To Encourage You

Proverbs 15:1 “A soft answer turns away wrath”

I have such a long way to go! That’s what time in God’s Word constantly reminds me of.  Time after time I am reminded of how the natural way is not God’s way. I am shown that the things that come so easy to me are that way because my natural bent is in the wrong direction. 

One such example is the verse above from Proverbs 15. It’s a statement, like all of Proverbs, that describes wisdom. Sadly, it’s also a revelation of how far I am from wisdom sometimes. It’s so hard to do what this verse says.  How often have you heard someone say something to the effect of “Well I told so and so a thing or two!” or “I gave so and so a piece of my mind!” How often have you said such things yourself?  And even if you’ve not used the same words, how often have you done what such words say.  It comes so naturally, this desire to defend ourselves with our words or to “put someone in their place,” whatever we, in our pride, think that place is!  Again, it’s hard to be soft. It takes such strength to be gentle.  It seems so counterintuitive to respond to the anger of another person with kindness as our tone. That’s because it’s the supernatural way, not the natural way.  And the supernatural requires the power of God and comes only as a gift from God; but we must ask for it.  Thus, Jesus told us at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon in which the impossibility of living a Christ-like life in our own strength is made abundantly clear, “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 the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11).

But is this the kind of thing that we ask for?  Or is our mind more on material things?  Do we want the things that any person naturally wants – things that the mind of the ungodly are focused upon? Or do we want those things that God wants us to want?  And when we find ourself lacking, do we keep on asking and not give up?  Or do we become discouraged (as I am prone to do) and think we’ll never change, that we’re a hopeless case?

But should we really be discouraged that we’re not Christlike? Should we quit the pursuit of godliness because we find, time and again, that we just don’t measure up? Well, to this, as with any other such difficulty in life, Jesus has an answer. It is this, from Luke 18:1, where He said that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart.” He then gives us the following parable to reinforce this point: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man,yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’And the Lord said, ‘Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” 

As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me how often “the adversary” in this parable can be our own self.  We are our own worst enemies, so often, as we choose to do the opposite of what God has told us are the very best things for us.  And so we should pray without ceasing. We should not give up, for as long as we live in this body, our old nature will have a tendency to rise back up.  As Paul told us, “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do . . . If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16-25). But that’s a life-long process, not a “one and done” thing.

May God help us to continually confess our sin and continually confess our need for His help to come against it.  For you see, the supernatural never comes naturally to us.  The supernatural is as high above our natural bent as the heavens are above the earth.