Stuck in Our Own Ways

 

“Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, ‘He traps the wise in the snares of their own cleverness.’ And again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are worthless.’” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20)

The people of God have become stuck in their own ways throughout history. Rather than follow a path that has led to a genuine relationship with God, we easily turn to following Him with a set of rules. People get confused between the world’s wisdom that is all around us and worthless, to God’s wisdom that only comes from above.

In Isaiah 65:1-5, “I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help. I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’ to a nation that did not call on my name. All day long I opened my arms to a rebellious people. But they follow their own evil paths and their own crooked schemes. All day long they insult me to my face by worshiping idols in their sacred gardens. They burn incense on pegan altars. At night they go out among the graves, worshiping the dead. They eat the flesh of pigs and make stews with other forbidden foods. Yet they say to each other, ‘Don’t come too close or you will defile me! I am holier than you!’ These people are a stench in my nostrils, an acrid smell that never goes away.”

Worldly wisdom is often about achieving something in order to gain glory, being successful to be admired, gaining more for oneself to get ahead of others, obtaining status to be viewed as important and above others and on and on. There are places in the bible that we see that even giving, praying and tithing can be worldly when it is a tradition that is performed to be seen, recognized and get a position or hold a position.

For years, I didn’t know Jesus and operated in worldly wisdom. I look back at the years that I spent trying to be successful, be promoted and get paid higher. I worked super hard in trying to feel of worth. Then when I did achieve a promotion, I just had to work all the harder to keep it because I didn’t feel worthy. The clothes I wore, the positions I worked in, were all to contribute to making me feel more of value. Because underneath, I struggled with my identity and feeling like I had value. I listened to the voices that beat myself up one minute and then to the voices that told me to work harder the next. And when I accomplished something, I listened to the voice that told me how great I was, until something didn’t go right and I beat myself up again. The result in trying to please everyone and be someone who would meet my own standards was eventual burn out.

When my father passed away, it brought up all kinds of past pain for me; I was working too many hours, and the hamster wheel of life was bringing me nowhere, I eventually totally burnt out. I moved into a severe depression and became incapacitated. One day, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was stuck. My mind wouldn’t process and kept ruminating over the same things over and over.

What was worse was that this struggle of burn-out and depression were making it impossible to do what I had in the past. I started to wonder where I would be without being able to work, how I would survive, and what would happen to me. My life felt like it came crashing down on all sides. I felt like I was losing my mind completely. The people closest to me affirmed there was something wrong with me which threw me further into anxiety and hopelessness. My whole life, I had feared and believed that there was something wrong with me and now I was face to face with this reality.

In the midst of it, and even before this, I listened to self-help stuff all the time. I was trying to change me because I struggled with an underlying belief that there was something wrong with me. I didn't like myself or accept myself the way I was. In years past, I had attempted suicide and used drugs to try to escape this. But then when I had my son, I became free from suicide and drugs, but not the beliefs I held about myself.

Since I had my son, I listened to tons of self-help stuff to try to learn to navigate and be better. Work harder, be motivated, be positive, talk to yourself with positive affirmations, don’t work harder but work smarter, take a vacation, set goals, manage your time well, be artistic, stand out and on and on. I remember one even saying, for time management, how they told their mother at the start of a call that they could talk for 10 minutes in their scheduled call and then they would need to be done until the next scheduled time. His thoughts were, don’t waste time on someone who is not effectively helping you accomplish something or be successful. This stuff just caused me to chase my tail and go in circles. It was all about this forced self-sufficiency. But then I came to the end of my sufficiency and had none left.

Hitting an emotional bottom, it was then that I became open to looking at things differently and doing things differently. An employee of mine, seeing that I was out of sorts, invited me to come to church with them. I was open to anything, so I went. As I did, I encountered a God that loved me and had a different way of living.

I had to realize that all the self-help, inner healing, and worldly wisdom stuff was rubbish and leading me down the wrong path. None of it accomplished anything good in my life. I finally realized this when I picked up a new age self-help tape that was supposed to be God speaking to this person and them writing it down and sharing it. It was all about life being centered around you. You are the center of the universe and should insist that all things go your way. Having just heard a sermon that was opposite, something inside me, now knowing God, [His name being the Holy Spirit] leaped up and I knew it was garbage. I then had a dream that night that a black wolf was trying to steer me down this path that was away from God and not good.

I stopped listening to this stuff all together and threw away all these millions of cassettes I had with all this new age wisdom. It was worthless. More than worthless, it was damaging. We are never meant to live in our own wisdom outside of God. From God’s perspective, it’s like living in vomit or excrement.

Someone, who is still one of my dearest friends, introduced me to the Bible. She started a bible study with me and a few others and we began to learn what God had to say. I remember her telling me that I could open up my bible anywhere and God would speak to me. And He did. He made promises to me and then fulfilled them all the time out of the Bible when I was a new Christian. Isaiah 51 was the first scripture He spoke to me. I sobbed as I read it as I could sense His presence in speaking it over me so strongly. Then in so many ways, He has fulfilled it in my life. It has been a transformational verse for me.

This deep desire for healing and freedom to fix myself that had me listening to all these self-help worldly wisdom speakers was found in Him. Psalm 119:114 says, “You are my refuge and my shield; your word is my source of hope.”

I hear Him say, “I didn’t need fixing.” But I do know it is His comfort and unfailing love that changed me. What I needed was to be loved to life. He touched my life and became my Father and my life has never been the same. His wisdom is so much different and greater than what the world’s wisdom.

“Write your word on the tablet of my heart, daily let Your Word transform me” sings in the background. His wisdom is never out of reach. I love how He meets me with it every day. Even if I am late on getting up, He doesn’t withhold His love or wisdom from me.

He showers it as freely upon me as He showers His love upon me. The broken world’s wisdom leads to broken worldly results. In following the way of the world, one reaps from the worldly order who is under the ruler of this world. It leads to confusion, strife, making self-centered choices and will lead you down the wrong path. While it seems to hold some truth, it is steeped in lies and deceit with a purpose to keep one from the truth.

2 Timothy 3:1-9 says that in the last days, many who proclaim to follow Jesus will be under primarily worldly wisdom. It says, “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.”

They will have this form of wisdom but they will lack a genuine relationship with the Lord, fear and holy awe, as well as the power of the Spirit. It will be about managing, manipulating, and controlling people and things rather than surrender, holy awe, and embracing truth. I once had a dream where I was at this church and they were taking people out back and beating them up with a baseball bat to get them to comply with their words. And the people were thanking them for it. This is a form of worldly wisdom in a godly setting.

In worldly wisdom, people see themselves as superior but lack the power to make change. They may beat others up or add weights to them to get results. James 3:16-17 says about worldly wisdom, "For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peace-loving, gentle, accommodating, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." True wisdom from above is rooted in love and self-sacrifice for others.

What seems wise to men, is not necessarily wisdom. Good psychology and reason sound good but it will not bring about His purposes. When Paul was speaking of this, he was talking about false religious leaders proclaiming the gospel out of the wrong spirit. They have a form of godliness with great ethics being demonstrated, practicing honesty and blessing of others, and having good things to say. But at the same time, underneath, they control and manage things and people to their own benefit. They are seeking worldly outcomes of recognition, financial gain, status, and being ahead of others in presenting the gospel.

Because these things are more important than God moving and having His way, they will choose looking respectable, honoring and making people feel comfortable so they come back over letting God operate freely for the benefit of others, especially if it is at their expense. We see this with a man being healed on the Sabbath. The religious folks totally missed the point that the man was healed because his healing broke the rules. They were not in awe and wonder that God moved, but rather angry it didn’t make them look good. What is most evident is that they deny God’s power when they couldn’t control it, manage it or use it to elevate themselves.

I see this occasionally, at different places I have attended where nice things are said that sound good, but they lack God’s presence and power. You walk out thinking this was a nice message but not being changed or touched by God. Maybe because there was a spirit of reason more prevalent than the Spirit of God. It becomes a good message of reason but it doesn’t stand in hope and faith or contain God’s power at all. It leaves me disappointed and feeling a gap as somewhere the Spirit is being quenched or just feels absent. Yet, these are godly people doing good things that are presenting. At the end, maybe this is because they are elevated and not God.

Matthew 6:5-13 gives us this same kind of message about prayer. Jesus says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

This, then, is how you should pray:

‘Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.’”

The jest of this is to not use God for your own benefit and gain by looking to be seen by man. Rather, honor and glorify God in all things and teach others to do the same. Turn the focus off yourself and on to God, and make it genuine and real from the heart.

I love how the pastor at the church that I attend shares stories about himself that puts him in not a good light. Not that the purpose is to look bad, but on de-elevating himself, he makes God more accessible to others. Through him, I can see there is grace for me when I mess up and don’t get it right. And in this de-elevation, while it is pretty funny stories usually, God’s power is touching people in it and in the point of his message. God gets elevated in the midst of it.

This is so helpful to me as I am preparing a message from my book, Let it Be, for a group this weekend called “Women on Fire.” And also in understanding better why God seems to move so powerfully sometimes and other times or places, not at all.

Lord, I long for more of your power and presence to meet us. I long for you to be lifted up and for every message to be filled with holy awe and wonder. We want to see you. Let all Your goodness pass by us! You are the source of all wisdom. Will you fill us with your wisdom and ways to see more of Your glory?