Proverbs 15:12

Mockers hate to be corrected, so they stay away from the wise.

Isolation.

Here it starts, in the heart. You don’t want to be corrected. You don’t want to be challenged. So you withdraw so as not to face truth. This is what we fight in our culture because it is so easy to hide in our very non-communal society.

I’ve seen this over the years. It is one of the easiest things to detect. It’s as simple as not seeing someone for a while at church, or group, or hearing from them on the phone. Most every time they are withdrawing and are not in a good place.

Isolation is the inevitable human reaction to being in a place of bad thinking and heart sickness. We do ourselves a double disfavor because YHWH created our brain to need both good thinking and joyful relationships.

In our left hemisphere of the brain is where we process correct and good thinking, and in the right hemisphere we grow in the context of joyful relationship- someone is glad to be with us. If we are healthy in only one of these areas, we are only half the person we could be, who God created us to be.

So when your thinking goes awry, and you get down in the dumps, you need someone to lift you up, ultimately God, yet He also works thru other people in some sort of community aspect. Therefore withdrawal in these times takes you even lower. Conversely, if we are abundant in joyful relationships with people with bad thinking and ungodly lifestyles, well, we know what that looks like-many people’s college and younger years I guess. Like maybe you belong to a swinger’s club and it’s a real tight knit community, but…you see what I’m saying.

John 6:40

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and trusts in Him may have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day.

Like those in the OT who had only to look upon the snake fastened to the pole to be healed, so we only have to look to Jesus fastened to the cross with the eyes of our heart, the gaze of our soul, and we will be healed in a way only He can perform.

We can live a life of peace and freedom only thru divine intervention.

There is no plan B.

Do I really trust in Jesus as God’s ultimate plan of mediation and salvation?

Do I look to Him for everything? Or do I find myself still trying to do much on my own? Striving to do that which I cannot do and which only comes thru divine action. [We’re not talking here of praying to God to supernaturally pick up my spoon and put cereal in my mouth. He has equipped me to do that myself (tho it’s only because of Him that I can), but anyway…]

There is the mystery of divine sovereignty. And I wonder if I have truly given myself up to that. To the God I believe to be infinitely good and who knows what He is doing.

Trust.

He says He desires my trust.

So this speaks to me that whenever I am worried or frustrated about something, especially with regard to people, that I am not ultimately trusting Him who has everything, who sees everything, who can do anything.

The Holy Spirit is telling me, “You’re feeling responsibility to make happen what only I can make happen. You just do your portion. Rest in the work I give you to do. Listen to Me and only to those people who listen to Me. One tiny but genuine amount of faith is the most powerful action in the universe, because that is how I work, thru your faith.”

How many times I have prayed in earnest about something, consistently over time, believing God would act, and I witnessed His powerful action. This is the inimitable time saver and stress reliever. Amen.