Proverbs 22:21-
“That I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send to you?”
God wants us to have answers. He does not want us to be ignorant. When someone asks us a question, He wants to make us look like the hero by giving us the correct response to say to them. I love this, I think it is one of the aspects of God’s character that Evangelical Christians miss. God wants us to have answers. He doesn’t want us “in the dark”. He says that the entrance His word gives light {Psalm 119:130}. And He said when He created the world “Let there be light.” even before there was a Sun to emit light! The Messianic Jews and the Rabbis understand that not only did the Lord mean light in terms of physical light upon the Earth so we can see but also spiritual and mental “enlightenment.” This understanding squares with the heart of God that He wants us to be aware, to know. There are countless verses in the Scriptures about God wanting His people to be knowledgeable and not ignorant, but one of my favorites is also sorely mis-quoted and therefore misunderstood by most Christians. That is Romans 10:17.
In the traditional KJV and subsequently the NKJV the verse reads as follows:
“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
However, if we breakdown the verse in the original Greek, we see that this is what the verse actually says:
“Faith comes by hearing…. and hearing comes by the Word of God.”
This is a very significant change because it gives us a clear picture of how we gain the ability to hear God! It goes like this….
We hear the Word of God spoken and there is a little “faith seed” planted in our hearts. Then when we hear the Word of God spoken again or if we read the Word of God, then we understand that it was God who spoke to us that first time when the “faith seed” was planted. The more we dignity the written word God, the more we hear the Word of God preached and then look up what is preached in the Scriptures, the more we know that we hear God! Why is this important? Well for several reasons…first and foremost, we get to hear from the Creator… that, in and of itself should be enough! Second, when we hear God and we receive that “faith seed” then we get to act on it, we get to walk out the Word of God and make the Kingdom of God come in our lives! This will help us and will teach us how to help others. Next, the closer we get to God, the more opportunities we will have to help others in and outside of the body of Christ with our words and actions. We will be called upon to answer a question about God, we will be called upon to give people the knowledge that God wants them to have about situations, and so on.
Proverbs 22:17-20 says the following:
“Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise and apply your heart to my knowledge; for it is a pleasant thing if you keep them within you. Let them all be fixed upon your lips so that your trust may be in the Lord; I have instructed you today, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge…?”
We have to listen to God; we have to search the Scriptures and then speak them out of our mouth and apply what we read and what we hear from the Word of God. When we do this, our trust will be in the Lord because we will be going about speaking what the Word of God says and then we will see it come to pass and then we will know that we can trust God because over and over what His Word spoken out of our mouth manifests!!! At last we will become solid in our believing of God and this is the point we need to come to in order to help others become solid in their believing of God. This is when the sharing our faith becomes effective and we are truly loving the brethren!
Comments