Find Favor
So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.
Proverbs 3:4
Proverbs 3:1-10
It was a new day. And it didn’t take long for my thoughts to turn to business matters.
Especially The Matter.
Do I sell Anabaptist Bookstore or do I try to find investors or do I just shut down — which, if any, does God want me to do?
I don’t know.
So then I come to this in my morning reading:
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).
All. No exceptions. Don’t hold back.
Trust in the Lord, eh? But I thought I had been doing that!
Be not wise in thine own eyes (Proverbs 3:7)
Well, I’ll take that verse as encouragement to keep doing it. And I’ll take it as a challenge to be alert to those areas where I’m not doing it.
So I keep reading:
“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:6).
Keeping God-aware all the time. Now that I most very definitely can do very much better at.
That must be why I don’t yet know what I’m supposed to do (other than keep providing dependable good service to our customers).
So I read a little further (I was aiming to stop with verse 10, if you’re wondering). It didn’t take long to arrive here:
“Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9,10).
Hope!
But could that be for me?
Are those God’s instructions for me regarding my business and The Matter?
Is that promise applicable to me in this particular situation?
Besides, there’s The Unthinkable, Unutterable Thought that I did think but have not yet divulged.
Except God already knows, of course.
But, but, but…. That’s what I have been doing. For years. Decades. And where’s my plenty and my new wine? Come to think of it, where are my barns and my presses?!
Hence the title of this piece: Is It Still True?
So the devil mocks and tempts: “Yeah, hath God said?”
My answer: “Yes, He did say that. So He still says that. And with His help, I’ll continue to believe it…contrary ‘evidence’ notwithstanding.”
(That. Sounds. So. Easy.)
![[The Scriptures say in Proverbs 3:7 -- Be not wise in thine own eyes]](/pantinghart/wp-content/not-wise-own-eyes.jpg "God's Word says: Be not wise in thine own eyes (Proverbs 3:7)")
from Proverbs 3:7
Republished on Mar 3, 2019 at 09:02 am
then returned to its original date and time on Mar 16, 2021 at 7:48 pm
His promises are ever true, but not all the blessings come in this life. We need to be like the three Hebrew young men who faced the fiery furnace. They said they knew God could save them, but even if he didn’t rescue them they would still trust Him. They knew this life was not all that mattered.
Not an easy decision, Brother. May the Lord guide and strengthen you as you wait on Him. We know your website has blessed and helped us and others too.
Does it comfort you to hear that you aren’t alone — that it seems most of God’s people that we know are in the midst of life changing crises, crucibles and quandaries? Some are in serious financial crunches, others face health issues that greatly alter the “normal” of their lives. Some experience the agony of church splits or the pain of searching for a Scriptural church in the desert of barren “churches”. Others are dying of cancer or are in the midst of losing or have just lost loved ones to that dread disease.
We don’t write this blithely; we are in the midst of some of those things mentioned above. There are days we can only place our hands in the Lord’s and pray, “Guide us through this day, Lord; we cannot see tomorrow.”
Isaiah comforts us, “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
David too, in the Psalms: “Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”
I am blessed by your website and blog. I am also in the midst of purifying circumstances that according to all human logic could only have been divinely engineered. I am brought to remember a scripture that proclaims that we are to delight in the Lord, and He will give the desires of our heart. Delighting in the Lord is the part I had thought I understood, but come to find out, I did not. For me, I believed I had faith but discovered I had only belief. Now, one who delights in the Lord finds that delighting in the Lord becomes the desire of the heart. The fulfilment of the promise is contained within its very precondition.
As for your website, it comes on time, I’m compelled to a simpler life of worship and self-abandonment, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of self-styled worship that excludes sacred forms derived from the words of Jesus.
thank you
john