Only a few years ago, we replaced the old office computer. It was a dual-floppy drive type, if that means anything to you. We decided that we would get a newer computer, the kind with a hard drive on it, so that we could not only do word processing (for the uninitiated, that just means typing, but on a screen instead of on a piece of paper) .. we could not only do word processing, but we could also create a database (for the uninitiated, again, that means a directory of names, addresses, and telephone numbers.) When we got that computer, I remember Charles Gray saying, “This computer has all the capacity you will ever need.” I believed him, mainly because I didn’t know what in the world he was talking about.
Charles, were you right? Say “No”, Charles! Oh, how we’ve moved on in the information revolution! After about five years of using that machine, it was going bad, so we went shopping again. We bought two computers, identical machines, one for our secretary and one for me. These were described as “state of the art”: they had 386 chips, they ran Windows 3.1, and they were loaded with a great big hard disk of 140 megabytes. You got all that? This too, it was said, will do all that we will ever need to do. We put a bigger word processing program on it, we put our database on it, we added a financial management program, an inventory program, a calendar program, a task management program, graphics, and we thought we were really burning up the bytes. It had a modem, so we learned to use on-line software to run the heating and air conditioning system; we hit the Internet and created a web site, and we thought, once again, we had arrived at the ultimate.
Except that it began to run very poorly. So we added more memory. Next we found that we had just about filled up that 140 megabytes of storage; so we added an extra hard drive. Now we’re cooking, for the duration, right?
But the machine I’ve been using sort of wheezed and gasped and gave up about a month ago; so we went shopping one more time, and bought the latest thing: a Pentium chip, 4 gigabytes of storage, running Windows 98, with more icons, options, plug-ins, and just stuff than you can imagine. This is going to be great! This is going to be fantastic. Except guess what? I cannot make it work. I cannot get it to run. It may be the machine; but it is more likely me. It may be the software, but it is more apt to be my buzzing brain. I am suddenly in information overload. I have more choices than I know what to do with, I am sitting in front of a device that offers me more possibilities than I can dream. I am loaded down with instruction manuals, help lines, tutorial sessions, and emergency phone numbers, and I can’t seem to make sense of any of it. I am in serious information overload. Plenty of information, but I cannot use it. Lots of facts, but no skill to use them. I am in trouble. Why? Information overload.
Isn’t that a parable of our very lives? We know plenty of things; but we do not know what to do with them. We have plenty of facts; but they do not make sense to us. We have all sorts of knowledge, but end up miserably unhappy. For all of our knowledge, we feel overloaded. Something is missing; we still need something else to make it all come together.
The poet of Proverbs has the answer. He tells us what the key is to make our knowledge work. He says that we must have a particular relationship before our information will work for us. We must have a particular relationship. And that it has to be a kind of relationship. See if you can pick it up from this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” The key phrase is, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”.
The fear of the Lord. You and I might call it “respect”, “reverence”. The infinite mind of the Creator of the universe; acknowledge Him as Lord. Revere Him. Turn to Him in all things. If we have a reverent relationship with God, we can relieve our information overload. If you want to know anything, truly know it, you must start with a reverent relationship to God.
Let’s see how that plays out in real life. I apologize in advance if the letter “r” grates noisily on your ears, because I am going to use that letter a great deal in order to drive home my points!
I
First, notice that a reverent relationship to God relieves information overload, because it readies us to respond. It readies us to respond. If you know God, if you listen to His Holy Spirit; then He prepares you to use what you know at the right time. We can use what we know, when we need it. If we have a reverent relationship to God, He will ready us to respond.
The poet of Proverbs puts it like this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ... for understanding words of insight.” Look at that phrase, “For understanding words of insight”.
You see, many of us have a whole lot of information that we can’t use because until we reach a crisis point, we don’t even know we need it. Some of us are fixed up with a whole lot of facts, but until some critical moment is reached, we don’t really know those facts. They are just garbage, information overload, a jumble of meaningless things, until we need them.
If my wife has to be away at meal-time, and she wants me to prepare something to eat, she will start to instruct me. Heat this, warm that, set the oven to so many degrees, brown this item, broil that one, or is it burn the other one, I don’t know!? I get more information than I know what to do with; I am in information overload. I just stand there and shake my head, “Yes, uh-huh, I’ve got it.” But of course when I actually have to do the cooking, and even more when I have to eat the results, I wish I had listened more carefully. We do not really learn anything until we actually need it. We do not learn until life creates the need to learn. But if we are in a reverent relationship to God, He will ready us to respond.
One of our members recently found herself sharing the her faith in an abortion clinic. She had been asked to go there with someone who had made a decision to end an emerging life. Our sister in Christ went there, as she had been asked. She could have jumped all over her friend and condemned her, or, quite the opposite, she could have just told her it was all A-OK and didn’t matter. But our sister did neither one. She just began to point out the life issues involved; she and her friend got into a profound spiritual conversation right there in that waiting room. But our friend says that pretty soon the whole waiting room got involved, not just the person she came to talk with. Every young woman in the room, without exception, identified herself as having been raised in the Christian faith, every one of them! And yet here they were, way out of synch with what they knew factually. They had been exposed to information, but it hadn’t sunk in .. until now they were in trouble, and somebody came along to teach them truth at the right moment.
God gives us teachable moments. We find ourselves drowning in knowledge, in information overload. When life shakes us up, and we are in trouble, we need to have a reverent relationship with God, who will ready us to respond.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. for understanding words of insight.”
II
Second, a reverent relationship to God relieves information overload by reinforcing righteousness. By reinforcing righteousness. Sometimes we know what to do; we have the information. And we are ready to do it, because we know we need to, it’s the best thing, let’s go. But we lack courage; we just don’t have the guts to do it. And so God’s Holy Spirit, if we are in touch with Him, will give us the courage to go ahead and use what we know. A reverent relationship to God reinforces righteousness.
The poet of Proverbs is very straightforward. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” We know what to do; we just don’t have the courage to move on and do the right thing.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be liked by everybody. I enjoy being popular. And so one of the hardest things I have to do is confront. I just hate to tell someone they’ve done wrong. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I am a complete “softie”. I may know that you have sinned from the top of your head to your little piggie, but I will probably say nothing about it and just mumble something that makes us both feel good. I hate to confront. I hate to tell others they’ve done wrong.
But there’s no courage in that, and not much honesty. There’s neither courage nor honesty in that, and most of all, there is no trust in God. There is nothing there that trusts a great and wise God to empower me to tell the truth and live with the consequences. But listen to the Bible! If you want to relieve your information overload, you need a reverent relationship with the Lord, and in that relationship He will reinforce righteousness. The Spirit of God will empower you to say what needs to be said, and live with it.
A friend of mine wanted to end a romantic liaison that she knew was not right. It was not within the will of God, it was not healthy, it was not right. She wondered how she could go about telling that guy how damaging he was and that she needed him out of her life. We talked about praying for the courage to say what needs to be said. We spoke about how when you trust in God for courage, it will come. She came back to me a few days later and said, “I did it. It worked. I prayed, I spoke, he’s gone, and the problem is behind me.” Do you see? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” A reverent relationship with God reinforces righteousness.
III
Now let’s go a step further. Is it not true that some of us manage our information overload by dumping it all? We get rid of the whole thing all at once! We don’t stay overloaded, because we tell everything we know! Isn’t it true that some of us know so much, and we just can’t keep from wagging our tongues and vomiting out every juicy tidbit? So part of the information overload problem is not that we don’t know how to use the information at our command, nor is it that we lack the courage to put it to use. Part of our information overload problem is that we don’t know how to keep things to ourselves and just stay quiet. However, if we enter into a reverent relationship to the living God, we will retain our reticence. We will stop rattling and just keep quiet.
This too that wise person who compiled Proverbs saw, in a wonderfully candid way: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young.” Shrewdness and prudence. A reverent relationship to God helps us retain our reticence.
If you have ever been through a counseling session, whether it was with a pastor or a psychiatrist, it may have seemed to you that he has the easiest job in the world. You went to this counselor for advice on some issue, and he spent most of the hour sort of grunting and looking bored and saying, “Tell me more.” For this he gets paid? It looks easy; but I assure you it is not. And one of the reasons it’s not easy is that we so much want to display our wisdom. We so much want to dredge up our own pearls and lay them before you, you swine! Counselors want to preach, that’s the problem and especially preachers who are counselors. We would rather talk at you for thirty minutes than listen to you for sixty. But the real work of counseling is in listening to someone and in helping them find the answers that they already know.
Now if a counselor is more invested in sounding good than he is in helping others, he will rattle on and dazzle you with his theories and his psychobabble, he will dump all his information overload on you. However, if he is truly concerned about you; if he really wants to help you, what must he do? He must listen and he must trust God. That’s right. He must listen and he must trust God. A counselor is no good unless he first trusts God and loses his need to prove himself, his need to impress. A counselor who has a reverent relationship to God will say only enough to help you find your own way, and will keep the rest to himself.
When we develop a reverent relationship to God, we are able to retain our reticence. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. to teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young.”
IV
And finally, we will be relieved of our information overload when we learn how to do something redemptive with what we know. If we can stay in touch with our God, if we get on His agenda, if we see that God is always at work around us, trying to advance His Kingdom; if we abide in Him and He in us, so that there is a reverent relationship with Him, then He will renew us so that we can be redemptive. He will revive us and renew us so that we can work redemptively, and not just keep all the goodies for ourselves. With what power the poet of Proverbs says it, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge .. let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill.”
Friends, it’s never too late to learn to do something new for the Kingdom. If you have a reverent relationship to God, you can translate that knowledge into a skill, and that skill can help redeem somebody else. It is never too late for that. You might be a mature Christian, seasoned, knowledgeable, full of ideas. But if you have not yet learned to put it to use, if you have not yet honed it into a skill, you still are in information overload.
More than thirty of us gathered on Wednesday night to begin to learn, in a fresh way, how to share Christ with others. I was thrilled at that. Many of those who came were mature believers; but they recognized that they needed even more. They needed a skill, a redemptive skill. I believe that more of you will join us this coming Wednesday night. I know that a great many more of you should. For if you know Christ, you want to share the good news about Him. And if you think you just don’t have the skill, or the personality, well, stay in touch with the Spirit of our loving God, and see if in that reverent relationship, God does not move you to renew, to learn to do something redemptive.
For the bottom line is this: the only knowledge you really have is knowledge you can use. The only truth you truly know is one you have taught to somebody else. The only Bible you believe is not the one on paper, but the one which is in your heart, your mind, and your hands. A reverent relationship with God renews us to be redemptive.
You know, I finally had to give up on running the new computer and its Windows 98. I had all this information, but I gave up on trying to use it on my own. I called for help. I called someone I love and I trust, and he will teach me what I need to know. I called someone who has never failed me, so that I have confidence in his wisdom. I called my son, for I know that out of our relationship he will guide me and help me relieve my information overload.
How much more if I want to learn to live, I must call on one who loved me before I loved Him? How much more if I want to make sense of life, I call on one who was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin? How much more, if I want to have the courage of my convictions, I call on one who cried out, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,”, and went to a cross for me? How much more, if I want to do something that matters with all that I am, all that I have, and all I ever hope to be, I must call on Jesus Christ, risen, living, living for me and in me!
Only a reverent relationship with the living God relieves you. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge ... [only] fools despise [His] wisdom and instruction.”
