Difficulty Communicating

Read: 1 Corinthians 2

"so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God." 1 Corinthians 2:5

Examine:

Paul was very careful in how he taught others about God. He would adjust his message based on his audience and never gave a person so much information that they did not have any questions left. He taught with the intention of creating a disturbance in them so that they would pursue God's wisdom on their own and would have to rely on the Holy Spirit to feed them truth.

Apply:

There are seasons of my life when my communication with God becomes difficult. I am in one of those seasons right now. For the past two weeks, reading and applying scripture has been a real grind. I have forced myself out of bed and really had a hard time comprehending what God is saying to me. In this chapter from 1 Corinthians, I see a few things that help me understand the struggle I have been facing.

First, I do not always want to be a self-feeder. Seeking, searching, and struggling to find spiritual food on my own is a challenge. I live in a day when there are so many resources available that make finding wisdom easy. Podcasts, assessments, books, blogs, and commentaries all stand available to offer me short-cuts to hearing from God. There are times when I want someone to just give me the answer to the things that bother me or tell me what I should do so that I can mark that issue off my list and move on to the next thing. God's desire is that I learn to rely on my personal connection with the Holy Spirit to be my main source of food.

Second, I want to work on my own agenda. This passage talks about the wisdom of God being hidden from the wisdom of man. To me, this does not mean God hides His wisdom under a rock so that I can't find it. It means that my personal agenda, attitudes, beliefs, and desires hide His wisdom. For the past couple weeks I have had three very specific struggles in my life. My compulsion to deal with those things has caused me to become deaf to anything else. God's desire is that I learn to lay aside the things on my agenda and pursue the agenda He has for me. He is speaking. He just is not saying what I want to hear.

Finally, I do not always get the Holy Spirit. The scripture makes some wonderful boasts about the role of the Holy Spirit in my life. In verse twelve of this chapter Paul says, "now we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God." It is hard to grasp the power of the Spirit in my life. I have inside of me the Holy Spirit of God. He has been given to me as a pledge of my inheritance. This means that God's desire is that the work of the Holy Spirit in my life should be so alive and vibrant that He serves as a proving of my faith.

Pray:

The attitude of my heart towards the trials I face have a huge impact on my prayers. My quite time with You has been impacted of late by some issues that I have desired to see resolved. I confess to You this morning that I have really struggled to communicate with You because I have allowed my heart to become encumbered by frustration.

I want to connect with Your Spirit, release my agenda, and find my own Spiritual food. Teach me the balance I need in order for these things to be true. I pray that I use the words of wisdom from other men to encourage me in my personal pursuit, but that I not try to make their pursuit my own. I ask that You help me release to You my agenda, but not separate myself from the life You have called me to live. In all that I do I pray for the power and wisdom of Your Holy Spirit in my life to become the sole driving force in my life.