Pray this prayer over and over for rest and revelation. Put it to memory.
God’s Word about hypocrisy is true, Luke 12:1-3. The truth always comes out. And today’s headlines prove God true. It’s hard not to marvel at salacious secrets being disclosed, the hidden being made known, private texts sent on government cell phones being read openly on the news, whispers in inner rooms proclaimed on the world wide web.
Our foolish choices will find us out. To the pure God shows himself pure, but to the devious He shows himself shrewd, Psalm 18:26. He sees those digging a hole for someone else, they themselves will fall into it, the trouble they cause recoils on themselves, Psalm 7:14-16.
The beautiful thing about it is that we can look up from the bottom of that pit and cry for mercy. He hears that cry and will lift us from our pit. We will have some consequences from the mess we made, but with the LORD as our ally, he promises to resurrect and author a new beginning filled with His grace. He has compassion on those who fear him, Psalm 103:11-13.
Psalm 40:2- He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
We need a spirit of wisdom to protect ourselves from ourselves. I needed it desperately. God had me memorize and pray Isaiah 11:2-3 over myself as a new Christian. I’ve been praying it ever since and He has provided His Spirit repeatedly at critical times. We need to daily rely on His Spirit. Our head-lines (our thoughts and bent towards wrong desire) always have been and will continue to be about sin. If the investigative reporter came into each inner world, what would the juicy details be? It’s horrifying to consider our sin splashed for the world to see. We need God’s Spirit every day to turn us away from sin.
Sin, that 3 letter word that in our time has become a dirty word, a word that turns people off, shuts down conversation, and garners you a narrowing gaze of disapproval if you dare call sin out as sin. It’s much more acceptable to say “Oh my gosh, can you believe these headlines?” Easier to try to get a chuckle by saying, “Watching the news is like watching a bad soap opera.”
Can you imagine if news stations always started out saying “and now for today’s most salacious stories of sin”. We’d turn it off. We prefer to label it as “news”.
That news is not God’s news. He has good news to give but in wisdom has sometimes used reverse psychology. He had a prophet named Isaiah give bad news. God let him know upfront, his words were to be of doom and gloom, see Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah was to tell people to be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. He was to go out and tell people to listen to God but ignore Him, go ahead and look at His truth don’t understand it. He wasn’t to just say it once; but until cities lied in ruin and houses left deserted and the land forsaken. Jesus referenced that passage in Isaiah 6 as explanation for why he hid his messages in parables, Matthew 13:13.
It’s a different way I suppose if we were to start saying a message similar to Isaiah’s, “I hope you keep your ears closed to God, please continue to ignore him, otherwise you will be healed.” Yes it would be quite different to tell people “I am going to keep hidden from you a great secret that will save your life.” Would people be more receptive? More curious? I do wonder. After all, we frequently want what we can’t have.
But bad news is not God’s preferred way. He has Good News in Christ. And there is beautiful language from Isaiah 11:1-3 about Jesus. It is His Spirit you can ask for, that He rest on you.
Whether believer or unbeliever, may you ask for God’s Spirit to rest on you to give you wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might and a healthy fear of the LORD. Jesus is good news and His news will be revealed by His Spirit resting on you and entering your mind and heart. Try praying it repeatedly for yourself, try for 5-10 times to put it to memory. Then pray it for your loved one. Pray it for those in today’s headlines. Pray it for the President. Pray it for the nations. Pray for God’s message of mercy, grace, and truth to come! God doesn’t want our sin openly disclosed before all. He has made a way out, to remove it as far as east is from the west; it is available to those who fear him, Psalm 103:11-13.
