One way to enter into compromise and cripple faith is leaning on your own understanding with the addition of relying on others’, which in reality, is nothing more than human opinion. That’s not to say we cannot learn from one another as we receive revelation from God. It’s the conjecture that gets us in trouble. What muddles the understanding is listening to someone who speaks with “authority” about something of which he or she is completely clueless. People get lost by leaning on their own understanding and the results can be devastating. It leads to unhealthy questioning and independence which may actually be outright rebellion. Questions are good when they are connected to gaining insight. But, those questions need to be attached to the desire for the actual truth in order to gain true insight.
God is mysterious, but some the mysteriousness comes from not knowing Him and His ways. If you don’t know His heart and nature, His ways will also be foreign. He does have mysteries, but He also wants us to search them out, because they lead to a better understanding of Him. In reality, if you can totally figure out God, you may be serving the wrong one. Some tend to make God in their own image, instead of conforming to His. Mystery can lead to intimacy. The more you search out what you don’t understand about Him, the better you will come to know Him as He reveals Himself to you. And that leads to a question: how well do you want to know Him?
James 1:5-8 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
When you lack wisdom or understanding, who’s the first person you ask for help? If it’s not God, why not? Do you have difficulty believing He can and will give them to you? Some are afraid of the answer they may get, and that may be the result of wanting things their way. James 4:2-3 . . . yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
If you want real answers, you have to be brutally honest with yourself. In extreme cases, people claim to be atheists simply because they want to do what they want without being held accountable in the end. How many of us did things in life without first asking for permission? Why didn’t we ask? We wanted it our way and we did not want to hear “no!”
Proverbs 3:5-8 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.
