Right to the Heart

For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Proverbs 2:10 (New American Standard Bible)

I often mistakenly think that truth has a way of getting into my mind and must somehow be worked into my heart. Just last week I shared with a friend how I have a lot more things stored up in my head than in my heart. It seemed I knew more than I was living. This morning, God is opening my spiritual eyes to a precious truth to take into the new year. When He gives me wisdom it enters my heart! Actually, when comparing different versions I began to see that heart and mind are interchangeable words. Rather than being two separate places in me they are the same.

I take delight in this concept. It gives me hope. It helps me to see where my energies need to be directed. It is not a matter of getting knowledge from my head to my heart. It is a matter of seeing my need to obey and cooperate with God in the areas He has shown me. It is a matter of applying the truths that have entered into me, not only this morning, but in the decades of my Christian life. They are all in me, not just in a part of me. My obedience and His empowerment will be what makes the difference.

That wisdom, truth, and knowledge that I speak of is received from many different avenues. Primarily it comes through His Word but secondarily it also comes through friends, books, music, experiences, His Spirit, and a host of other options God freely chooses and uses. Whichever means by which God desires to bring wisdom to my heart is up to Him. He is perfectly creative and ingenious.

So what has been the wisdom that has entered my heart this morning? I get to put the failures and mistakes of last year behind me. I no longer have to live under the banner of my past. I enter this new year a new person with a fresh start. I can view relationships in a different light because they have changed but not ended. My interaction with individuals will be different this year because the reasons for the places in each others lives are different. I am free to embrace all that God offers me in this new year because some chains of bondage fell of during 2009 and more are to fall in 2010. Things that did not make sense to me last year may very well come through loud and clear this year.

Father, I joy in You and the hope You have given me. I choose today, with Your help, to live out of the wisdom that has entered my heart! Amen.

Shout to the Lord - Hillsong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I71XhjqoHvs&feature=related

Getting into God's Word and letting God's Word get into me one truth at a time.

Becoming a Possessor

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. Proverbs 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)

Today starts a personal journey into the book of Proverbs. I have enjoyed and drank deeply of the Psalms and am ready to venture into the book of wisdom. God is wasting no time in letting me know how to become a possessor of His wisdom. To not only take in truth, but to know how to implement it into my daily walk. He has graciously prepared me for this time and He has done it in progressive stages.

A few years ago, God began to show me how often I failed to walk in truth about Him, His Word, and His ways. He showed me how much of my thinking was connected to the lies of the enemy. Lies about Him, about others, and even about myself. As I began taking in the truth, a profound thing began to happen. I began to hunger for it. This was an essential shift for me, because the hunger led to a willingness to be taught. It affected my hearing as well as my receptability to what was being said or read.

Today’s verse goes beyond being a mere “how to” verse. It is a verse packed full of results and promise. It actually describes the characteristics and advantages of being a wise person. The first half is a stated fact. A wise man will listen and will yield to godly instruction, advice, and wisdom. His open ears and obedient heart are what mark his life. If he is truly a wise person, he will listen and he will act upon what he is being told when it lines up with truth. The result? He will add and join himself to learning, instruction, and teaching. As he does that, he becomes a possessor of the wise counsel he is being given. The way to own something from a store is to purchase it. And the way to own wisdom for oneself is to listen to and obey the words of wisdom that come from God and others.

Many have been the times when I not only refused to listen because of pride and self sufficiency, but I refused to act upon what was being said. It wasn’t until God began to show me the purpose and beauty of hearing and obeying that I finally became open to experience what today’s verse is saying. It is much easier to take in the very things I am hungry for. That is why my daily prayer has become, “Father, instill in me a tender and teachable spirit toward You.” For if that is the kind of spirit I have, I will begin to hear, yield to, and acquire the wisdom that God is continually offering me through Himself, His Word, prayer, and a multitude of sources.

Father, open my ears to wisdom so that I will increase in my learning and possess the wise counsel given to me on a continual basis. Help me to listen, learn, and acquire much today! Amen.