New Morning Mercies #120

Today you will be tempted to buy into the delusion that you’re smarter than God, that your way is better than his.

It is one of the functional contradictions of sin. Even though sin somehow, some way reduces us all to fools, at the very same time it also convinces us that we are smarter than God. While we name ourselves as wise, we look at things that God does or things that he calls us to do as utterly foolish. How many people have said, “How could you ever worship a God who would _____?” How many people have wondered, “If God really loved me, why would he _____?” How many people have said, “I don’t see what’s so wrong with a little _____”? How many have asked, “Is _____ really that bad?” We really do have the ability to convince ourselves that we know what’s best and that we really don’t need wisdom greater than our own. I am convinced that most of us do this far more often than we think. We minimize the danger of what God calls dangerous, we question the need for the boundaries that God has set for us, and, in the face of our own sin, we argue that it’s not so bad after all. Every day in some situation or relationship, we are tempted to think that we are smarter than God.

Without the rescue of God’s grace, we are all wise fools heading for danger we simply don’t see. So we eat more than we should while denying the physical, empirical evidence of our foolishness. We spend ourselves into hopeless debt and are surprised when we can no longer pay our bills. We live selfishly and judgmentally in relationships and then wonder why so much tension and distance exist between us. That’s why Paul says, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25). Paul is saying that if it were possible for God to be foolish, his most foolish moment would be infinitely wiser than our wisest moment. How humbling!

So where are you tempted to tell yourself that you’re wiser than God? Where do you argue that your plan for you is better than his? Where do you lay out the logic to yourself that it makes sense to step over one of his boundaries? Where are you tempted to name sin as something less than sin? Where do you tell yourself that you don’t really need grace? What do you call wise that God says is foolish, or foolish that God says is wise? Where do you, like Adam and Eve, accept the illogic that there may be a better way in life than God’s way? Where do you take life into your own hands so that you can have it your way? Confess the utter foolishness of ever thinking that you’re smarter than God, and run to his wisdom. Pray once more that the One who is the definition of what is wise would by grace make you wise, that is, a person who loves God’s wisdom more than you love your own.

For further study and encouragement: Job 40