The Alpha of Dealing with Ignorance

UV 3062/10000 The Alpha of Dealing with Ignorance
As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:
I Peter 1 v 14
Personal knowledge of God gives us freedom from our former ignorance. That kind of ignorance held us in spiritual blindness and we were trapped or ensnared by our lusts and foolish pride. Now that we are in a personal relationship with the Lord, we are to live our lives as obedient children of God. The Lord fulfils our legitimate desires and satisfies our needs but we are to subject ourselves to His discipline as a child to his parents in the area of our lusts. Our understanding of the requirements of the kingdom of God will help us lead victorious lives even in this dark world. We are no longer alienated from the Lord. We can learn from Christ and lean on Him for understanding and guidance by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The word of God, the gifts of the Spirit of the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom act as chisels to shape our inner character and personality in the mould of the first born Son of God – Jesus. We can pray for spiritual wisdom as St James exhorts the believers to do so. The Lord can anoint us with the seven fold wisdom of Christ- the spirit of God, the spirit of knowledge, wisdom and understanding, the spirit of might, the spirit of counsel and the spirit of the fear of the Lord. We are to see everything in the light not of a temporal or earthly perspective but from the heavenly, eternal, spiritual perspective. It does not however mean that we cut ourselves off from this world and cease to be practical and real. In fact, such knowledge, wisdom and understanding will make us even more effective in our workplace and in our homes.
A pot cannot fashion itself but needs to yield to the touch and movement of the hands of the wheel and the potter’s hands. The pot does not know the final design and purpose to which the potter is going to put it to. Likewise, we cannot shape ourselves but we should from day to day and moment to moment by sensitive to the move of the Holy Spirit. Even our knowledge of ourselves and the world is as good as ignorance in comparison with the infinite knowledge and wisdom of the Lord. We need to unquestioningly, unreservedly, wholeheartedly submit to the leading of the Lord in our daily lives, to His higher knowledge, deeper wisdom and greater understanding and not to our darkened understanding or impulses. In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus is narrating the story not of the disobedience of just the younger son but that of the disobedience of the older and apparently more obedient son. Both the sons did not have a full knowledge of the love of their father. The Lord looks not just for an external compliance of His instructions but for conformity of our inner thoughts and emotions of the heart. The ultimate knowledge, wisdom and understanding comes from understanding the agape love of God, the unconditional obedience of the Son Jesus.