ACKNOWLEDGE HIM

Saturday 28 December

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV).

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, And whose hope is the LORD. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NKJV)

As we get ready for the closing of this year, you are probably already thinking about and planning out what the new year will hold. Maybe you have a goal to be healthier, wealthier or wiser. Maybe it’s all three. There is always a sense of hope and possibility of ‘what could be’ and it is important to go in with a sense of positivity.

In the midst of all this however we need to ask a simple question. What will we do differently or better even, to bridge the gap between our expectations and our outcomes?

One of such, if not the most crucial thing we can do, is make every decision from the basis of truth and not our feelings.

The prophet Isaiah speaking of Jesus said something instructive.

‘And shall make Him of quick understanding, and His delight shall be in the reverential and obedient fear of the Lord. And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, neither decide by the hearing of His ears;’ Isaiah 11:3

When we think about how Jesus the man lived, he always seemed to be in sync with the Father’s will at any given time and in any given situation. Many believe that this was because he was God in the flesh. The reality is though that he laid down everything that made Him God when he stepped down to become man.

In other words, he had no special advantage except for the Holy Spirit. It was his time that he spent in prayer and fellowship with the Father that allowed him to fulfil Isaiah’s prophecy and that was an act of his will as a free moral agent.

It’s the same for us today. Our confidence and assurance to be in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, comes from our ability to trust in the Lord and ‘acknowledge Him in all our ways’.

What does this mean in practice?

The word acknowledge is ‘nakar’ in Hebrew means to be acquainted with, care for, respect and have reverence for. The Greek transliteration is the word ‘epiginosko’ and it means to recognise and to know fully.

Believers live in two worlds at the same time. One in the natural and one in the Spirit. If we are not in tune with the heavenly aspect of our lives then the ‘sight of our eyes’ and the ‘hearing of our ears’ may drown out the frequency of God’s still small voice that is always speaking to us through His Word and being confirmed to us by the inner witness of His Spirit.

My encouragement to you today is never make any plans or decisions for the coming year before consulting with the Holy Spirit. He is the one who is able to do ‘exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think, according to the power that works in us’.

In all your ways, in every decision, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths’.

APPLICATION

Make up your mind that you will not make any major decisions in your life without the counsel of the Word of God and the confirmation of the Word by the Holy Spirit to minimise mistakes and maximise your goals.