I Know That!

My mother did her job well but she had such a reluctant student. She was an expert seamstress and tried with diligence to teach me how to sew. She loved materials and threads and sewing machines and yarns and from those materials she could and would make dream dresses for me. I dutifully followed her instructions so by the time I went to college I had the knowledge I needed to sew but I refused to do it. It was boring. It was tedious. It took way too much time. And beside why should I bother? Mom continued to sew for me!

However, that all changed the day I got married. For some reason which I could not understand at the time, Mom put her sewing machine away and took up painting while I was left to fend for myself. I had gotten use to nice clothes....cheap. Now as we struggled financially to pay for graduate and undergraduate tuitions on $6300 a year, there was no money for clothes. However there was a little money for material. And so I dragged that knowledge out (along with an old sewing machine one of Mama’s friends gave me) and put it into service. Soon I was making my own dream dresses.

Like my sewing skills, one can have the knowledge without having it affect their lives, but when we put that knowledge to work it can greatly enhance it. But sometimes lack of putting knowledge to work can be brutally harmful even leading to destruction. Listen to these words from Hosea 4:6:

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Because you have rejected knowledge,

I also will reject you from being priests for Me;

Because you have forgotten the law of your God,

I also will forget your children.

…because they have ceased obeying the Lord.”

In this passage God is saying something important to all of us. Learn. Know. Study. Obey. There is much to be gained but equally much, oh so very much, to be lost if we choose to ignore the very words, guidance, counsel, and truth, that God gives us in His Word.

At least once a week we get a call at Big Dream Ministries from someone who tells us, “I never knew or understood the whole Bible. The Amazing Collection has opened my eyes to so much of God’s Word that I didn’t understand!” We love those calls. God’s Word changes lives. It sets the captives free. It brings joy to the depressed and courage to the fearful. But without it…..well words like “destroy” “reject”, and “forgotten” paint a sobering picture. Love demands obedience but before obedience there must come knowledge.

When it comes to sewing it really isn’t earth shattering if knowledge is not followed by obedience. But God’s Word? Well it really is.