's coming along with you. And no one is better equipped and more capable of perfectly executing a plan than your Heavenly Father!
I often think about the things God has done in my life or what He has called me to do, and most of the time in looking back on something, what I see is that #1 - I would never have thought to
execute a plan the way God executed it, and #2 - God's execution of the plan was the only exeuction that could possibly have worked.
Point of emphasis here: We have to be careful that we don't confuse God calling us to a game plan with God actually executing the game plan. He can very clearly start leading us in a
particular direction or toward a particular goal, even though we don't initially have a clue how He's going to pull it off. You and I not understanding how to accomplish something shouldn't
factor into our decision to follow Him if what He's calling us to is otherwise "pure" as we've discussed.
The Power of Post-Mortem
One of the things that can really help us in knowing if we are hearing from God is looking at our past experiences. If you don't have much history with God, there are people around you who do.
Hindsight is a wonderful way to see patterns in how we respond to what we are hearing and who we are hearing it from. In my computer programming days, whenever we would get to the end of a project,
we would always have a "post mortem" meeting. That's where we could get together as a software development team and talk about what we did well, what we didn't do well, and what we would do
differently next time.
This is so powerful when it comes to following the Lord's direction. One thing I would love for you to do as we go through these 8 qualities of the wisdom that comes from God is to think about times
when you have followed what you thought was God's leading and it turned out it was, as well as times when you have followed what you thought was God's leading and it turned out it wasn't.
Stepping back and analyzing those times against these 8 qualities of God's wisdom can help you be better able to discern what is and isn't coming from God next time. I've added this post-mortem idea
to the challenge questions for this week.
Challenge Questions
These questions will give you something to think through, pray about, spend time with God on this week. Maybe you can talk through these with a trusted peer, mentor or leader. Keep writing stuff down!
Think about some times in the past where you felt the Lord leading you to do something or giving you wisdom in a particular situation--maybe a relationship, a job, a calling to serve. Take
note of a few of these and use the following questions to do a post-mortem on them.
- What's a time when you initially thought God was calling you to something or speaking to you about something, but it turns out it didn't come from God?
- What led you to think you were hearing from God?
- Looking back, was there something that was not "pure" about what you heard that should have clued you in that you weren't hearing from God?
- At what point did you realize you had not heard from God? What happened or what did you realize?
- How will you be better able to discern wisdom from God as a result of this experience?
- Now think about a time you thought you heard from God and it turned out that you actually were. How was that experience different from the one from the previous questions?
- Who is someone maybe older and/or wiser in your life that you could ask these questions to? Could you make a plan to get up with them and let them share their experiences
with hearing from God?
Praying Us Out
Heavenly Father, we love You and we are grateful for the sacrifices that Jesus made to allow us to have a relationship with You, to draw closer to You, and to be involved in the work you are
doing in and around us. Lord, help us to better discern all the things we hear and see and feel every day, to know what is coming from You, to know what is wisdom from above--versus knowledge
and so-called wisdom that we are being fed by the world, the flesh and the Enemy. We know that obedience to You is the key to intimacy with You. And we know that the closer we are to You,
the easier it will be to hear that still, small voice of Your Spirit speaking wisdom into us. Help us this week to pursue the purity of Your wisdom. Through the Spirit and in the name of Jesus
we pray. Amen.
