June 21 - Asking for Wisdom - Evangelical Caucus/Devotional

Gracetoyou.org ^ | 2008 | John McArthur, Grace Community Church

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“‘Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened’” (Matthew 7:7–8).

Our heavenly Father is generous to us and promises we have access to His eternal and unlimited treasure to meet our own needs as well as the needs of others. Even when we have been cleansed of our own sin, we need divine wisdom to know how to help a brother remove the speck from his eye.

God’s wisdom is one of our greatest needs. We can’t be discerning and discriminating without divine counsel from our heavenly Father; and the primary means for achieving that wisdom is prayer: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).

Along with God’s perfect and infallible Word, we need His Spirit to interpret and illumine, to encourage and to strengthen. He does not want us to have all the answers; He wants us to be students who search the Scriptures. The Bible is a limitless store of divine truth. But apart from God Himself we can’t begin to fathom its depths or mine its riches. God gives enough truth for us to be responsible, but enough mystery for us to be dependent. He gives us His Word not only to direct our lives but to draw our lives to Him.

So when you need God’s wisdom to make spiritual decisions, ask God for it.

Ask Yourself

Part of feeling as though God isn’t providing us wisdom is that we don’t know how to receive it or what’s required in listening for it. How has God most often supplied you with the wisdom you need to handle a certain situation?

From Daily Readings from the Life of Christ, Vol. 1, John MacArthur. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Moody Publishers, Chicago, IL 60610, www.moodypublishers.com.

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Studying God’s Word ping

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Thank you as always

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Anyone can irrevocably receive eternal life free of the power of sin, but in this life only by progressive sanctification, which is the entire focus of God's Word, cover to cover, spoken or written by Him.

Absence of it indicates that the spirit of death still prevails in a person. It is commanded for everyone to judge for oneself:

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in (T)he (F)aith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except^(unless)" ye be reprobates^unfit?"
(2 Corinthians 13:5; cf. Rom. 1:29)

"To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved"
(Ephesians 1:6 AV; see context v. 3-12 )