Muddling Wisdom
Baby Girl,
You’re doing it again. You are gathering so much data that the idea of organizing it is overwhelming you.
Do you remember how I had you delete 7,000 pictures from your phone - four year’s worth of pictures - in one night? Remember how anxious you felt when I asked you to do it, the fit your mind threw as you did, and the peace you felt when it was over?
Looking back, do you regret it?
No.
Not even a little?
You had 1,718 contacts in your phone and, because they were there, you felt responsible to maintain connection with them - even though some were only intended to be in your life for a season. When I asked you to delete almost all your contacts, leaving only your immediate family, your doctors, your inner circle of friends, and whoever you needed because you parent your daughters, you wanted to throw up. You bargained with Me. You asked Me to make exceptions. Eventually, you conceded.
It took you about five hours over several days to painstakingly and individually delete each of these contacts. I told you if they were meant to be in your phone, they would come back to you. Some of them have. The ones who contact you WANT to be in your phone.
Do you regret this act of obedience?
No.
How many times have you had an impulse to send something to someone but didn’t have their number, so you were forced to resist the impulse? A lot, right? Those people didn’t ask you to send them anything.
Over the years, when you have sent things you intended to encourage others with, some of it has landed on parched ground and been welcome rain; some people you sent stuff to responded when you sent things simply to be courteous; and others simply ignored you hoping you’d get the point - but you are not good at subtle social cues. You’re getting better, but we still have a ways to go.
I hate to bring up your Daylio journal app because we both know that was a hard ask. You depended on that app to track your work, your day-to-day interactions with people, and your thoughts and feelings. Using the app, you could effortlessly go back in time and remember even small details of your life with a quick keyword search. It was handy but unnecessary. Having access to that information, rather than quieting your mind, actually kept it buzzing.
You have had multiple occasions where you wished you could refer to what was deleted.
Let Me ask you this: did the world end when you did not have the information you wanted to look up? No. You simply gave Me your grumpy, squinty-eyed face and moved on with your life. I can handle that face. It’s kind of cute… like when your daughter would make that face as a toddler and say, “no pasketi!” when she didn’t want spaghetti for dinner. She was going to eat the spaghetti but you couldn’t help but grin at her defiant attempt to change your mind.
Here’s what I see you doing now: you are not jotting down a few notes here and there when you listen to other pastors speak. You have been almost transcribing word for word with enough detail that you could read your notes and preach the message verbatim on your own. When I talked to you about your education, I told you to take brief bullet point notes and I gave you the idea of small spiral notecards to remind you to keep it short. Using 35 index cards to take notes on a 27-minute video is NOT keeping it short.
When you went to Nashville, how many full pages of notes did you take with you?
Eleven.
How many times did you pick those papers up to preach?
I will take your silence and that crooked smile as you remember what happened: I had a different plan in mind.
You are working on writing your testimony that is over a month away. Have you noticed what a trainwreck your efforts have been?
Have you directly asked for My involvement in writing your testimony?
Are you still unaware that the gifts I have given you when exercised carnally, apart from My purpose and power, lack sophistication and, quite frankly, just read like a monotone lecture on the practical use of the quadratic equation?
Exactly. I love that you looked it up to see if that’s actually a thing! Even what they say the quadratic equation does makes no sense to you - that’s how people feel when they listen to you speak from your NATURAL mind about the things of God.
One sentence anointed by Me can change a life. One hour of well-thought-out truth which is not anointed will come to nothing.
Do not write your testimony. Meditate on what I have done in your life.
Don’t make lists of your past sins and accomplishments, how you’ve been changed, who I put in your life to accomplish that change, the path you took to get where you are, or even what you’ve learned. If you want to talk to Me about your testimony, talk to Me in your prayer journal and that is all.
Back to those notecards and these Word documents - when did I ask you to stockpile resources so that you could be prepared to teach My Word?
You are not to teach anything that I don’t ask you to teach, and I will not ask you to teach anything that your mind and spirit are not so full of that it spills out effortlessly.
I am going to ask you to let go of one more crutch. Burn your little notecards. Everything but the one I gave you titled Seminary Syllabus.
Your immediate reaction was to ask Me if you can pull out the important concepts you’ve taken notes on. No. All means all.
When you explain that the power of Holy Spirit was always in you but you were unaware, what do you tell people? You tell them that Scripture says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” and then you tell them the story of the pastor who didn’t know there was a button on his remote to auto-start his car from inside his house in the winter.
The concepts you need to learn hit you as profound when you hear them. When I told you to take brief notes - bullet points - it was not to transcribe entire messages in bullet points but to simply make note of perspective-shifting thoughts.
You have been stressed out about how to keep track of and organize everything we are doing together and everything you’re learning. You were preparing your stack of notecards for a friend who offered to type them all up for you.
Listen. To. Me. Quit coming up with big ideas. Quit seeking advice on how to compile everything you are gathering.
You are incredibly wise. Your wisdom is growing at an alarming rate because you are becoming fully surrendered and you’re trying to make note of every profound thing My Spirit enlightens you on. STOP.
You. Can’t. Stop. Trying. You trying to capture all the wisdom I’m making available to you is like you thinking you can catch all the fish in Ceasar’s Creek Lake. You. Can’t.
Don’t muddle My Wisdom with a bunch of meaningless knowledge.
LOVE you,
Daddy
1 Corinthians 1:27-29
