The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: 1st Corinthians 1:18-31 / Psalm 26

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”
1st Corinthians 1:21

Wisdom – Folly

A blind man will never fully appreciate great art, or a deaf person great music, for we learn of these things through the means they do not possess. The way to God is not through our intellect, but through faith created by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. We do not “discover” God by our own reason and thinking power. The Holy Spirit reveals God through the Gospel and receives us through the water of Holy Baptism. The Holy Spirit uses believers as witnesses who tell us the message of God’s love and mercy, which God revealed in sending Christ Jesus into our world to take our sins upon Himself and die for them and thus to make peace with God. All this is foolishness to natural man, and he seeks to destroy Him. But this is not possible, because God is God. And through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are assured that He is God of very God and has conquered, lives, and rules forever.
The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are saved it is the power of God. We believe that it’s not through our own intellectual power that we believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, but by insights supplied by the Holy Spirit. We are thankful that by His persuasion we believe.

O Lord, give us grace, O Precious Light, to walk by faith and not by sight. Amen.

May 26, 1965