Open your Bible, please, to Proverbs chapter 2. We're in the early stages of a series of studies that we're calling You Asked For It. I'm responding to requests for messages on various topics and sometimes passages of scripture. We received one request that is requiring three messages to complete and started last week and will continue both this morning, also during our adult Sunday school class will discuss the passages. We'll look at this morning and then complete this this evening and while we're talking about the u.s. for its series the last request that I received was just about a week ago and That was a reminder to me that the opportunity is not over you can still submit requests I've got a pretty good list. I think I counted up about 29 different requests and And it's going to be a challenge to get through them all, but I'm going to do my best throughout the summer. If you would still like to submit a request, I'll still consider a few others as well. This morning in Proverbs chapter 2, this will be one of several passages we'll look at this morning. And as we read through this, you can see that there is a very close connection in this passage between God's word, God's wisdom, and what we need to make decisions in discerning and accomplishing God's will. Proverbs 2, we're going to read the first nine verses of this chapter. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding. Yea, if thou cryest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom. Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous. He's a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgment and equity, yea, every good path." That'll be our goal this morning, to understand the path that God has for us. A common question is, how do I know God's will for my life? And scripture makes that clear. We'll look at this and some other verses this morning that can provide, I think, not only answers to questions, but relief from anxiety in searching to accomplish God's will. Many years ago, I faced a very difficult decision. Out of all the girls I knew, Which one was I going to marry? Now, that was a hard decision. And I insist that I did have some choices. There actually were several as I was going through the dating years. I could just tell in their eyes, if I had said, will you, they would have said yes. But I didn't want to. And so I didn't ask and did not pursue the relationship. There were opportunities. There were choices. Actually, through that process, the hard part wasn't deciding which ones to say no to. The difficulty was out of those that were really possibilities, which one to choose. None of us would want to make choices like that in our own wisdom. And there are many such choices. We saw last week in our study of God's Word that God controls all things. But we still have to make decisions. We still have choices to make. Yes, we don't find out God's will, His sovereign will, until it happens. But we have to make choices before that. How do we make decisions on such matters, particularly those major decisions of life that will affect us for the rest of our lives? Where you're going to live? What you're going to do with your life? With whom will you do it? Those are huge decisions. But on top of that, we have many other, we would consider, lesser decisions that also require us to make choices We need help with those as well. The fact is we are inadequate to make the choices of life based on our own perspective, our own comprehension, our own wisdom. Today we're going to look at some passages that reveal to us that we don't have to. We do not have to make decisions in our own wisdom. God offers us, as we'll see in these passages, God offers us the grace that we need that can enable us to choose what is best. In every instance, we can choose what is best, what is right. What that requires is that we trust God in the process. Last week we saw that our responsibility is to submit to God. Whatever He commands us in His Word, we must be willing to do, and to submit to His sovereign will as well. Whatever He brings about in our lives, now in addition to that, whatever choice we have to make, to seek His wisdom as He has prescribed for us in His Word, and then trust Him for the result. We're gonna start this morning in Proverbs chapter two, passage we read earlier in the service. There are two things that God provides for us that we'll see this morning that enables, that those two things together enable us to choose what is best. The first is that He grants wisdom. God offers to each one of us, every day we live, the wisdom to make right choices. And you can receive that wisdom. It's what He's offering here in Proverbs chapter 2. In the first five verses, there's a responsibility though. God is offering the wisdom. He holds it out to us. You have to want it. You have to strive to know God's Word because God has included His wisdom in His Word. There's a direct link between making right choices and knowing what God's Word says. Not that God's Word records for us the answers that tell us the right choice to make, as if you're going to find where you're supposed to live. Some of the places that are available to us in our day are not recorded in the Bible. It's place names. But your wisdom to know where to go Your wisdom to know whom you should marry and what you should do and all the other decisions of life, wisdom to make those right decisions, is directly linked to your striving to discern God's Word. So we see in these first five verses, striving to know God's Word is our responsibility. Solomon here says to his son, and thus to all of us, my son, if thou wilt receive my words, there's the key, receive what God has said, and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding. Yea, if thou cryest after knowledge, in the sense of wanting it and asking for it with earnestness, and liftest up thy voice for understanding, asking God to grant it. If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou know the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. See, God has hidden His wisdom in the pages of His Word. He has hidden it there as precious wisdom, and He expects us to be seeking it earnestly. For someone to say, I want to have wisdom to make right decisions and to be spending no time in God's Word, is by their action showing that their attitude is wrong. that their ambition is not God's wisdom, their ambition is simply comfort, convenience, and having their own way. Someone who really wants God's help to make right choices must be spending time in God's Word, to be seeking it earnestly, as if this was filled with hidden treasure, because it is filled with hidden treasure. And God rewards those with treasure. who search for it earnestly. So strive to know God's Word. Expect that God is going to answer your striving with the wisdom that you need to make choices. It is not just knowledge of God's Word that God expects, though. In order to receive God's wisdom, it's not just, help me know what you have said, but the next essential step, which we'll see in verses six through nine, Help me to do what you have said. It's obedience to God's word that results in true wisdom. And God here in this passage, we'll see, reserves wisdom for those who do right and who are determined to walk with God. Verse six. For the Lord giveth wisdom. It is a gift he has to bestow, but he bestows it on a select group. The Lord giveth wisdom. Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous. Who are the righteous? They are the ones who strive to do what is right. He layeth up wisdom for them. He is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. I said last week I like to use the phrase walking with God to describe those who are fulfilling God's moral will. What's God's moral will? It's everything He has commanded in His Word. And the one who is striving to do that, and of course we can only do that in dependence upon God's grace, but the one striving to do that is essentially walking with God. And in this passage, we see that God knows who those individuals are. The ones that are seeking to know and obey His Word are the ones who are walking uprightly. And it's for those that God has wisdom stored up, that He is ready to dispense, to distribute at every time of need, at every new decision. Those are the ones that have the benefit of the wisdom of God. Let's continue in verse 8. Isn't that a blessed thought? God keeps the path of those who are striving to do what He wants. Verse 9, There is the result. of striving to know and to obey God's Word is that God will grant to you the wisdom to know the right path to take, the wisdom to make right choices in life, both the big decisions and the lesser ones. God has grace and wisdom sufficient to meet every one of those needs exactly. You can have God's wisdom because God offers it to you. but here's what you have to do to get it. On the other hand, looking at essentially the same truth negatively, God also makes it clear in a number of passages, and we'll look at two such passages, that He reserves the right to retract His wisdom. to hold his wisdom in store yet. Here is an individual who has a decision to make and God says, no, you don't get my help with that one. We need to understand under what conditions God withholds his wisdom and leaves us simply to operate in our own wisdom. First of all, in Proverbs chapter one, just turn back to that page, Proverbs one, 24 through 29, this passage we see that failure to heed God's Word, to do what God says, forfeits God's wisdom. Individual who knows what God expects and instead says, No, I'm not going to do that. Now Lord, give me your wisdom anyway, finds that God says, No, I don't work that way. Here's how God says it. Proverbs 1, verse 24, Because I called and ye refused. I stretched out my hand, this is the offer of God's wisdom, and no man regarded. Ye have said it not, you've neglected all my counsel, and would none of my reproof. You didn't want it. You didn't want to know what God had to say. How does God respond to the individual who doesn't really want God's wisdom? He says, I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. Refusal and neglect of God's Word, of seeking the wisdom that God has offered, not caring to obey God, then to find yourself in a time of crisis. I have a decision to make. Lord, please give me the wisdom that you have to make this decision. God's response is, no, you already made your choice. You chose to make decisions without my help. A lot of people want to use God as a fire escape. Serve themselves all week long and then come to a time of need and the very God that you have been neglecting, the very God that you don't care to obey, you find you need His help. Very sad experience as you find his help is not available. This is not an isolated instance. We're all very sad to have to admit we all know what this feels like. We've all been there. We have all come to a point of decision and realize, oh no, but I haven't been walking with God. There's a sin in my heart that I've not confessed to Him, or I haven't spent time in His Word in days. I've neglected the wisdom, Oh Lord, please help me now, and have the very distinct feeling that we are facing the crisis alone. I'll have to make this decision on my own wisdom. That's why he says God laughs and he just leaves us to our own fear, because it is a fearful thing to realize I'm on this in my own strength, and my own strength is not good enough. What God expects here is that we'll anticipate that very scenario and decide, I don't want to experience that. I don't want to have to make choices in life in my own strength. All right, then, Lord, what do I have to do to get your wisdom? Well, He just told us. Strive to know His Word. Strive to obey His Word. God's promise is for that individual. When that person faces a decision, God has wisdom to give. And God gives that wisdom freely. But failure to heed God's Word is a forfeit of God's wisdom. You'll be left on your own wisdom. Let's turn to the New Testament for a corresponding verse, James chapter 1. Many people have observed that the book of James in many ways corresponds in the New Testament to the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. Here is the New Testament book of wisdom, and in this book as well, James recognizes for us that God is the source of wisdom and that we need His help. What James tells us, besides the fact that God is the source of wisdom, that God can choose to retract that wisdom as well. And in this case, it is failure to trust God that forfeits His wisdom. James 1, verse 5, If any of you lack wisdom, that's all of us, of course, Let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. Here we see that even for those that walk with God, you still need to ask for His help. God responds to the request for wisdom. God, I'm facing a decision right now, and I don't have enough wisdom to know what to do. Please help me in making this choice. God wants to hear that prayer, and in response to that, He says He will give liberally, and He doesn't rebuke you for admitting your need, and it shall be given Him. But there's a stipulation here that he goes on to explain in the next three verses. But let him ask in faith nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Well, here's the case of the individual who, in fact, is walking with God, striving to obey God's Word, asks God for help, and God has said, I'll always answer that prayer for that individual, so the individual then gets the wisdom he needs to make a choice, and the next thing he does spoils the whole thing. He's now got God's wisdom, but he doesn't think so. He doesn't think that's a very wise choice to make. God's telling him what to do, directing him, and he's, oh, but I don't know, but what if that doesn't work out? Maybe I ought to reconsider this one instead. And he's got the wisdom he needs, but he's refusing to trust it. God says, I think so much of my wisdom that I'm not going to waste it on an individual who, once he gets it, doesn't value it. and doesn't believe that He has it. God is promising that He'll give it. And to say, I don't think I've got it yet, is questioning God Himself. So doubting, second-guessing, wavering, all these things are an insult to God's wisdom. And He says explicitly, let not that man think that he'll receive anything of the Lord. For all his asking, his doubting causes God to retract it. That really gets us then to the main responsibility in the whole message this morning, is that when you are walking with God, and that's a huge assumption. That was really a lot of our attention last week. If you are walking with God, if you are asking for His wisdom, the next step is to believe. that He has provided it, and that now your perception of the right choice to make must be coming from God Himself. And to question that ruins the whole thing, and God retracts His wisdom. To trust God in the process of decision-making, and to appreciate the reality of the wisdom that He has given, Many years ago, our church in New Hampshire was building a new building. And I was very closely involved in all the process of that, decision making and so forth. We had a committee and they were all closely involved as well. But I was one of a few that were there on the site from time to time throughout the day, all throughout the summer that we were under construction. And I was just astounded how many decisions had to be made. I thought we had the plans. I had the contractors, they know their job, they're just going to come and work. But questions would come up and decisions had to be made. One time a contractor came up to me and says, it's time to install. The propane tank, we were going to use propane furnaces, furnaces run by propane gas, and we were going to have a 1,000 gallon tank buried in the ground somewhere on the property. Where do you want it? He said, here it is. Got to put it in the ground somewhere. Oh, I started thinking about all the possibilities. And he said, well, it's got to be so many feet. I don't know if it was 50 feet or so from the building. And I thought, well, 50 feet, well, that eliminates all the parking lot area. It can't be under the parking lot. Over here, no, because that might be future expansion. And in the back was a retention pond and couldn't be back there. I thought of all the possibilities. I couldn't think of any place to put the thing. We had one other man on our building committee who was retired, so he was often there as well and was available. So I called him and said, Ray, we need to put the tank in the ground, and I can't think of a good place to put it. He didn't think about that for more than two seconds, and he said, well, put it in the front yard. The front yard, you can't put a tank in the front yard. He says, yes, it's going to be buried in the ground. There's going to be a little pipe sticking up. Nobody will know what that is. We'll put shrubs around it. Put it in the front yard. I thought, that's perfect. That meets every need. Now the truck doesn't have to drive all around the property when he delivers it. It worked out great. What I learned from that experience is that I had somebody available who had more wisdom than I did. There were literally dozens of other issues where I'd be faced with a decision, and I'd think through the options, and I didn't know what to do. Call Ray. Ray said, how'd you do this? Yeah, it was the right thing to do again. Over and over, he had wisdom. Now you think, wouldn't it be great to have somebody available that every time you've got a decision to make, ask them and they have the exact right answer. You see, that's exactly the point of the verses we've just looked at. God is that one. God knows the best choice in every decision you will ever face in your life. He knows exactly what you ought to do, and He offers to you His wisdom. He does have some stipulations. You have to do what He says, you have to ask Him for it, and then you must appreciate the value of His wisdom once He's given it. Stop doubting what he's leading you to do. God grants wisdom to make choices. And that wisdom, the availability of that wisdom relieves much anxiety about decision making. But he offers something else as well. There's another part of this process that I think gets very little attention among God's people. But as we're going to see in God's Word, here it is in black and white. This is reality as well, something else that God offers to help us in making decisions. He grants us wisdom. He also grants us freedom. He gives us the freedom to make choices. He has laid the responsibility on us. We've got to make these choices. He wants us to have the freedom to do it. Now, my phraseology at this point, I think, gets just a little bit dangerous. That is, it can be misunderstood. But I really think the best way to say it is, you can choose what you want. Faced with a choice, you can choose what you desire. A lot of people have the misconception of God's will and are afraid of God's will, thinking, oh, if I submit to God and tell Him I'll do whatever He wants, I just know He's going to send me to Africa and I'm going to be miserable the rest of my life. No, God's will does not work that way. God's will is not a path to misery. God's will is the path of choosing what you want. Now let's understand how that can be by looking first at Psalm 37. Psalm 37, this verse came up in our discussion in Sunday school last week, and I gave a brief response to that question, but said, that's coming up next Sunday, so stay tuned, or come back, or pay attention next week. So here we are, Psalm 37, verse 4, where the psalmist says, ìDelight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.î What an opportunity! Hereís a way for you to get what you want. for you to be able to choose the things in life that you desire. What is that way? Now, that's the important part here. The way to get what you want, he says, is to delight thyself in the Lord. Make God the focus of your delight. Make Him the center of your affection and your attention. When God has his right place in your life, when God's right there at the center, then he is going to respond by giving you what you want. Now you see, it's almost like there's a little bit of a trick here. When you want what God wants, that's when you can get what you want. See, what God has just done is eliminated all sinful desires. He has just eliminated all selfish desires. And He has now offered freely, you can have anything you want as long as you are centered on God Himself. When God's the focus of your heart, you will want what He wants. and God can grant you all of that. Let's look a little more specifically in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 to see just how this works. Does God really mean that? When you're faced with a decision, you can choose what you want and that's okay with Him. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul gets very practical here. and applies this concept to the issue of marriage. Right at the end of that chapter, 1 Corinthians 7, verse 39, Paul here is giving a variety of scenarios and choices that people can make, and one of them, he says, the wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth, that is, he is bound to the law of marriage. The marriage bond is in effect as long as her husband is still alive. But if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married, here's the key phrase, to whom she will. Literally, he's saying there, whoever she wants, only in the Lord. Now that last stipulation says, of course, you have to stay within the bounds of God's moral will. As we saw last week, God has given very specific instructions. Part of that, in this case, would be any prospective marriage partner must also know the Lord. Not just know the Lord, but be walking with the Lord as well. I mean, it doesn't do to choose a partner who professes to know Christ as Savior, but is not living for Him. So the person who knows the Lord and is walking with the Lord, as many of those people as you can find to choose from, say you've got ten. Say this widow has ten prospective future mates. They all know the Lord and all are walking with Him. How is she going to know which one to pick? Paul says, pick the one you want. She can be married to whomever she will. As long as she's within God's moral will, obeying His word, she can pick. Now, as we saw last week, God's very closely tied with that process. The person who's walking with God is going to have God directing their steps. We'll see more about that in just a few moments. But the emphasis here is you've got a choice to make. You get to pick the one you want. Now, how practical is that? I decided God really meant that. And when it came time for me to choose out of all, there were several, and many of them were walking with the Lord. So far, all things are equal. I decided, hey, if I get it, I'm going to pick the prettiest one I can find. I'm going to pick the one I want. Tell Jen, you're the one I picked. is so good in giving us the choice of what we want. Now, we do have to take the stipulation seriously, only in the Lord. You do have to be following God's moral will as He's recorded it in His Word. But so many of God's people are almost beside themselves when it comes to make a decision, oh, but what if I pick the wrong one? Maybe Lord wants me to have this one instead of this one. God says, hey, just make up your mind. Just choose the one you want. Pick the one you desire in the Lord, and God's happy with that. Now, it is not as if God doesn't care. Hey, you got these choices, I don't care which one you pick. There are some who think that that's how it works. There's one man who wrote a very influential book on this subject, and that was essentially his position. You can pick whichever one you want, and God doesn't care. If there are eight choices, any one of them will do for God, and He doesn't have any particular one in mind. I think that's all wrong. If you have eight choices, God does have one in mind. And God is so powerful and so wise that He can make you want the one He wants. You want to see that in the Bible? The very next verse. Look here, plus one other. But while we're in 1 Corinthians 7, look at verse 40. Paul says here, but she is happier if she so abide after my judgment. And what he's recommending here is that she not get married at all. Here's this widow, we don't know what age, and yes, she could get remarried after her husband dies, but he says, I think she's happier if she so abide after my judgment. That's just Paul giving his personal opinion. I think, and he's already told us elsewhere in this context, that there was some present distress that made it more difficult for married couples than for single people. Whether that distress was a localized persecution at that particular time, we're not sure. He doesn't tell us. But Paul makes it very clear he's not against marriage. But in the present circumstances, he gives this advice. But what is significant is he goes on to say, after my judgment, my opinion, then he says, and I think also that I have the Spirit of God. That's an amazing phrase for Paul to use here writing under inspiration. He's giving his own opinion and then adding in, but I think also I have the Spirit of God. You know, he's not guessing about that last part. He does have the Spirit of God. Having Him, meaning not just that the Spirit was indwelling his heart, but had the agreement of the Spirit of God. And it's not that Paul made up his mind and the Spirit said, OK, I'll go along with that. It's that when Paul made up his mind, it was because the Spirit had directed him. How can he say the Spirit agrees with my opinion? There's only one way. It's because the Spirit controls his opinion. What Paul thinks is a direct result of the work and influence of the Spirit of God upon his heart. Here is Paul convinced that because he's walking with God and submissive to God's will that what he wants and what he thinks is exactly what the Spirit of God wants him to want and wants him to think. Let's look at one more verse that will support that. Back to Proverbs again. Proverbs chapter 21. Proverbs 21, verse 1, how is it that God can accomplish His will when we are doing what we want? Proverbs 21, 1 gives the answer. He says, ìThe kingís heart is in the hand of the Lord. As the rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he will.î In this case, the writer goes right to the most powerful individual who seems to have His will and whatever He wants to do, but you know something? There's more to it than that. When a king makes a decision, there is a God, the God of heaven, accomplishing His will. Most of the time, the influence of God's hand upon kings is so subtle The kings don't even know it's at work. They don't even know that they're doing what God wants. That's how powerful God is. Now, if God can do that with kings, many of whom don't even submit to Him, what can God do with an individual who honestly and earnestly says, Lord, I just want to do what's right? I want to obey your word. I want your wisdom in every choice I make. Is God going to have any trouble directing the thoughts of that individual? No, it's like putty in his hands. Is God going to have any trouble getting that person to think the way he wants? No. To desire what God wants? No, you'll have no trouble with that at all. God can say, take your pick because God can control the pick. And what if you're walking with God, what you desire and what you choose will be exactly what God desires every single time. Now all that being true, you see why the right response then is to trust how God has directed you. To believe that he really can do what he says he can do here. Seven years ago, our family decided to move from New Hampshire to Greenville. It took all of our associates, our family, our friends, it took all of them by surprise. It took us by surprise, although our surprise was a few months earlier. Here's how the surprise went. God had burdened our hearts, Jan and me together, to start a new church in New Hampshire. Picked the city, didn't have a good church, moved up there, started that church. It was our desire to stay there the rest of our lives. And therefore, it was our plan to stay. Didn't see any reason we'd ever have to move. But something happened seven years ago. God changed my desire from being entirely content pastoring a church, God gave me the desire to teach future pastors. It took me completely by surprise. I wasn't planning on doing that. I didn't want to do that. In fact, I'll probably tell you more about this tonight. But I had an opportunity to do that very thing 15 years earlier. And I turned it down. No, I don't want to teach. I want to pastor. That's what God gave me the desire to do. And for 15 years, I had the privilege of doing that. And suddenly, I had a desire to teach. Where did that come from? I tried my best to deny it, to insist that it was just me, but that didn't make any sense because it wasn't going to work out advantageously for me, humanly speaking. I finally had to conclude, I have this desire for one reason only, God gave it. So although it was a very sad thing to leave a place and people that we loved, at the same time, God had given the desire, and I was choosing now what I wanted to do, and uprooted our family, moved us all down here, but God, was accomplishing His will. And although there were some hardships involved with that, I refused to second-guess God, refused to second-guess His wisdom and His ability to turn the heart to where He wants. All of that, of course, dependent on walking with God. You see how we ought to be afraid to walk away from God. We need to be afraid to sin against Him. Oh boy, then I have to make decisions on my own. Walking with God is the key. When facing a decision, check your walk, seek God's wisdom, and then make your choice. Do what you want to do, knowing that your want is in His hand. Last summer, I had the opportunity of teaching these same lessons to a group of teens at a family camp in Vacaville, California. And it was just the teens. I had other sessions with the parents and the whole group together, and Jan had sessions with the ladies. But, every morning, for an hour, I'd have the teens all week long, and their parents knew we were talking about God's will, but were not in on the discussion at all. Well, the following Sunday, in their church, back in their home area, The camp was a few hours away, so we came back to the church that next Sunday, and I was teaching a combined Sunday school class. I had the teens and the parents all together, and I was going on to teach something else, but I thought, I think I'll take the opportunity to let the teens tell the parents what they learned this week. I thought that might be helpful. So I invited the teens. Somebody stand up and summarize what you learned this week about God's will. And one of them, kind of a wise guy, He stood up and half-jokingly he said, you told us to do whatever we want. And I said, wait, wait, wait, no, there's more to it than that. And you're, I'm going to get you afterward. But I was very appreciative of the opportunity to explain. I said, no, I didn't just tell them do whatever you want. And the rest of them, they're laughing. Yeah, all right. He said, obey God. That's crucial. Walk with God, seek God's wisdom, and with those two behind you, do what you want. And that will not only always be a safe choice, it will always be the best choice. Because that's how God expects us to work. A question this morning then, are you walking with God? Are you seeking His wisdom? Or are you trying to make decisions in your own strength? It could be that you need to ask God's forgiveness this morning for, first of all, failing to walk with Him. There's some sin in your life? You've got to confess that to God. Have you been neglecting His Word? He doesn't give His wisdom to those who don't search for it in His Word. You've got to be seeking it there. And perhaps you've also been guilty of the sin of doubt. Doing those things and God gives His wisdom and you're not sure that He has. God doesn't like to be doubted. And He regards that as a sin against Him. Let's take a few moments for each of us to examine our hearts. What you find there that needs confession, repentance, then confess and repent to God. And seek God's grace to trust Him in making decisions. Father, we thank you for the simplicity of the truths we've seen in your word today. And Father, we are rebuked by how simple they are, and yet how regularly we fail to do our part. Father, indeed, without your help, it would be impossible for us to walk with you. So help us do that. Father, we also need your wisdom. Thank you for offering it to us. Help us to remember to ask for it. And Father, when you grant it, help us to believe it. Help us to trust your wisdom. Help us to trust your sovereign control of our desires. Father, help us to be able to move forward unhindered by the wavering that so often characterizes our hearts. Help us, Father, to move forward into the decisions of life with confidence in Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.