Insight

“In all wisdom and insight, He has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention”  Ephesians 1:8-9

Insight – My friend Terry and his family survived hurricane Ivan as it passed over Grand Cayman where they live.  Their house was destroyed by 165 mile an hour winds and an ocean swell than covered the entire island in four feet of seawater.  When they returned to their home to see the damage, the ceilings collapsed, the salt water and sewage covering everything, their possessions floating in the muck, they were devastated.  But ten-year-old Holly saw something else.  She looked into her bedroom and said, “There’s nothing in here that I need”.  The insight of a child penetrating the trauma of life.  “Nothing that I need”.  She was right.  She was alive.  Her family was alive.  All that was lost could never compare with what she still had. 

Insight, that gift of seeing the depth of reality, is often found in the mouths of children.  They have not yet unlearned the deepest truths of life.  They have not yet become mired in our false expectations and delusions. 

The Greek word phroneo is about our frame of mind.  It’s about the way that we view the world.  It’s the same word used by Paul in Philippians 2:5 where we are exhorted to have the “mind of Christ”.  Godly insight sees the world from God’s perspective.  And from God’s perspective, a lot of our attachments just don’t make much sense. 

However, don’t think that godly insight is all a mental mindset.  Phroneo encompasses the will and the emotions.  It is about turning your entire personality over to God’s agenda.  It’s not just what you think.  It’s what you choose and how you feel.

“There’s nothing here that I need” is more than a frame of mind.  It is a decision of the will and an emotional perspective.  That’s the kind of mindset that God wants.  The insight to attach ourselves to His agenda in word, thought and deed.

Now we see that God combines right relationship behavior (wisdom) with right frame of mind decisions and emotions.  If this is your reality, don’t you suppose that the mystery of God’s will would be pretty obvious to you?  Maybe the reason we struggle so much to know what God has in mind is that we are disobedient on some point and we have not deliberately adopted the God perspective frame of mind.

“There’s nothing here that I need” is incredibly perceptive.  Makes me wish I’d said it.  My task is to live it, just like ten-year-old Holly.