Those who understand Jesus and his Father know that provision has been made for them. Their confidence has been confirmed by their experience. Though they work, they do not worry about things "on earth." Instead, they are always "seeking first the kingdom." That is, they "place top priority on identifying and involving themselves in what God is doing and in the kind of rightness he has.

Knowledge is the basis of belief, and, when it is, it gives the belief a very different bearing upon life.

Anyone who can find a better way than Jesus, he would be the first to tell you to take it.

It may seem strange but doing the will of God is a different matter than just doing what God wants us to do. The two are so far removed, in fact, that we can be solidly in the will of God, and know that we are, without knowing God's preference with regard to various details of our lives.

The spirit is able to consider alternatives, and God prompts us to have an interest in what is better and best.

So God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness, which is heightened and given a special quality by his presence and direction, to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world.

So those who hear me and do what I say are like those intelligent people who build their homes on solid rock, where rain and floods and winds cannot shake them. MATT. 7:24—25 Train them to do everything I have told you. MATT. 28:20 The Course of Studies in the Master Class These words from Jesus show that it must be possible to hear and do what he said. It also must be possible to train his apprentices in such a way that they routinely do everything he said was best.

The right thing would be simply releasing it all and saying, "All right. God knows. I'm living in his world. He can give me what he wants. I will not put these things in the place of God.

God both develops and, for our good, tests our character by leaving us to decide. He calls us to responsible citizenship in his kingdom by saying—in effect or in reality—as often as possible, "My will for you in this case is that you to decide on your own".

We are not only asking to be forgiven, we are asking for guidance and wisdom and strength to respond differently tomorrow.

An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and is inseparable from it.

Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin.