It’s What You Know That Counts
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 NASB
Acknowledge– I’m not sure this particular rendition of yādaʿ really captures what we need to know (ah, a pun). yādaʿ is the verb translated “acknowledge,” but “acknowledge” seems too weak. After all, we can acknowledge that the man in the White House is the President, but that doesn’t mean we trust him or follow his directions. Acknowledge is about admitting or accepting, but that’s not the issue here. I can admit or accept that God should be trusted, that I should lean on Him, that He knows best and He wants to make my paths straight. I can acknowledge all that—and still miss the point. It’s not about admitting or accepting. It’s about trusting, and in Hebrew this means living, not just thinking. In order to trust God, I have to first surrender my own cognitive protective shell. I can think all the right things, and still be lost. Why? Because surrender is waiting on God rather than running to the protection of the yetzer ha’ra. This is more than a rational decision. You and I can read all these words and agree with them, but it won’t make any real difference until we feel them. Our issues are not rational ones. They are emotional and it is in the emotional involvement with God that we find relief.
“To find my own freedom, I must first grasp the intimacy of God’s involvement in my struggle. God is present to me in my addiction. I may not feel like He is there. After all, the bestial logic closes my awareness to anything but the instinctual pathway of my disease. But my feelings are lying. God is there even in that moment of my most shameful addictive behavior, even when I wish myself to be somehow removed from the actions I am performing. God is there because He says He will be and He does not lie. The addictive attack of the Beast will marshal my own consciousness to convince me that no one could witness what I do and stomach it. But this is not true. God sees it all, knows it all, feels it all. And He still loves me. It is true that God hates my sinful addictive union with the Beast. But so do I. The Beast is bent on taking the good that I am and turning me into evil. And God agrees with my desire for true freedom. In the union that I cannot break, the union that makes me feel the Beast’s breath on my neck, God still loves me.”[1]
Let’s face it. No one really knows everything about us. Except God, of course. But we don’t actually invite Him to know everything. We pretend, for the sake of emotional protection, that there are some things no one should know, and it is just this tiny little alteration that prevents us from trusting God. Oh, we can acknowledge that He knows, but that still insulates us from the intimacy He shares with us, and we won’t find that intimacy we so desperately desire until we are willing to invite Him to really know all that we know about who we are. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? But you and I both know it’s not. Why? Because it’s not a rational choice. It’s an emotional one—and like most Greeks, emotions scare us to death. Trust is a very frightening thing. It is, however, essential for growth. So the Hebrew text confronts us, not with acknowledgement, but with the full force of yādaʿ, “know” in its most comprehensive sense. “Know” like no one ever before has known you. “Know” like your life depends on it, because it does.
Topical Index: trust, acknowledge, emotions, yādaʿ, Proverbs 3:5-6
When Adam and Eve headed into the bushes they took us with them (epigenetically, too: LOL) and so we all learned bush behavior: hide from life (and its Giver) through fabricated personalities, denial, altered states of reality (addictions are all bushes), false religions (which are all occultic because they posit something other than God as if it were God), social structures (which mimic the Body without its Head), etc; lie about who is responsible, and try to cover ourselves with pieces of those bushes instead of the white robes of righteousness. I think we all do it because we all believe, like our first parents, in whatever confirms our bush paradigm.
Instead of trust in God, which is faith in the future, we, through shame and blame and fear ABOUT that future, get shoved around by what has already been because we are walking in the death (which is the power of the past over us) of the flesh without its most important Part: the Holy Spirit. No present (life) possible.
So I have started trying to do something new. I admit that my addictions are all crutches or attempts to access either love or the knowledge about love: I acknowledge (admit) that I am looking for love in all the wrong places. This is shameful behavior, and, historically, I have tried to pretend that I am doing it ‘by myself’ without taking God with me. I decided that was wrong, because without Him not only can I cannot actually get love or see the truth about love, but I also have no defense: I am easy pickings for highway robbers (of my time, energy, etc.). So I have started taking Him with me in my addiction areas. I pray that He will love me and show me how to love and forgive myself and others and Him right smack in the middle of my bushes: I pray that He will open my eyes to see the lies about love I am falling for as well as show me the ram in the thicket – a better way to get love in those places. I ask Him to heal the hurt that sends me into those bushes. Before, I went into the bushes ‘alone’, and did all the above AFTER THE FACT. Now, because I know more about God and His love than I used to, I have started thinking perhaps I can trust Him in the middle of my alienation, instead of thinking I have to go it alone without Him. This is because I am tired of attempting to quit addictive behavior all by myself, so I am guess-and-checking a new way to turn when I hit that brick wall. I will keep y’all informed of developments. Reporting from the front: this is Laurita. Back to you.
Psalm 139 fits so well in here. Thank you Laurita, for exposing your ”earth”. He knows our frame he remembers that we are but dust !
Our monstrous weaknesses and His extravagant love.
This is a powerful TW that I need to “hear.”
Though He might have us in Egypt for a time, we can rejoice in the verse given to us in Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Perhaps those times in the desert are His way of inviting us to invite Him to “know” us more fully…and so we can know ourselves more fully in the process.
Does he have us in Egypt or do we have us in Egypt …..
Hmmm…perhaps “yes” to both questions?
Keeping that raw “knowing” fresh in our being doing whatever it takes to keep it fresh because “He is our Life”.
Being totally naked.
Internally naked, that is.
Total exposure. Everything you know about yourself
that you want NO ONE else to know, is what we must
openly admit to God with all our heart. Sure, He already
knows it, but until WE fess up, we won’t live in His life
for us. It’s our biggest missing step. And it ain’t easy.
I believe this is what Nicodemus discussed with Yeshua
in the dark of the night, lest anyone could see. “You should
not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ” Jn 3:7
We must turn to trust God’s Spirit to do what we can’t.
He is the door and the giver of the gift of trust to us to walk
through it . . . to new life.
New eternal life while we’re still here.
It’s ours to live.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to contemplate if “born again” puts us back at expulsion from the Garden. Oh, yes, and BTW, the Greek text actually doesn’t say, “born again.”
Maybe it’s more like, “come, follow me “. ?
Yes, the Greek text implies “being born from above” or
being born from a higher place.”
Either way, Nicodemus arrived to see Yeshua with a different
knowing apparatus. Earlier in John’s gospel Yeshua referred
to “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or
a husband’s will, but born of God.” Were the words clear?
Yeshua had to open Nicodemus’ eyes. He began in the natural
saying “unless he is born of water and the Spirit”, to assure Nic
that both are from above and yet the kingdom’s entrance requires
the spirit’s leading while here on earth. In short, Nic is told it happens
as God wills and man desires. The vast move from human will to the
desiring of the divine will is at hand. It’s a tremendous transformation
as we humans begin to be partakers as children of God. Mere words
are easy to misunderstand. But there’s no mistaking His Spirit!