LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Over my years in ministry, I have observed two Biblical principles that must be connected and balanced. They are faith and wisdom. I have also observed that most people in the church tend to emphasize one over the other. There are those who push faith without sight, and there are those who require sight before faith. Both groups of people are needed to bring balance, but generally the two groups are at odds rather than working together to discover the will of God.  Sometimes it even results in name calling. Those who need sight call those who don’t fools. And those who don’t need sight call those who do faithless. It causes tension and division in the church and hinders the accomplishment of God’s purpose. 

There are two things we must consider. First, those who claim great faith and are ready to move forward on anything without having all the answers  must slow down and consider all the practical issues of doing so. And second, those who require all the pieces of the puzzle to be in place before moving on must learn to trust God when He says to move even when it doesn’t make sense. Both groups of people can help each other grow in faith and wisdom.

Our next devotional study is going to look at Biblical examples of people with faith and wisdom, and how both are necessary to honor God and accomplish His will. We will see that delayed obedience while we try to figure things out doesn’t honor God, and that immediate activity is presumptuous and does not accomplish God’s will. Our ultimate desire is to both honor God and accomplish His purpose. It’s not about how well we can plan our activity, provide for it, and predict the outcome. It’s about how God is going to fill the activity with His glory.

When the prophet Haggai was charged by God with the rebuilding of the Temple, the people used both wisdom and faith. By faith they built without the knowledge of where the resources would come from. Wisdom made it their priority to accomplish God’s purpose. Wisdom and faith combined to produce obedience even though none of them would see the glory of which God spoke. None of them would be around to see the “desired of all nations” arrive. None of them would be alive to see the peace in the nation that was promised. But in faith they obeyed and trusted God for the outcome. 

When everything we do is about God and His glory, then everything we have or desire to have becomes a sacrifice to accomplishing God’s purpose. That’s the faith we need to have – a faith that denies our rights to benefiting from the outcome and that acknowledges our total dependence upon God’s provision. That’s what brings us peace. Do not be afraid. God is with us, and the glory of God seen in steps of faith is greater than any glory we can claim from human solutions.

Pastor John