After six chapters of detailed tabernacle instructions, God tells Moses: I have already chosen the man to build it. His name is Bezalel, and I have filled him with My Spirit, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and all kinds of skills. Not a preacher. A craftsman. Today’s devotional is about what happens when you see your practical gifts and abilities not as your own, but as something God placed in you for a purpose He had in mind long before you did.
Before God gives a single commandment, He establishes something: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” Relationship first. Then instructions. The Ten Commandments didn’t come from a distant rule-maker. They came from the God who had just parted a sea for His people. The one who commands is the one who loves. Today’s devotional — Day 50 — closes the first month of Exodus with a reminder that God gives commands, not suggestions, because He is serious about our flourishing.
Age doesn’t give wisdom — closeness to God does. In Job 32, a young man named Elihu waited until the older voices had finished, then said something that cut through everything: “It is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.” The Hebrew word for understanding here means far more than knowing facts. It’s perception, discernment, the ability to see what others miss — and according to Elihu, it is given by God, not earned by years.