Open Heart, Open Eyes
(You can read the introduction to this 8 week study here. You can also click the tag at the bottom of this post and all of the Biblical Motherhood posts will be shown to you.)
As you pray today, ask the Lord to make a solid foundation in your heart of the knowledge of Him. Ask Him for cool water where your soul is thirsty, and to redeem what is your inheritance!
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Yesterday we let God define false wisdom and true wisdom for us, and He also identified their sources. Today we will seek His Word to carefully lay the groundwork for gaining true wisdom. The Lord will show you by His Spirit where He will work in you. Your part is to stay pliable to Him and put your trust in Him and in His Word. When the foundation is secure, the storm will blow but the house will stand firm. That is God's aim for us!
In Christ is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge! This is Bible truth! So can those wonderful treasures of wisdom and knowledge be found without Him? The Bible says no. True education is built on the nature of God; it is about knowing God. How can we know Him? There are three ways that the Lord reveals Himself, and they all work together to make Him clearly seen.
How does God reveal Himself from the following verses?
Matthew 4:4
John 15:26
John 15:27
Romans 1:20
The Bible is the Word of God, and we will have a special lesson more specifically on it in week 6.
The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, and we will look further at Him in week 4.
In this lesson we will go through the creation more thoroughly to gain a better understanding of how God uses it to make Himself evident.
Let's go to Genesis chapter one. From verses 8, 9, 10, please list the three places that God made to support the life He was going to create.
Please see Psalm 135:6. (Do you see a pattern here?)
There are many verses in the Word of God where these three places are spoken of. God made them, and then filled them with creatures. All of them tell of His character. They reveal Him to us. However, they must be interpreted by the Spirit of God using the Word of God. When sin entered the world, it brought with it decay and death, and these have confused the message that God conveys through His creation. Without the Spirit and the Word of God we will begin to think that God is against us, and that we will surely always be under His scrutiny because we are untrustworthy. Even in reading the Word of God you may have noticed this tendency in your understanding. The Spirit speaks to us if we will take the whole counsel of God's Word and believe Him, and He applies it in creation to make truth tangible so that we have insight; we understand.
This study of created things is generally called science. True science can be tested, and the same results are observed again and again. Creation-science includes the physical makeup of air molecules, gravity, the speed of light, planets and rotation, stars, time, seasons, the layers of rock, sand, precious metals, gas and water in the earth, the lay of the ocean floor, currents, salt vs. fresh water, feathers, flight patterns, types of birds, styles of nests, habits of creatures, weather, feeding patterns of land animals, skeletal structures, cold-blooded vs. warm-blooded animals, types of fish, sea creatures, underwater plants and depth and density of water, for example. And all of it is here to testify of God's presence, His power, and His character.
Not only are there the sky, the earth, and the sea, which God made, but if you will look at Genesis 2:7, you will see God's tenderness with His last creation: man. From this passage, what intimacy do you see in the way God created the first man?
God's desire was for fellowship with mankind from the very first. He so intensely desired us! In fact, before we were ever born, before the first people could even sin, He knew what was coming, and so He had provided far in advance. From Revelation 13:8 we understand that as far as God was concerned, Jesus was, in His heart, crucified "from the foundation of the world," so set was his plan to buy us back. He is God for all people for all time! From the first man who stood upon the earth and breathed in air to those who today are being born, Jesus is The Answer. He was there to watch the birth of the firstborn child upon the earth. He was there, and He grieved over the people, which led to the flood. He was there when the people loaded up their earthly possessions to travel to unknown places on the earth. It was God who sent His Son as a tiny baby among the Roman soldiers, busy streets, and crude walls of an obscure stable. He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross in order to take the punishment of justice that sin required. He was there to rise from the dead and make His victory in the unseen realm known to all men in this physical act. He sees all the children He is forming within their mothers all across the world. He sees every person in every country, and has throughout all time. He watches the streets and farmland, He is in the tents, huts, and houses, with every man, woman, and child, and His great desire is for them to receive His sacrifice for them, to live within them, and to have fellowship with them.
The study of mankind we most often call history. History is not meant so much as a study of people in the past, present, and future, but of God and His presence and provision for the past, present, and future of people. Included in history are mechanical and medicinal inventions, languages, cultures and family groups, clothing, foods, transportation, uses of creation (creatures and resources), effects of climate and topography, governments and laws, uses of time, education, wars, value of money or trade, architecture, and dentistry, for starters. All of these things speak not so much of people and their coming and going, but of God who has provided the knowledge of Himself in creation and the opportunity for those who have His Word to testify of Him to others. It is His-story.
These areas of sky, earth, and sea and all that is in them, and the study of mankind become fresh and exciting when we see them in this light. No longer a list of subjects to fulfill on a report card, for us these become a way to know our God, and they are our pleasure to search out!
You may find that you want to study in a new way, different than you have before. God's Word is the most important book you will ever read. Don't neglect it for the study of the creation. But it is an opportunity of a lifetime to pick up a book on nature and compare it to the Word of God. Take a walk and gather flowers to press, and find "flowers" in your concordance to see what God is saying to you. Sometimes He has more than one likeness for a picture.
Run a glass of water and find it a type of the Word – think on it. Ponder these things. Dig in your garden and look at the soil. Find a path and look closely at the ground, and then meditate on Mark 4:3-20.
As you bake a batch of cookies, check the sky at night, look out across the horizon as you drive, as you hear the sound of the wind, look into the eyes of your children, God is speaking to you. God is speaking to you! To hear Him requires not merely the desire for an educational experience, but the will to know God, to have fellowship with Him, to hear His voice!
In 2 Corinthians 2:15,16 we read, "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?" Every time we smell the blossoms of an apple tree, or catch the scent of a lovely perfume, the Lord wants us to hear from Him! That is the sweetness of His smell! With the odor of spoiled potatoes or a garbage can left too long comes a reminder from God to help us to understand how offensive the Righteous One is to the lost around us. They cannot come without the Lord's power.
From these verses, please identify the picture used and the lesson given. Remember that they are to be used in dividing the Word of God, not to become our focus in themselves. The creation must serve the Word of God and the Spirit of God!
Matthew 15:13
Matthew 15:14
Matthew 16:6,11,12
John 2:19-21
John 4:14
John 4:35
John 6:48,51
John 15:16
Oh, my friend, do you see? He has given us the creation to explain things that we cannot see yet, things that pertain to the life to come, life in His kingdom!
When we see people, we can have God's vision of them, God's vision for them. Could it be time to ask Him for sight for the blind, that we might see from heaven's point of view? We might see a little clearer our Savior, our King Jesus and we might grow in longing for His kingdom and the citizens of that kingdom. Because of Him, we can see with new eyes! We will experience life like we never have! May what we learn be ours for eternity!
Please pray with me!
Oh, Father! Thank You for making it possible for me to hear You! It cost You everything to have fellowship with me. Oh, help me to see, open my eyes and my ears so that I will understand how much You love me. Till up the soil of my heart so that I will not listen out of mere obligation, but with thankfulness, and a desire for Your heart. Thank You, Father, for this beautiful earth, and for using even the mean things of life to speak to me. You will not waste any of it. Open my heart that I might study to know You! In Jesus' name, A-men!
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