The Requirement for Receiving God's Wisdom (and other devotionals)

The Requirement for Receiving God's Wisdom

In yesterday's devotional, we talked about how, when you ask for God's wisdom, He reveals it in your spirit…that hidden place.  But there is a critical requirement for God to reveal that wisdom to you.  You have to ask for it in faith.

James 1:6-8 tells us,

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

You can't vacillate between two opinions.  If you don't anchor yourself on God's promise that He will give you His wisdom, you will be blown about by the opinions of others, by your feelings, by the way the circumstances look, and you won't receive anything from God.

Not too long ago I went with some friends in a small boat to Catalina (an island 26 miles off the coast of Southern California).  Just as we were arriving at about eight in the evening, the engine seized. We paddled in to a depth where we could drop the anchor.

After calling Vessel Assist, a storm came up and the wind began to blow and the rain began to fall.  We had to wait a couple of hours before help arrived.

You know what?  If we hadn't dropped anchor, the wind would have blown us somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

My friend, you have to drop your anchor.  You have to ask in faith.  You can't vacillate.  You can't be double-minded if you are going to receive the wisdom of God.

~Bayless Conley~

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Romans 8:23

Waiting for the adoption.

Even in this world saints are God's children, but men cannot discover them to be so, except by certain moral characteristics. The adoption is not manifested, the children are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a child, and keep it private for a long time: but there was a second adoption in public; when the child was brought before the constituted authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition of life. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." We are not yet arrayed in the apparel which befits the royal family of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore as the sons of Adam; but we know that "when He shall appear" who is the "first-born among many brethren," we shall be like Him, we shall see Him as He is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the lowest ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would say to himself, "I long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall leave off these plebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial rank"? Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of what is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets. We are young brides, and the marriage day is not yet come, and by the love our Spouse bears us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen spring, longs to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it heaves and groans within our spirit for want of space and room by which to manifest itself to men.

~Charles Spurgeon~