Consider the Ant

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise!—

Which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler,

Provides her food in the summer and gathers her supplies in the harvest.

Proverbs 6: 6-8 Amplified Bible Classic Edition

Have you observed an ant lately? You probably won’t see a lot of them right now because it is wintertime. The ants who took advantage of the spring and the summer are thriving right now. They took the time to prepare for the winter. If you ever see ants in the summertime, they are always working. It looks like organized chaos, but they are working. They don’t have anyone standing over their shoulders, reminding them that winter is coming. They know it. They know that they must take advantage of this time because when winter comes, they are stuck.

It reminds me of Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper. The grasshopper wanted to play and have a good time while the ant was working and preparing. When winter came, the grasshopper found himself in need while the ant was enjoying the fruit of his labor. God tells us to consider the ant for a reason. The Bible tells us that there is a season or time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1). There is a time to play and a time to work.

There is a time to laugh and a time to get serious. Opportunities pass us by because we do not prepare. Many aren’t considered for promotion because they do not qualify. We must be like the ant. Opportunities are coming and we must prepare for them. There will be opportunities for promotion, but we must be ready. We shouldn’t need an overseer. We must consider our future. We must be ready for what God has for us and that takes self-development. We must endeavor to get better every day. We must prepare for opportunities that do not exist. Noah built the ark before it rained. We must prepare before the storm. We cannot be like the grasshopper and play all the time. We must consider the ant and be wise. The greatest opportunity is the next one. When it comes, let’s be ready. Lets be ready for all that God has in store for us.

The Plan of God

But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [[e]who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed].

Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the [f]divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man’s scrutiny].

For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man’s thoughts except the man’s own spirit within him? Just so no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

 Now we have not received the spirit [that belongs to] the world, but the [Holy] Spirit Who is from God, [given to us] that we might realize and comprehend and appreciate the gifts [of divine favor and blessing so freely and lavishly] bestowed on us by God.

I Corinthians 2: 9-12 Amplified Bible Classic Edition

Isn’t that exciting? God has things that He has preordained for us to walk in. He has a plan and a destiny for our lives. Jeremiah 29:11 says:

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

God says that He has plans for our lives and they are good. We have a hope and a future. We don’t have to be anxious about tomorrow. God has it already planned out.  Our job is to walk with God. Our job is to fellowship with Him and to spend time with Him in prayer. God’s will for our lives are hidden, but God wants to reveal them to us. Those plans are revealed by the Spirit of God. They are spiritually discerned.

The Bible tells us to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and to lean not to our own understanding. When God tells us to trust Him with our heart, He isn’t referring to the blood pump in our chest. He is referring to our spirit man, the real you. He is saying that trust goes beyond our natural thinking. It goes beyond our comprehension. We must trust God with our spirit man. Our trust must go beyond our intellect because sometimes God’s plans can baffle us. Sometimes it goes beyond our reasoning, and we can sabotage His plans because it goes beyond anything that we could ever imagine. We serve a big God, and we must come up to His level. His thoughts are not His thoughts, and our ways are not His ways.

Don’t put God in a box. Don’t put yourself in a box. God has great things in store for us, but God will reveal them in His timing. We simply must trust His timing and His Wisdom.  God loves us and He knows what is best for us. Simply walk with Him and He will change the landscape of your life. You will go from one level of faith to another. One level of glory to another. Your life will not remain the same, in Jesus Name.

Friendship with God

As I was in the [prime] ripeness of my days, when the friendship and counsel of God were over my tent,           —Job 29:4 AMPC

Friendship with God should be a desire in all our lives. Abraham was called a friend of God. God even asked a question in Genesis 18:17: Shall I hide from [My friend and servant] what I am going to do?  God wanted to share His plans with His covenant friend. Being able to reach out to the One who created the heavens and the earth when we want to, that is a privilege that all of us should enjoy. (Those of us who have made Jesus the Lord of our lives.) Unfortunately, many Christians don’t make time to develop friendship with Almighty God.

We must pursue God the way we pursued the significant relationships in our lives.

We called people. We text them daily. We went out with them. Relationships didn’t just develop on their own. Relationships had to be developed. Many are caught up in the hustle and bustle of life. We all can get caught up in the day-to-day grind of life. We cannot make excuses. We must take the time to fellowship with God daily. God wants to commune with us.

He wants to talk to us about His plan for our lives. God wants to develop a relationship with all His children. The Bible tells us that He “is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”. It is obvious that Job’s relationship with God influenced His life. He referred to this “as the prime of his days”.

Job had become the greatest man in the East. He had wealth and influence. It was obvious that the friendship and counsel of God was over his tent. If we want to experience success in our lives, God’s friendship and counsel should be over our tent as well.

God wants us whole

From there he went all over Galilee. He used synagogues for meeting places and taught people the truth of God. God’s kingdom was his theme—that beginning right now they were under God’s government, a good government! He also healed people of their diseases and of the bad effects of their bad lives. Word got around the entire Roman province of Syria. People brought anybody with a sickness, whether mental, emotional, or physical. Jesus healed them, one and all. More and more people came, the momentum gathering. Besides those from Galilee, crowds came from the “Ten Towns” across the lake, others up from Jerusalem and Judea, still others from across the Jordan.

Matthew 4:23-25 The Message

God wants you well. God wants you well in every area of life. Jesus came to heal the sick, but not just those who were sick physically. Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted. Jesus came to heal the oppressed. Jesus came to set the captives free, spirit, soul, and body. God wants you free from a tormented mind. II Timothy 1:7 tells us that:

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.

God wants you to have a calm and well-balanced mind. A mind that is free from worry and fear. A mind that is well balanced. Jesus said something in Luke 12:29:

And you, do not seek [by meditating and reasoning to inquire into] what you are to eat and what you are to drink; nor be of anxious (troubled) mind [unsettled, excited, worried, and in suspense];

God does not want His children to have a unsettled, worried mind. We are to keep our mind on the Word of God. Keeping our mind on God will allow us to experience the peace of God. The Word of God is to be the anchor to our souls. That simply means that we can stay emotionally stable when hard times hit us because we are standing on God’s Word.

We know that God wants us well physically. Jesus took the stripes on His back so that we could be made whole (Isaiah 53:5). III John 2 tells us that God desires for us to prosper and be in health even as our soul prospers. God wants us to prosper in our health, our soul, and in our finances. It is easier to help make someone whole, when we are walking in wholeness in our own lives. God wants us to be examples. We are His evidence that we can experience the blessed life that Jesus shed His blood for. That life is possible for us if we can believe for the Bible tells us that all things are possible to him who believes.