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Published: Tuesday, Jul. 17, 2012 / Updated: Sunday, Jul. 15, 2012 06:00 PM

Pray for deliverance from our own foolishness

We all have to wrestle with sin, and sin is all about being foolish.

Sinners are merely fools who are able to convince themselves they’re really wise. When a person sins, they convince themselves their way is better than God’s way, that their thoughts are better than God’s thoughts, that what they desire is better than what God has planned for them. We all do this and in doing it we act like fools refusing and spurning the perfect wisdom and direction of God.

Paul, in his writing to the Romans, described a sinful people who had rejected God and His wisdom as follows: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…” (Romans 1:22).

You will recall it was at this point that the original sin took place in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve refused to listen to and obey the wisdom and directions of God. Had they done so, no disobedience would have ever occurred nor the death and destruction that followed in its wake.

Why did they disobey God? They did so because a crafty counselor enticed them by getting them to question the wisdom and goodness of God. He was enticing them to think he was wiser than the God and that they could be as wise as God themselves. Instead, they became fools and sinned against God bringing on the human race a storm of foolishness that has flooded humanity ever since.

Now, human beings are born into the world as fools and we need to be rescued from ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. We convince ourselves we are wise and know better than God how we should think, feel, and act. Unfortunately, everything we think and hear and see is filtered through the grid of our own foolishness. We plow forward into the darkness at full speed not realizing such a course will only lead to certain disaster.

What do we need? We need to be rescued from our worst enemy. We need to be rescued from ourselves and our foolishness. The only rescuer of fools like we are is the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wrote, “all the treasures and wisdom and knowledge” are hidden in Christ (Colossians 2:3). egarding our salvation in Christ Paul also wrote, “It is because of Him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God…”(I Corinthians 1:30a). Wisdom is bound up in Christ and offered to us through faith in Christ.

Our Lord told of a farmer who had bumper crops and he tore down his barns and built bigger barns to hold his enormous wealth. Then in total satisfaction the farmer said to himself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your soul will be demanded from you.” (Luke 12:19-20).

That farmer needed to be rescued from his foolish self. We are all held in the hard handed grip of foolishness and we all need to be rescued from ourselves. Thank God such a rescue can be a reality when we follow the wisdom of God’s Word and turn to the wisdom of God that is found in His Son Jesus Christ.

Dr. Randall Odom is senior pastor of Grace Church of the Carolinas.