SCHEMING WITHOUT GOD

“Through the pride of his face the wicked will not seek Him; There is no God in all his schemes”, Ps.10:4

The Christian way to look at things is often conditioned to what people may or may not believe or think concerning others or even themselves. We read in the Bible that we should have a look at things from a truthful perspective, especially if that truth is an anointed and blessed one. I will not go into the parts where truth has got to be applied timely (I mean, not before nor after the time, when it is too late or too early).

The first problem we find in the annoying perspective of not having God or of not having Him to bless our ways is that pride emerges from it. Pride is where God is not - it comes to live and reign there. Knowledge tries then not to be subjected to God by reading the Bible, breeding some schemes as to still have and breed its own way, subduing God instead of exalting Him in honesty. The secret of all knowledge is the thought of it being set into the obedience of Christ, I mean, that it still obeys Christ as thought, imagination or any piece of wisdom. After being gained and achieved, thought and imagination should be willing to obey in due time alone. Wisdom is like a crop: you eat of it in due time, use, give away and put at the disposal of people for times when hunger will bring them to eat from what God has given you. But, you eat from it at first, you apply it to yourself before anything else happens; ("It is right for the labouring farmer to partake first of the fruits", 2Tim.2:6). The end of knowledge is that it comes to obey God in due time, as something which has to be pulled into the captivity of obedience once and for all, “pulling down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought into the obedience of Christ”, 2Cor.10:5. The secret is not how much you know, but how much of what you know is able to obey God if you have it. The disposition of it to be obedient is wisdom, not the amount of any of it. It is not the amount of it that tells you how Christ-like you are, but the amount of simplicity in prompt obedience it has, how much of it obeys God naturally or even unaware. This does not mean, however, that conscious obedience is ungodly, for I solemnly believe it can be holy.

I believe Christians are conditioned by whatever their belief and knowledge is and are not made free by it. Usually they look at things from an own belief’s perspective. They say and believe, “I am free because I am born again when I said Jesus come into my heart” and not realize whether they are freed indeed first, before assuming a new birth has indeed taken place; or, “I am filled with the Spirit because I speak in tongues (or whatever)”. I imagine that every Christian who reads this piece of Scripture above (Ps. 10:4), as soon as he comes to the word “wicked” he assumes instinctively it might not be referring to him at all. Hence the spirit to go and teach others due to the assumption that one is never wicked (and others are) from an own, fitting and convenient point of view. The second assumption is that all people wrongly assume that one who assumes that he is wicked, is condemned and not saved by assuming truth as it is, never deleting the temptation to add words to cover filth (even though he often reads “If they acknowledge…” from the Bible itself). To assume truth about us near a living God means Life and not death; to assume any lie near a living God is to die and never to Live. Whether you are holy or unholy, let God help you up from a truthful point of view. You may never say you are unholy just to please a certain greed towards a false humility you conceived during a period of time (Col 2:23) when you may instead assume it to be so because God might be giving holiness as an undeserved gift; nor may you assume you are holy when you are not for the sake of self-confidence, nor may you come to excuse yourself under any roof of belief if sin is your daily bread still, for there is no reason to sin near a powerful, Living God. “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts; and in the hidden part You shall make me to know wisdom.  (7) Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”, Ps.51:6-7.

So, if one is to read Scripture without adding unto it in any way, and come across verses like “Through the pride of his face the wicked will not seek Him; There is no God in all his schemes”, Ps. 10:4, there is the possibility that the word “wicked” before the actions are described, misleads us to some point. If one, however, reads this backwards, one may gain another perspective of it. It says here, “will not seek God” and “there is no God in all his schemes”. Just how many things do you project in your personal life, how many of it you desire and even constrain others to respect and stick by it like yourself and God is not in them? You might not be wicked, but how many of his actions do you copy still? How many times are you able to seek God in certain matters (even in Bible reading) seeing the important part of the whole of it is not how much you know but how much of it wills to obey God naturally after you came to know? Do you think that you go after God for knowledge purposes (so you can impress others or yourself with it) or rather that you go after knowledge so you can eventually reach unto God? Does knowledge make you an independent person or an abiding one? Does self perish or does it live when you read the Bible and pray over it? Do you seek God to be your servant or do you seek to be God’s servant continually by whatever means you came to know how to do? Do your schemes lead you to a Living God, or does your mind seek to have God in your worldly schemes instead? Is there a finger of a creating God full of imagination in all you scheme and plan? Is your plan to be financially stable or to have God as He is, eventually? If you are able to plan without God, you are wicked enough to repent.

Suppose you find out you seek not God as you ought, you still scheme and it is not forged by God Himself and some of your imaginations are still not of the kind that will turn you into an obedient person at all. Can you assume, then, that by truthfulness, concerning yourself, there is hope if you near God somehow through knowing your wickedness, even in shame? You know God will never uphold any of your views because He wishes to uphold you instead and your views will in fact bring you down – will you still near Him or will you be disappointed that your own standards of acceptance are not met and move away from Him because your own way can’t be fulfilled as you wished it ought? The result of knowing about yourself (knowledge) is that you come to know God as He is and be subdued and involved fully into His schemes, whether they benefit you or not. If, by being ashamed of yourself, you come to the Lord of your soul and become “captive into the obedience” of knowing Christ as He is, can there be any difference, in it, from knowing all secrets and to become subdued to a loving and Living God by it at all? It is not important to know all, to do all, but rather that God can be made all in all you know and are.

If you are a doctor or an unlearned man, recall it to mind continually that all you are is called to the obedience of the knowledge of Christ. It doesn't matter if you come to know Christ by being wise or by being ashamed of yourself – as long as you come to know Him as He is and never as you wish Him to be. If you know or do not know, what matters is whether you are an obedient, useful vessel to the One who made the mouth and never that you can speak fluently, whether you are obedient to Him alive and not to a imagination of the Jesus of a certain mind which does whatever you wish he should do for you and for others as well. If you mine for gold, do you keep the huge amount of stones that pile up to extract gold from or do you rather keep the little pieces of gold you refine out of them? In the same way you should keep the God of wisdom alive in you even if He seems to be unattractive to you and not knowledge. Recall it to your memory often that the most precious Being the Universe “has no form nor majesty that we should see Him, nor an appearance that we should desire Him, for He comes up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground”, Is.53:2. I imagine a root in a dry ground! I will not believe it will be able to grow there at all from a human point of view or perspective. I may come to loose the most precious jewel and jewellery in universe because I mistake it for an unworthy nothingness and dry root. Beware of it.

If you do not seek Him as He is, you may not regard yourself as being different from the wicked in any way, for it is the wicked that seek Him not and do not have God in all their schemes. Many of them have a imagination god there though. If your King comes riding an ass to the Jerusalem of your heart, accept Him for what He is and not for what He rides upon, for “Behold, this One is set … as a contradicting sign… so that thoughts of many hearts may be revealed”, Luke 2:34. The end of all you know and do should be to know Christ as He is and to manifest Him in a real shape.

Once an actor said: “I act and people cry, because I live lies as if they were truth; Christians, however, live truth as if they are lies and that’s why people are not attracted to preaching anymore”. The only people who do not have to act are such as know Christ as He is – we find, however, that acting is mainly done and promoted by Christians themselves because they love movies more than their Lord. If you don’t have truth in a reality shape, don’t act – seek to find truth instead. It is the wicked who do not seek God that way.  Amen.

José Mateus