I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw.2
No matter how hard you try or faster you go, it wouldn’t matter if you are headed the wrong direction. Thus, it would be prudent to first find out what the directive or plans are before you take any action. Know where you fit in the spoke of the wheel, figuratively speaking.
God’s purpose and plan for his kingdom will prevail.3 As citizens of God’s kingdom, we are like a surfer who observes the ebb of the sea, awaits the rising wave, and rides it. When Jesus was disclosing to his disciples the kind of death he would have to go through, and after three days rise again, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Jesus would have nothing of it and strongly rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan!”4 At Gethsemane, Jesus prayed to be relieved of the burden, yet submitted, “. . . Yet not what I will, but what you will.”5
Are you among those that the Lord has sought for himself—a man after God’s own heart?6 Of David, God testified and said, “I have found David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.”7 Are you willing to trust God? In distress you called, and I delivered you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. (Selah) Hear, O my people, while I admonish you! O Israel, if you would but listen to me! There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god. I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.8 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.9
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.10 And he said to them, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”11 And the man said to me, “Son of man, look with your eyes, and hear with your ears, and set your heart upon all that I shall show you, for you were brought here in order that I might show it to you. Declare all that you see to the house of Israel.”12
Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction.13
Notes:
1. Mark 13:5, . . . “See that no one leads you astray.”
2. Proverbs 24:32 (NIV)
3. Isaiah 14:24
4. Mark 8:31-33
5. Mark 14:32-36
6. 1 Samuel 13:14
7. Acts 13:22
8. Psalm 81:7-10
9. Proverbs 21:2-3
10. Hebrews 12:28-29
11. Mark 4:11-12
12. Ezekiel 40:4
13. Proverbs 24:32
