God’s Navigation Plan by Rocky Fleming

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.  James 3:17 ESV

May I establish a contrast of insights and perceptions for the purpose of trying to navigate the trying times we are in, and the ones we will face?  First, there are two types of wisdom.  There is a worldly wisdom that comes from our experiences with the world and learning from them.  Then there is a godly wisdom that comes from our experiences with God and our learning from His experience.  Most clearly it is our experience with Him in a teacher/disciple role that His wisdom transfers.

An earthly wisdom is produced by our personal experience with life.  In other words, we have to get burned to know that fire is hot and needs to be avoided.  Remember how you were taught this as a child?  Then as we experience more days and years of life, we learn even more serious issues from our good and poor choices, and the consequences from them.  Not that everyone gets it.  But for those who do gain worldly wisdom, life is better for them.  But the wisdom we gain from God deviates from the source of worldly wisdom which requires our personal experiences to learn the rights and wrongs.  The wisdom from above that is granted to us is produced by being in close proximity to the Giver and Sustainer of life, and His personal experience with life.  We see Jesus’ personal experience with life and how He uses it to guide us in the following verse: 

“For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.”  Hebrews 2:18 NASB

So, not only do we have wisdom from above available to us from our Creator who formed all the details of life including ours, we also have experiential wisdom from our Savior God, who lived life on earth to know what we are feeling, what frightens us, what tempts us, and what needs to be pursued and as well steered away from.  This is the wisdom from above that is available to God’s child.

I feel it is essential to know how to find and be led by God’s wisdom, for the world that we are entering right now is unlike anything people living today have experienced before.  I’m aware that there are people such as Holocaust victims and what they went through, and most of us have never experienced that.  There are many persecuted Christians throughout the world, and most of us have not experienced the things they’ve had to deal with.   Governments have risen and fallen in some of our lifetimes.  But most people have not seen this or experienced it.  But we might be seeing it now. 

For those who live in this country, we clearly see a concentrated effort to confuse people with biased propaganda, with attacks on well-established laws, with attempts to skirt around those laws and decency, and with anger and violence meant to intimidate.  There has been an attempt for a good while now to rebrand, rethink, remake and reorganize our country toward a path that leads from our founding principles that made the USA the greatest social experiment of all times.  Voices with hate and hate of those things held dear by generations of all people in this country are the “Voice of America” right now.  Never in my lifetime did I ever think this would happen.  But here it is.  It’s knocking on our doors.  They have the stage. 

There is no way to determine how this current crisis turns out.  It may cycle back to peace and civility where criminals are caught, punished and able to gain earthy wisdom by the consequences of their crimes, or it may continue as it is going now, and evil will rule and destroy that which we once knew as good.  Earthly wisdom will never be able predict or give comfort, for it feeds on personal experience, and like I said, no one has experienced what we are now dealing with.  But, and this is a “good but,” wisdom from God knows the details with how to guide us, and if we will seek it and follow it, we will be able to navigate the future.

God is not panicking.  God is not despairing.  God’s family can have peace just as David did when he wrote this Psalm.  Let’s allow God’s word to comfort us with hope and anoint us with His wisdom, and to remind us that He is still on His throne.  I close with this exhortation from David:

“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,

over the man who carries out evil devices!

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!

Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

For the evildoers shall be cut off,

but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.

In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;

though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.

But the meek shall inherit the land

and delight themselves in abundant peace.

The wicked plots against the righteous

and gnashes his teeth at him,

but the Lord laughs at the wicked,

for he sees that his day is coming.

The wicked draw the sword and bend their bows

to bring down the poor and needy,

to slay those whose way is upright;

their sword shall enter their own heart,

and their bows shall be broken.

Better is the little that the righteous has

than the abundance of many wicked.

For the arms of the wicked shall be broken,”

but the LORD upholds the righteous.

Psalm 37:7-17 ESV