Bill Johnson - God Is Speaking to You Through Simple, Everyday Things
There’s always something to learn if you’ll stop being inquisitive like a child and learn; that really is the beauty of wisdom. All of us can learn something from just the normal, everyday parts of life. Hey there, welcome back! I’m glad you could join us. We’re on this quest for wisdom. Wisdom, as Scripture says, is the principal thing. It’s not peripheral; it’s not some side issue. It’s not something you choose to attach to your car like an additional element. It’s the essence of life itself. Wisdom enables and equips us to reign in life. God is looking for people who will reign like Jesus reigned, demonstrating the goodness and love of God. That’s our privilege.
So today we’re going to look at a few things from chapter 6. Unfortunately, time doesn’t permit us to take it verse by verse, and I’m not sure that would help us anyway. But we’re going to take portions of chapter 6 and see what we can learn from them. Let’s go ahead and get started here. I want you to take a look at an unusual verse; to me it’s in verse 6. Chapter 6, verse 6 says, «Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.» Having no captain, overseer, or ruler, she provides supplies in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest. It goes on to describe a really corrective word for those who are lazy.
But here’s the thing that strikes me about this story. First of all, we’ll find out in chapter 8 that the world was made out of wisdom. God actually designed everything through the lens of wisdom, which means every part of God’s creation, functioning as He designed it, carries a message of wisdom. So here He says, «Listen, if you find yourself lazy or slothful, not diligent in your activities, priorities, or purpose, go to the ant.» I mean, how many of us have actually gone to the ant and sat in our backyard, just watching them? This is actually the invitation from Solomon, the man of wisdom. He says if you’ll just pay attention to the world you’re in, if you’ll just slow down and consider all that God has made and how it functions with divine purpose, it will illustrate the nature of wisdom.
That’s fascinating to me. For example, take the whole idea of sowing and reaping. Go to a cornfield and see how corn grows. Here’s the deal: if you take a kernel of corn, you would never plant that kernel if all you would do is harvest one kernel of corn—that would be a ridiculous exchange. Instead, you plant a kernel of corn and harvest an ear of corn, which sometimes has between 6 and 800 kernels of corn. The point is that there’s actually wisdom talking to us daily as we go through experiences in life, and God is constantly teaching us what His world looks like, teaching us the nature of wisdom—wisdom plants with the intention of increase. No farmer in his right mind would pray for a crop to grow that he didn’t plant.
There’s the prayer effort and the supernatural influence on natural activity, and I believe the Lord has a heart for us to discover the beauty of the natural world married to the power, wonder, and unlimited nature of the spiritual world. To combine those two helps us understand why we’re on planet Earth. So here it is: He says, «Go to the ant.» That means we can take time and walk. I like to do this on my own property; I enjoy walking around and just observing the animals we have here. My wife has several beehives, and just watching how they function—you’ll find there’s always something to learn if you stop being inquisitive like a child. That really is the beauty of wisdom; all of us can learn something from just the normal, everyday parts of life.
Let me make one more comment, then I’ll need to move on. Sometimes we want the Lord to speak to us in such loud or profound ways that it startles us. I admit those are wonderful times when the Lord is that clear, but that’s not necessarily a sign of our maturity. If He has to shout or make something that obvious, it’s not necessarily a sign of maturity because the Lord loves to hide truth in the simple parts of life—the everyday parts of life. If we’re listening and paying attention to how things work, the Lord will always have something to say. So I want to encourage you, as a child being inquisitive, to ask questions, ask Him questions, and look at the world around you to see how things function.
He moves on throughout this chapter, and the next two chapters are very sobering for me. He ends this one with an absolute crazy warning about immorality and adultery. Before we get to that, he warns us about what a worthless person looks like. We’re not going to study this verse by verse, but in verse 12, he says, «A worthless person, a wicked man, walks with a perverse mouth. He winks with his eyes,» which means he’s deceptive in his gaze. «He shuffles his feet; he points his fingers.» The pointing of the finger is accusation. When it talks about lifting holy hands before the Lord, it’s hands that don’t accuse. He points out this man’s perversity in his heart; he devises evil continually. Here’s the part that really stood out to me—I have it underlined in my Bible: «He sows discord.» Elsewhere in Scripture, it says that if you silence the whisperer, a fire will die out; it’s talking about the fire of controversy, hatred, and resentment—junk that is fanned through the voice of a whisperer.
Here we have this individual whom the Bible calls wicked, who sows discord. As you move down, it says six things the Lord hates. The last one mentioned is that he sows discord among brethren. I want to end with this thought; I didn’t get as far as I hoped to today. Here’s what I want to address: the Apostle Paul— I believe it was Paul—said to mark a person who causes discord. It’s wisdom for you and me to not spend time with people that cause discord, who are dividers and need to be right all the time. I will be with them to serve them; I will not be influenced by them. So I want to encourage you to draw a line in your relationships because they’ll always drag you down to their level of conflict. We can’t live with that kind of mess going on in our hearts and minds, where we’re constantly accusing and being suspicious of others.
So I bless you with that. I pray for tremendous wisdom as God helps us to learn how to avoid people of discord but also to be people who speak healing, peace, and the grace of God. Next week, we will look at the scary warning about immorality, so make sure you join us for that one; it applies to all of our lives in everyday life. Bless you!