Hearing His Voice #109

This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans.

1 Corinthians 1:25

Scripture makes a clear distinction between God’s wisdom and our own. In fact, God’s wisdom often appears foolish, as Paul points out in referring to the Cross. And human wisdom is often nothing more than foolishness in the eyes of God. Even scriptural wisdom—the maxims in Proverbs that tell us how the world normally works, for example—doesn’t apply across the board. What human would have advised Moses to go on an apparent suicide mission into Pharaoh’s courts? Or endorsed Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute? Or recommended Joshua’s circles around Jericho as a viable military strategy? No, God often gives us apparent folly to see if we’ll accept it as wisdom, and He often foils the best of our wisdom in order to show Himself wiser.

So when someone advises us to “do what’s wise” or to take a live-by-principles approach to life—even when those principles are derived from Scripture—we must insist on the need to hear God’s voice, even if He gives us surprising, counterintuitive direction. We may be called fools by many, but the best wisdom comes from hearing God, following Him, and living according to His direction. Eternity will reveal that holy fools were wise and that human reasoning was usually foolish. Only those who are willing to embrace God’s absurdities—which aren’t absurdities at all, from His perspective—are able to enjoy the adventure of a supernatural life.

Deep down inside, we don’t crave a relationship with wisdom or with principles. We crave a relationship with God—a personal, living Being who interacts with us daily. Sometimes His voice will seem wise to us, and sometimes it will seem foolish. If we live by our own standards of wisdom, we will receive the former and reject the latter. But all we really need to know is that we have heard. Then we can follow God anywhere—even if it seems absurd.

Father, I trust Your will—even when I don’t understand it, and even when others might think I’m foolish for following it. I embrace Your wisdom, no matter how it appears.