Selfish Intelect vs. God's Love

Man guys, it's been over a month! Are any of you feeling kind of burnt out right now? I sure am. I'm really hoping that this here lesson will lift us up. Hopefully I won't bring you down and make you start feeling sad or anything.

This afternoon I've been feeling, just, really burnt out (like I already said). I had one of those afternoons where you seem to be driving around a whole lot, but never getting anywhere. I was going somewhere, but the plans kept changing as I was on my way, or the directions I got were just plain bad, so I ended up driving in circles for awhile. Over all -- I was pretty frustrated. When I went to church tonight I just wasn't in the mood. The worship just really wasn't doing it for me. The lesson tonight just really didn't say anything to me. The people around weren't cheering me up any. -- And then I stopped and realized what all had just happened. Let's back up a second. Those past few sentences: "I, I, me, me, me..."

Remember the last Ecclesiastes lesson I wrote? It was awhile back. All the way back to September 17th. I talked a lot about wisdom. What real wisdom is. Who has any hope for wisdom. All that sort of stuff. Lately I've been reading a lot of 1 Corinthians and when I read chapter 1 it was so in sync with what all that last Ecclesiastes lesson was trying to say.

Christ sent me to preach the Good News -- but not with clever speeches and high-sounding ideas, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power. (1:17)

So, starting in verse 17 Paul has already said that God is not speaking to us through really smart words and ideas, but through very simple ways. Let's keep reading in verse 19:

As the Scriptures say, "I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas." So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world's brilliant debaters? God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never find him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save all who believe. (1:19-21)

This, to me, seems like the answer that we're looking for. Although the answer isn't very satisfying. Basically, what I get out of that is that no matter how hard we try to understand God there's no way that we can. "...the world would never find him through human wisdom..." I feel like so often we spend our time sitting there discussing God as though he's some sort of math equation that we can solve if only we can find the right formula that we forget the basic, most important part of Christianity. Greg and I had sort of a realization of this at our church's fall retreat where we watched a segment from the "Passion of Christ." It was so sad that even though we spend so much time together talking about and discussing God it had been so long since we had spent any thought on Christ on the cross, the only reason why we have any access to God. We both felt really guilty and cried together on the inside.

Looking back at those verses from 1 Corinthians we know that God doesn't work through discussion of human reason and wisdom and thought. God doesn't present himself in fancy speeches and really smart ideas, because then the smart people telling us those things would get the glory instead of God and instead of Christ on the cross. (vs. 17)

So, I think about tonight and the way that church just didn't do it for me. And I think about how it has everything to do with my attitude and how I approach worship. Tonight I showed up with this really selfish "make-me-feel-better" attitude and I was probably hoping for some sort of fancy intellectual realization. So tonight I take away that I really need to let go of my selfish thought and my human wisdom. The only things that can help me understand God is my heart and His love.