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PREDICTABLE

"When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; and in the morning, 'it will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs for the times." (Matt. 16:2-3)

When I was growing up, my father who was a WW II Navy man used to say, “red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.” Observation over a long period of time led them to expect the weather to follow this pattern. Obviously this was true long before my dad ever heard it. Here, Jesus confirmed it!

Jesus was trying to get these religious leaders to watch the present signs as closely as they watched these simple signs of the weather. He was trying to open their eyes to see that the very scriptures which they studied, not only revealed that He was who He said He was, but that the things they were doing and saying were predicted in the scriptures as well.

The truth is that when we observe things for long enough we can begin to see a pattern in behavior. Good fishermen can tell you about fish. Hunters can do the same when it comes to the game they hunt. They know these things because they have studied what they do. They study because it is important to them. Marketers do the same in business, athletes do the same in sports, and families and friends do the same with each other. Anyone who pays close enough attention to anything gets an understanding of what is predictable concerning whatever they are observing.

In the same sense, I believe that Jesus is saying to us that He is in fact, predictable. I realize that this goes directly against the idea that we just never know what God will do! After all, “His ways are above our ways and His thoughts are above our thoughts.” Of course at times this is true, but that does not change the fact that if we are doing the Word and paying attention to the Lord, His ways are predictable.

The only time that God seems mysterious is when we do not know all that God knows about a situation. For instance, we may say they are confused about what was happening, when actually we have an idea and God knows exactly what would change things, we just did may not want to face it at the time. I think we’ve all been there! Therefore, from the outside it may seem that God is confusing and acting mysteriously, but in truth everything is clear as can be. It is our failure to see the signs that causes the confusion.

If we will observe Jesus and begin to trust all that He says and does, we will dare to become confident in Him and expect Him act in character. The person thinking in the natural might see it as presumptuous and even arrogant to assume that we know what God will do, but to Jesus it will look like faith. He is the one that we are trying to please, so this is a good thing! I predict Jesus will bless you if you seek Him.

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