Skip to main content

Understanding


How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!  I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. (Psalm 119:103-105)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

                In Psalms and Proverbs, we’re told repeatedly to gain wisdom and understanding. I’m fond of understanding, but I have to confess, I’ve had some strange conversations with God about it. One that gets rehashed once in a while is this:
Me:        “God, I don’t understand!”
God:      “That’s OK. You don’t have to.”
Me:        “No, You don’t understand, God. I don’t understand!” 
                It’s a good thing that God is so patient. I’d like to think we’ve all been in the same boat. Understanding and not understanding cause problems. The first problem is when understanding becomes the end, not the means. When this happens, understanding becomes an idol.  If I understood, then everything would be OK. Well, no it wouldn’t. But I could tolerate it better. But that removes faith in God from the equation. This is why God commanded us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts (translation: will, not emotions.)
                Another problem is when understanding equals approving or accepting. If I understood, then I would believe, or obey, or approve, or accept. Instead of being our idol, we make ourselves out to be god, and understanding is the whip with which we flog our servant, Jehovah.
                A third problem is when, because we haven’t understood, we throw understanding away and make emotions our idol instead. We don’t have to understand; we just need to feel happy. “Understand” in various forms (Understand, Understanding, Understood) is found in Scripture more than two hundred times. Happy, happiness, and feel fewer than fifty. 
                The proper order for us to follow, it would seem, is 1) Trust, 2) Understand, 3) feel. When we let them get out of order, it leads to a broken life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shepherd!

                 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep . (John 10:14) God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Genesis 3:14) The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4) For the Jews, it was politically incorrect to make claims about yourself as a teacher (or possibly as anything else.) Teachers were expected to take pride in the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more