FOOLISH WISDOM

So last week, I left some people wondering if they should go and get a flying broom and a pointed hat to make their art of witchcraft complete😂 [Read it here if you missed it]. Just to be clear though, no believer is a witch😁 [Before you start second-guessing yourself😂]. The scripture just likens your rebellion to the sin of witchcraft. But the Lord is still crazy about you, and He has provided a way out of rebellion.

In Romans 12:2 [NLT], Paul insists:

Do not copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Paul himself taught Titus in Chapter 3:5 that the Lord ‘saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit’. But when he wrote to the Romans, he instructed them to renew their minds. And he taught them exactly how to. I’ll come back to this in a jiffy.😉

James explained the expected lifestyle of believers in his writing to the 12 dispersed tribes. He talks about trials and temptations, practical Christian living, faith, speech, fighting, criticism, patience, advice for rich people and prayer. In Chapter 3, he talks about two types of wisdom – earthly, sensual, devilish wisdom on the one hand, and wisdom from above on the other [v. 15]. If you’ve done a bit of life, you know by now that this world has its systems and its way of thinking. It’s a system that promotes self; everyone else can go to hell. It’s a system that boasts in the ‘rightness’ [NOT righteousness] of self, and elevates a person’s personal knowledge and experience over what the owner of this world and all that is in it says about them. Before it gets too abstract, let me show you what I mean.

‘Nobody can tell me how to live my life. It’s MY life.’ Sounds familiar? ‘But if a person chooses to be homosexual, how does it affect you? They were born like that, and they do no harm to society, so what’s your problem?’ ‘We’re in the 21^st century. Submission does not mean the same thing as it did when the Bible was written.’🤦‍♀️ ‘As for me, if you cross me, I’ll tell you my piece of mind! I don’t fear anybody.’ ‘How can you buy a car without test-driving? What if you’re sexually incompatible? Have sex with him/her before you marry him/her!’ ‘God knows your heart. Church is full of hypocrites. The pastor too is only interested in your money.’  This next one makes me laugh in dollars 👉🏽 ‘Only poor people have witches in their families’. 😂

These are a few examples of full-blown earthly wisdom that purport to be wiser than the God who gives them breath. Here’s why the Spirit of God said through Paul to renew your mind:

1. There is a behaviour/thinking/way of life of this world. Of course, it’s a norm, it’s normal; acceptable if you belong to this world.
2. But you do not belong to this world.

Jesus said in John 15:19 👉🏽 ‘…you are no longer part of the world, because I chose you to come out of the world…’

• But because you lived in this world before He called you, GOD MUST TRANSFORM YOUR THINKING!
• It is only in this way that you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect – Romans 12:2

SO HOW DO YOU RENEW YOUR MIND?

1 Corinthians 3:18 – 19 hits the nail on the head:

‘Stop deceiving yourself. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.’ [NLT]

The Message Bible puts it this way:

‘Don’t fool yourself. Don’t think that you can be wise merely by being up-to-date with the times. Be God’s fool—that’s the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid.‘

Find out what God says about everything! Let it brainwash you, especially for those things which your natural inclination is to disagree with!

Choose to believe the wisdom of God’s Word over the supposed enlightenment that your education has brought you.

Choose to believe that if God instructed it, then the reality of human beings’ selfish perversion can distort it, but that deviation does not rule out God’s ultimate authority over your life as a believer.

Choose to be conscious of how limited your understanding of the world really is, in that we expect to be the wisest authority on the best workings of a world which is only three-dimensional when the universe is ten-dimensional.

Choose to resist the temptation to think that because you do not agree with or understand a way of life that the Lord has instructed you to live makes it foolish or outmoded and okay to disobey it.

Choose to be a fool in the eyes of the world if it means living by an understanding of what God says about the things your fellow humans [who also are limited in their understanding] have purported to be better authorities in.

This is what renewal of mind is. It is literally being brainwashed by God, at the pain of seeming stupid to the world, and sometimes, even to yourself! As always…

Love, 

Rad!