Monday,
February 13, 2023
If you need wisdom, ask our generous
God, and he will give it to you. He will
not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure
that your faith is in God alone. Do not
waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea
that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should
not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their
loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in
everything they do. James 1:5-8
When it comes to difficult choices which
harbor a nagging conflict, a strong pull on two (or more) sides, how can you be
sure? King Solomon had that
on a scale none of us would ever want.
Two women were hauled before the king for a decision. The infant child of one of them had died, and
she was claiming it wasn’t hers, but the other woman’s, who was claiming it as
her own. What to do? It’s a very familiar passage in 1 Kings 3.
Solomon calls for a sword and declares the child must be cut in two. The real mother of the child is
horror-stricken, and pleads for the child’s life…don’t kill the child…she
can have him. Only the real
mother would give her child to another, if it meant life for the baby.
End of story.
But what of the backstory that
explains how Solomon knew what to do?
The story before the story of the women with a dilemma, helps us
understand how the king, with a child’s life in his hands, and an unknowable
fact to be decided, uncovered truth.
It’s found in the prayer of a young, new king who felt overwhelmed:
“Now, O Lord my God, you
have made me king instead of my father, David, but I am like a little child who
doesn’t know his way around. And here I am in the midst
of your own chosen people, a nation so great and numerous they cannot be
counted! Give me an understanding heart so that I can
govern your people well and know the difference between right and wrong. For who by himself is able to govern this
great people of yours?” The
Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for wisdom. So
God replied, “Because you have asked for wisdom in governing my people with
justice and have not asked for a long life or wealth or the death of your
enemies—I will give you what you asked for! I will give you a wise and understanding heart
such as no one else has had or ever will have! 1 Kings
3:7-12
Recognizing his calling was too
great, too demanding, and too important for relying only on his own strength,
Solomon called on God to bless him with an understanding heart. God responded to the open-mind and heart,
with blessings of wisdom and great resources.
He does that a lot!
For You Today
Consider the warning of James, when
you contemplate praying like Solomon for wisdom and understanding…you need not
be certain about a lot of decisions you’ll need to make in
life, but you must certainly be sure about the ONE whom
you will trust to lead you through all of them.
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Divided Mind and Difficult Choices
Images: Title via Wikimedia Commons Images without
citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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