This is to be a year of revelation!

Brand new insight, a fresh perspective of that which we thought we already fully knew, a new depth of understanding.  All of the things that we need to be successful and to more fully reach our God-created potential.

Just one revelation from God can change so much in our lives!  A relationship that is falling apart, finances that never seem to make ends meet, healing that seems hopeless; people that you just can’t seem to ever see eye-to-eye with; whatever our need might be, just a single revelation from God can radically transform it!

A few things that we can clearly see from cover to cover of the Bible is that there is nothing too hard for our great God, that He intentionally chooses to cooperatively work in and through people, and that His ways are far, far from our ways.

Marching around silently for six days, then shouting on the seventh day isn’t recommended by the world’s smartest engineers as a method to crush a great wall surrounding a city.

A trumpet and an empty jar aren’t the primary weapons issued by the world’s strongest armies.

Optometrists aren’t trained to rub spit-formed mud into their patients eyes.

A financial consultant would never tell someone behind on their taxes to look in the mouth of a fish for the funds they need.

No caterer would order five loaves of bread and two fish to feed thousands of people.

A town with poisoned water killing people would not be told by a scientist to throw a bowl of salt in the spring sourcing it to purify it forever.

I could go on and on, but the entire point here is that all of these things historically, actually happened.  Each one resulted in success as a result of a revelation from God. Success was not achieved by worldly knowledge and wisdom, but by obeying a revelation from God that made absolutely no earthly sense. 

They were also not a permanent pattern to follow.  I’m sure that Peter checked hundreds of fish mouths after pulling that 4 drachma coin for the temple tax out of one, but found not a single one.  It had everything to do with obediently doing what God said to do when He said to do it and how He said to do it.  Only in that place was success found.

Proverbs 3:5-6

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight

All of these events were recorded to reveal the limits of our understanding and the limitlessness of God’s knowledge.  As He stated it:

Isaiah 55:8-9

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

It is only through relationship with Him that we can receive His revelation and only if we humble ourselves that we can excel beyond the limitations of our own thoughts and ways.  As far as the humility part is concerned, Paul reminds us that most of us don’t have that far to bow intellectually…

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

So often, we over-complicate things.  We exist because God created us; knitting us together in our mother’s womb.  Then, we begin to think that we are something and know best who we are and why we exist.  We live according to our own flesh.