Re (3): Reply to last newsletter...

Anita,

When you talk about faith in God, yet say, "I believe I am experiencing my current circumstances in order to better mentor and teach others how to turn inwards and drawn (sic) on their own strength and endurance..." I wonder what god it is you are placing your faith in.

Indeed, the true and living God who created us and all that is does place a measure of strength and endurance in each of us. However, it is to Him we must learn to turn in time of need, placing ourselves completely in His hands.

The Bible reminds us that it is better to trust in Him than in the arm of flesh, and that includes our own flesh; our gifts, our intellect, our parentage, our education, our popularity, or worldly status, possessions or prosperity. All these things will fail us. All these things are transient. God alone will never fail us. When all that we place our hope and confidence in within this world has passed from us, He will still be there. He alone helps us from a position of wanting always, and only, our ultimate good — not just the quick and easy answer to our pain. He alone comes from a place of absolute honesty and integrity. Our inner resources cannot compare to Him. Our friends cannot compare to Him. Our contacts, our network, cannot offer us what He offers us. Our own heart often deceives us.

God is greater and far more dependable than any internal or external resources we may possess, and ultimately we find true and lasting rest only in His everlasting arms.

It has been my own experience, as one who kows intimately the torment of panic-anxiety, that only in surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ, in placing all confidence and trust in Him above all else, can the peace He promised His own be found. Having tried, myself, to find my help over the years in so many different ways, so many different people, including myself, different philosophies, religions, methods, and places, I know now that all my help comes from God.

I am content to know my insufficiency, my weakness and vulnerability because I know His all-sufficiency. As Paul says in the Bible, in my weakness is His strength made perfect. I have experienced the truth of this firsthand. When I placed confidence in my internal and external resources, I was riddled with anxiety and my life with failure.

I'm sure you know the very word philosophy comes from two Greek words, Philo (friend) and Sophia (wisdom). Wisdom is not in accumulating knowledge for he sake of knowledge, making it your god. There is a great deal of difference between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. Unfortunately, in our society, the more knowledge we have gained, the more we have rejected the very real wisdom of God, the less we feel we need God at all — after all, we believe, all we really need is our own internal resources. And maybe a network of external resources to buoy us up. This is foolishness.

Greater knowledge should lead us to a greater understanding of and appreciation for the God who is, but it has become for our world an idol to which we build numerous shrines, not least of which the one we build within our hearts to the god of self-reliance, "self-actualization;" it is the altar on which we ultimately sacrifice truth, virtue, that which philosophy was meant to give to mankind, and God Himself.

Knowledge alone will not fill the empty spaces in our souls. Knowledge alone will not drive out fear and anxiety. As Paul said, we can speak with the tongue of men and of angels, but if we have not love, we have nothing.

Often we interpret that as a charitable love for others, and that is a part of it, but the truth is that genuine charity, genuine love, comes only from the source of that love, and that is the God of the Bible, the Lord, Jesus Christ. It is knowing His love for us through a personal relationship with Him that His love, perfect love, casts out the fear in us.

He knows our hearts, our pain, our fear. He created us. Jesus said, "Come to Me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart."

Again, many interpret that as a statement of weakness. But there was never a stronger man, there was never a man who has been more a man than Him. No one knows power like God knows power. No one knows compassion like God knows compassion. No one knows wisdom like God knows wisdom. The Bible tells us that Jesus has become for us our wisdom as well as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

It is this God who calls us to Himself, who offers us the only true security in this world, the only true freedom, the only true riches.

Your mother was right, Anita. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. And commonsense is not always worth a pound of knowledge, though it often is. One must examine such cliche's to see their true significance, where they came from.

Commonsense was the wisdom of the past,when people placed their faith in God and not in the wisdom of the world's philosophies. I believe this is part of what Eric was alluding to when he said, "Wisdom brings the lessons of the past to bear on the challenges of the present."

"Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall ever thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:14

"And this is life eternal, to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You sent." John 17:3

• Re(3): Reply to last newsletter... - By Eric February 4, 2005 at 01:58:06 PM