Living Proverbs 22:6

Wisdom

“Wisdom begins with respect for the Lord. And understanding begins with knowing God, the Holy One.” Proverbs 9:10

This month, I have been going through the book of Proverbs. Proverbs has 31 chapters, and October has 31 days, so I have devoted each morning to reading one chapter. God placed on my heart quite a while ago to seek out His wisdom for my life. Of course everyone wants to be wise and discerning, right? But in all honesty, I was (without even realizing it) going through life under more of my own understanding than Gods.

God is so faithful. Praise God that He does not give up on and will continue out His perfect work in us until the day of His Son, Jesus Christ. We really are unworthy of the grace we are given! The Lord allowed a pretty tough season in my life, about six months ago. He used it to grab my attention and boy did it!! It rocked my world. I have always been a pretty go with the flow person. I wasn’t much of a worrier. Did I worry…yes, but it didn’t have a grip on me. I did know, believe and held onto the almighty power of God, who He is and that everything flowed through His mighty hand. But God knew where He had to grab hold of me. My problem (and struggle still) is that I still had a heck of a lot of flesh. I knew head knowledge of God and did the usual go to church, work in ministry….but my heart had a lot of work that needed to be done yet. I woke up daily to my own plans instead of seeking Him first. I honestly was trying to be lord over my own life, instead of allowing the Lord to be Lord over me. I would pitch fits if things didn’t go my way and often (more often than not) responded to life and situations in my own flesh and desires rather than God’s. I started feeling like a hypocrite as the Holy Spirit convicted me. Then one day He just took me out! =)

I can smile about it now, because I can see God’s hand in the whole thing but at the time it was life altering. I woke up to a normal morning…got the kids off to school and was loading the kids up for the preschool run and it happened. I felt my heart flutter several times…I took my pulse, and it would beat four times then skip a beat. I panicked!! I threw myself into a panic attack! This has never happened to me in my life. Continuing on with the Preschool run, I was in prayer the whole journey. “Lord, protect these children, please don’t allow me to have a heart attack and crash” When we returned home, I called my friend Lori to come over and watch the rest of the crew and asked my Dad to take me to the ER. Words can’t describe how I was feeling. Long story short, they checked out my heart and after several more trips to the Dr and ER…they determined that it was anxiety.

I struggled with it for months. It was crippling and consuming. The Lord got my full attention! The only thing to get me through was reading His word and lots of prayer. And not just reading words, but believing them. Believing that God is who He says He is and His promises are true! I still work with the anxiety a bit, especially as my hormones change through the month. You could put many worldly interpretations as to how/why it happened, but the bottom line is that God allowed it. It has been a long hard road…but God is so good! The things I have learned on this journey in the wilderness has been life changing, and PRAISE GOD FOR THAT! I feel He continues to allow a little bit of the anxiety to keep me in check. I start to feel anxious or overwhelmed and the Holy Spirit grabs me. What am I worried about? What is truth?

So as I continue in the book of Proverbs, I encourage you all to seek God’s wisdom yourself!
I chose to share this on a Living Proverbs 22:6 post because we can not train our children properly if we are not right with God. We will be teaching one thing and living out another and our children see that. It teaches them that it’s okay to say and do one thing on Sunday’s and live out in the world the rest of the week. I was feeling conviction that I was trying to teach my children about obedience, and I don’t obey myself.

Draw close to God and He will draw close and reveal Himself to you. This is an absolute truth! Most of the time, I’m afraid because I know there are still so many dark corners within me. Things that I am ashamed of. Things that are hidden from my past. That ugly sin that still rears it head in my life. Friends, God already sees those things and wants to take them away. Stop holding on to it, deal with it and embrace the wonderful joyful peace that only Christ can give to you! It hurts to face them. It’s crucifying self…but oh the beautiful resurrection on the other side!! =)

Wisdom is seeing and responding to life situations from God’s frame of reference…not our own.

Seek God’s wisdom and will for your life…and live it!!

With much love~Tina