To hear this Morning Devotion, please click here — Zero-sum knowing
You’ve heard the phrase often used within some faith circles — “I know that I know that I know.”
I’m typically not one to engage in sing-songy phraseology such as the above, but this phrase did come to mind this morning during my One-Year Bible reading from Joshua 7.
The insight was not directly connected to vv. 12-13 of that passage, but the trigger was still there.
Here’s how.
The occasion was the shameful defeat in round 1 of the Old Testament battle for the city of Ai. Long story short, the Israelites were cocky, presumptuous and tainted by greedy sin, even though just one family was directly involved.
There was sin in the camp and 36 Hebrew men died as a result.
God told the grieving Joshua that the failure was rooted in Achan’s hiding of plunder gathered from Jericho in direct defiance of God’s order to destroy everything but the silver and gold. Those items were to be donated to the treasury.
When Achan’s sin was discovered and dramatically remedied by God, the divine power for victory returned.
Before God revealed the root cause of the failure, Israel knew that it didn’t know why their plans had failed.
Hmmm….. to know that you don’t know. That’s what I call zero-sum knowing.
It took God’s gracious intervention to help the Israelites to transcend the zero-sum knowing.
The challenge with zero-sum knowing is that it sometimes doesn’t involve our sins but instead the timetable of God’s plans that we don’t control or perhaps don’t even understand.
Many stories in the Old Testament record faithful people who were honoring God yet their desires for the progress of life were not happening at the desired pace. In fact, some of those desires didn’t happen at all.
People like Abraham and Joseph and Moses and David and Isaiah and Jeremiah wanted to know all the in’s and out’s of God’s plan and schedule, but they didn’t. When it came to timing and details, these Bible heroes were sometimes gripped by zero-sum knowing.
I can certainly relate to them in that respect. There are a number of circumstances in my life just now that fall under the umbrella of zero-sum knowing.
But just as the Bible heroes above transcended their zero-sum knowing in order to continue moving forward in faith, so should I.
For so many things, I know that I don’t know what’s going to happen or even why some things have happened.
It is not a comfortable place for my human, want-to-be-accomplishing-goals side to be.
What is most important, though, is that I look for guidance and strength from the One who DOES know what’s going to happen and why He’s arranging things to play out the way that He is.
I am gaining more patience and humility. Those are good things.
I am gaining more experiences that will help me to better minister to struggling people in the years ahead. That is a good thing.
I’m ministering to people even though I’m not their church minister. That’s a good thing.
I am learning that, even in the midst of so much zero-sum knowing, I can KNOW the Lord more intimately and enduringly.
I can KNOW peace because I know the One who has already prepared a place of eternal peace for me.
Please, my friends, accept the reality of zero-sum knowing for certain aspects of your life and faith.
It’s part of more deeply appreciating the fact that you KNOW personally the One who knows you and promises eternal peace to those who know Christ as Savior and Lord.
As always, I love you
Martin
