1 Chronicles 12:32 And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment.
Over two decades ago, when I moved to Israel, I had the opportunity to spend considerable time with a pastor and his wife. This pastor imparted significant wisdom to me during that period, counseling me to “be like the children of Issachar,” he directed me to this specific passage in 1 Chronicles 12.
The children of Issachar were men who “understood the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” The Hebrew word for “understanding”, “bee-nah”, has a root which also means discernment, wisdom, perception and knowledge.
We live in a day and and age in which discernment is a sorely needed gift in the body of Christ– and praise God, it’s a gift which is freely given by the Holy Spirit! [1 Corinthians 12:10]
Why? Because the enemy of our souls is cunning and subtle, and a major sign of the times is the proliferation of “seducing spirits” and “doctrines of devils.” [1 Timothy 4:1]
A.W. Tozer once stated, “The red corpuscles are like faith – they carry the life giving oxygen to every part of the body. The white cells are like discernment – they pounce upon dead and toxic matter and carry it out to the drain. In a healthy heart there must be provision for keeping dead and poisonous matter out of the life stream.”
So how can we become like the children of Issachar? By building up our spiritual immune system! We need to ask for and develop the spiritual gift of discernment, not falling into the trap of spiritual laziness where we fail to discern truth from error, or to identify the enemy’s spiritual toxins which could poison us.
Let’s ask God for this important gift! Let’s ask the Spirit of Truth to lead and guide us with discernment, every step of the way so that we become like the children of Issachar — able to understand the times, …and, to know what we ought to do!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Recently, I’ve been impressed by the Lord to address the anxieties many are feeling about the future– how to be strong in the face of the intense opposition we’ll be facing as believers. One of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage.”
For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?
Is that a trend or something? I don’t know what it is but I’ve heard that phrase said quite a bit. We were even walking down the Wal-Mart isle to pick up a few things and my wife showed me a T-shirt with “I have issues” written across the front! I guess the world is coming to the sad reality that we really do have some issues.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way the devil uses our offenses and our “offendedness” to divide and conquer marriages, relationships, churches — even entire nations!
There’s an old adage, “Have the heart of a lion!” Hearing it, we think, “courage”. This recalls a quote I once heard; “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened”. I doubt there’s a single hero story in which the fearless leader fails to inspire the righteous determination of his army or people. The voice of the captain resounds through the ranks evoking the fierce cry of every warrior ready to face death or worse, for the cause. Courage truly is contagious.
The Hebrew word for “face” is “panim”, (the Hebrew letters, peh-nun-yud-mem), literally “faces”, a plural word. Normally, when we think about God, we focus only upon one of His “faces” at a time. God is “love” – or He is “holy”– or He is “just”— or He’s a God of “wrath”. Yet, of course, ALL these “faces” are His at once; and so the word “panim” accurately reflects the truth of God’s multifaceted being. As we get to know Him better we begin to appreciate the complexity of His nature and the fact that our focus on one “face” is a very limited view, since there’s so much more going on in His amazing “Personality”.