Making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding. – Proverbs 2:2
Have you ever tried to define “understanding?” It may be harder than it sounds! For example, you have probably met a person who has a firm grip on the facts of a situation yet still misses the larger meanings and implications involved. That person has knowledge, but not understanding!
Most philosophers and theologians agree there are components of reason and judgment involved in fully understanding anything. Jesus Christ addressed His disciples after speaking about His death and resurrection, repeating the mandate from Moses for living the life of faith (Deuteronomy 6:5), “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). That incorporates every element required for spiritual understanding.
Followers of Christ live in a place of daily discovery, both in the attributes of triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – and also with yourself, observing and coming to grips with your own individual traits and tendencies. Spiritual growth takes place when you allow God to use every area of your life to teach you. Much of the time this will be through circumstances, prayer, and Bible study applied to your real-life experiences that will provide new insight. When you make a conscious decision to yield yourself completely to His instruction, mere knowledge grows into understanding!
The Holy Spirit is eager to help you grow and progress, but you have to desire it and actively focus on it! Pray that those serving America in positions of authority develop Godly understanding for themselves, and apply it to the job they do. Ask God to touch the hearts and minds of Americans to repent and return to Him so that the U.S. is again “One Nation, Under God” – a culture showing spiritual maturity and Godly understanding.
Today’s Verse: Proverbs 2:2
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: Ephesians 4:11-16
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
