Women In The Word Wednesday~01/19/11

I am doing a bible study in James with the Good Morning Girls. Every Wednesday, I will do my best to post about what the Lord is teaching me and I link it up to their site. I realize I haven't posted here in quite some time. We are settling in here, and doing well. God is good!

James 1:5,6

"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."

There's a lot to be taken out of this verse. I'll just point out a couple things. One, we need to seek God for our answers. So often, (myself included...at the top of the list!) when trials come our way, we search ourselves, our co-workers, magazines, books, friends, "the world," for answers to fix our problems and situations. We must FIRST seek God, who has abundant wisdom to give to us! It's so sad when a Christian waits until all efforts have failed, to turn to God. I struggle with this so much, and I pray that God will continue to help me to turn to Him first...always.

Second, when we seek God for wisdom, He will give it to us. It's not questionable. There's no stipulations on this. He doesn't have to be in a giving mood, or require that we do all these steps first. God clearly tell us here in verse 4, that it shall be given to us! Praise God!

Thirdly, we must trust in the wisdom and the answers that God gives us. It's so easy to doubt God's ways, because they are above our own understanding sometimes. We still think ourselves and our own wisdom to be so great. I've heard the saying, that it's often not that we don't trust God will answer our prayers, but that we don't know if He will answer our prayers the way WE want Him to answer them! I find this to be so true! We must trust Him though, and know that He will ALWAYS say and do the right things. We can trust the Holy Spirit's leading, and when God gives us an answer, or wisdom about a situation, we need to stick to that, and not waiver in our faith. Wavering gives room for Satan to do real damage.

I leave you with one more passage. I find it no coincidence that both these verses (above in James, and here below in Proverbs), though many years and pages apart, are both verses 5 and 6.

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5,6