by George Runyan | May 20, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
1 Corinthians 12:8 – To one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit
Natural wisdom is the ability to apply possessed knowledge and experience. The “word of wisdom” is not natural or human wisdom, but supernatural wisdom from God. This Wisdom cannot be developed because it is already perfect. The word of wisdom is the supernatural revelation by the Spirit for divine plans and purpose concerning things, people, places, and events. The “word of wisdom” should not be confused with deep spiritual insight in God’s Word. The latter comes from study and revelation. The gift of the “word of wisdom” comes directly from the Spirit of God.
In a sense, the word of wisdom is the revelation of the purpose of God concerning things in the now and in the future. This wisdom is given to direct us in our decisions and provide safety from deception. Some Scriptural examples of the use of the word of wisdom will show how indispensable this gift is to a finite people.
In the Old Testament there are many examples of a word of wisdom given to those walking in a relationship with the Lord. The wisdom that comes from above always carried a redemptive purpose. Consider Genesis 6:13-22. God’s knowledge of future peril was communicated in a supernatural way to Noah. Noah was given the wisdom necessary to build the Ark and accomplish God’s will of saving the human race from the soon coming flood. King Solomon provides another example in I Kings 3:16. Solomon received supernatural wisdom to shepherd God’s people. The issue of the two women claiming to be the mother of the same baby is a great example of this wisdom given by God (1 Kings 3:16-22).
Paul tells us, “By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God.” Today, all wisdom is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul understood more fully than most about wisdom. “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom” (Colossians 1:28). The gospel of Christ is the wisdom of God unto salvation for every individual.
Be bold and ask the Holy Spirit for the wisdom of heaven. Every day, ask for wisdom and expect the Lord to release your portion as needed. The Father, through the Holy Spirit, is waiting for us to ask and receive of the wisdom that comes from above.
by George Runyan | May 19, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
Isaiah 28:12— “Here is rest, give rest to the weary and here is repose,” but they would not listen.
The “rest” of God comes through obedience to His will. The Assyrian army was a growing threat to Israel’s safety and peace. What Israel had known under God’s protection was on the verge of disappearing. Once again, Israel, which had known the deliverance of Jehovah’s great power, was about to be taken into bondage and slavery by a people who spoke a different language. This people also had a different world view than that of Israel. Israel confessed faith in Jehovah and His redemptive power, but lived like the heathen nations around them. As we have seen in previous devotions, they mocked the word of the Lord and the Lord’s messenger.
The height of Israel’s rebellion and arrogance came during the times of Jesus. The religious leaders mocked Jesus and rejected the deliverance Jehovah was offering through His Son. As in the past when they killed the prophets, they planned the murder of Jesus, and later the murder of God’s apostles. In Peter’s first sermon, he warned Israel when he testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40-41)!
There are three words that are important to consider as we speak about the rest God has provided for His people. The first word is to reflect. God sends His word and allows circumstances in order to get our attention. Many times obstacles are allowed by God to draw us toward Him. In those times, we need discernment. The second word to consider is the word received. The Lord sends His word and it is important to take a posture of receiving His word. I like the use of the word embrace because it speaks of getting close. It is possible to agree with God’s word in terms of doctrine, but not embrace His word as relevant to my circumstance. Our third word to consider is the word respond. Responding is obedience to God’s word. James expressed it this way, “Prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves” (James 1:22).
Ask the Father, in Jesus’ name, for the help of the Holy Spirit to discern words spoken to you and the circumstances that surround your life. Ask Him to give to you grace to embrace the word of God and apply it appropriately. Finally, set your heart to obey God’s word and all of its implications to your situation.
by George Runyan | May 18, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
Isaiah 28:11-12 – Indeed, He will speak to this people through stammering lips and a foreign tongue, He who said to them, “Here is rest, give rest to the weary and here is repose,” but they would not listen.
Yesterday, we saw how God chose to speak through the Assyrians as their conquering army was poised to swoop in and take Israel captive. God’s people mocked the word of the Prophet and rejected the protection that Jehovah was offering His people.
It is interesting how the Scriptures can have more than one meaning, and prophecies can have a couple of applications. The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14:20-21, chose to use Isaiah 28:11 to explain the purpose of the “gift of tongues.” Paul says, “Do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20). In Isaiah’s passage, he reveals that Israel was not being mature. They acted like children as they mocked the Prophet. The Corinthians were misusing the “gift of tongues.” They acted immature in the operation of the gifts of the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 14:22 Paul teaches, that tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers.
In Isaiah 28:10-12, the stammering lips and a foreign tongue was a “sign” to Israel. When God poured out His Spirit as recorded in Acts 2, once again “tongues” was a sign to Israel. This time, it was evidence the kingdom of God had come with the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, and the accompanying sign of tongues. Paul is reminding the Corinthians “tongues” was God’s means of getting His people’s attention. Isaiah said, “This is the rest whereby I will cause the weary to rest, this is the refreshing, but they would not hear.” The “rest” was found in receiving God’s warning through the sign of pending judgment. In Acts 2, the rest is found in receiving the Spirit who brings the Good News of the kingdom of God through the Apostles’ preaching.
The rest and refreshing for the people of God is found in an open heart poised to receive God’s word by making the needed corrections and moving in the direction of God’s will. The Spirit of God has come with gifts that will refresh God’s children as they receive them. Many resist the Spirit’s gifts because they seem strange or because their hearts are fixed on other things.
Today, let us choose to be mature in our thinking. Open your heart to what God has for you. He may choose to speak to you through His written Word or through another individual. Holy Spirit, lead us to be aware of when You are speaking, though it sounds like a stammering lip, help us to hear and obey.
by George Runyan | May 17, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
Isaiah 28:10 – For He says, “Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.”
What is Isaiah speaking about through the Spirit of the living God? I was taught early in my Christian walk that this meant God gives us a little here and a little there. That thought may be true in regard to how God deals with His children, but it is not what the Prophet had in mind. He is describing how the Lord saw the Israelites as a mocking people. In response, the Prophet is mocking them in what he has to say from the Lord.
How do we receive the Word of the Lord? Many of God’s people today, as Israel of old, regard lightly God’s Word to them. It is easy to reject a sermon when the minister begins to deal with one’s heart condition or one’s attitudes. Today, many want the minister of the gospel to make them feel good about themselves. There are those who feel safe because they are sitting comfortably in a church with a pastor who is feeding them pabulum. Israel, in Isaiah’s day, was comfortable in their religion and their compromise of God’s true purposes through them.
God began to speak to His people through the Assyrians who threatened the Israelites’ safe abode. The Assyrians represented a pending judgment to the people of God. They spoke a language that was foreign to the Hebrews. God was warning Israel to repent and turn back to Him. They refused to listen to the Spirit of God through the Prophet. They continued to mock the Prophet’s word. Calamity came upon them.
Today, as in Isaiah’s day, the Lord is looking for His people to open their hearts to Him. In this passage, God used foreigners that did not speak the Hebrew language to be the instrument of His judgment. What is the Lord using in our lives? Could it be the threat of radical Islam? What about the possibility of economic collapse? Could it be poor leadership in the State and Federal government?
Ask the Spirit of God to increase your respect and honor of God’s Word. Ask Him to protect you from mocking the Word of the Lord in your life, and open your heart to hear and receive His corrections. Ask Him for power in the Holy Spirit to live godly in an ungodly culture. Pray for revival!
by George Runyan | May 16, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
Psalm 51:17 – The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
Brokenness is the true sacrifice which God desires. It is not a sacrifice in Old Testament terms of animals or grains. In New Testament terms, it is not about good deeds. Jesus offered Himself as “the sacrifice.” Jesus became broken for all of us. In His brokenness, I can recognize my own brokenness and need for His saving grace. On the cross, Jesus cried out to His Father and said, “Into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). Some believe that Jesus died more quickly than usually experienced on a cross as a result of a broken heart. He was broken for us, broken over our sins. Jesus is the only sacrifice that fully pleases the Father.
In Psalm 51, David came to understanding that the sacrifice God is waiting to receive is a broken and contrite spirit. Our hearts should be broken over our own sin, and then the sins of others. God is looking to find broken and contrite hearts to work through. Religion is full of self-serving attitudes and fleshly attempts trying to appease God. Many run after religion, trying to get their needs met by God and also hoping that God will accept them. True faith in the living God is rooted in this one thing, “brokenness”! Brokenness will produce humility and a heart desiring to serve.
David concludes this verse with the confident cry, “O God, You will not despise.” God will never turn away from the broken spirit or a contrite heart. Even as David, the king, had to come to this place in his life, so also God’s people must learn of brokenness, hopefully not in the same way David had to. Many in the Lord’s church are filled with self-approval and self-serving attitudes making them vulnerable to the enemy. Brokenness begins with the individual, develops in the congregation, and becomes the spirit of the church throughout a city, which in turn will cause sinners to be converted!
Pray with me for the Spirit of God to deal with our individual heart condition. Pray for your local church community and for the church of your locality. Pray that we will bring to God a “broken and contrite heart.” Claim the salvation of sinners and their conversion to God’s glorious kingdom.
by George Runyan | May 15, 2017 | Devotional, George Runyan
Psalm 51:13 – I will teach transgressors Your ways and sinners will be converted to You.
A result of our salvation should be to “teach transgressors God’s ways.” Once we deal with our own issue of iniquity (lawlessness) and our sin nature by receiving God’s work to save us through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we should turn our attention to others. An evidence of true conversion is a concern for others that are as lost as we once were.
David had asked for a “willing spirit.” Peter tells us that “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). When David recognized his depravity and confessed his sin, he desired to be an instrument to help others that were in the same condition. A “willing spirit” is one that aligns itself with the will of God. The Holy Spirit has come to “reveal the Father’s will.” From that revelation, we are to align our self with God’s will and pray for the Holy Spirit to lead us to do the will of God. It is clear, God’s will was to heal David and re-establish Him in God’s Divine Purpose. David, in turn, began to focus on other broken lives around him.
Is our relationship with God all about our need being met or do we also have that component of “a willing spirit” to do God’s will? Another way of expressing this concept would be to ask God to “give us a willingness to do His bidding.” God has called us to be His representative to others. First by wholeness in our own life, and then to declare God’s desire to save and restore others to God’s salvation.
My testimony is of my own “depravity” and God’s “love” toward me. He has answered my prayer which is after that of David’s: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).
Lord, please help me to be willing to do Your will by sharing with others how You forgave my sins and clothed me with Your great salvation so rich and so free. Give me grace to lead others to Your wonderful love and presence.
