A Plea for Wisdom

As you might recall from my last blog post, I am in a season of change. Things have calmed down as I have gotten into some daily routines and slowly navigated new relationships and responsibilities. This past month I have prayed for God to simple give me wisdom. It’s one thing to have the knowledge of how or what to do, but do you practice wisdom in those things? In the present day it seems that knowledge has become separated from wisdom. God commands us to be wise in our thinking. Don’t just do what is popular. The Holy Spirit is identified as our Helper, Teacher, and Counselor in the New Testament, and will also instruct our hearts day by day as we meditate in the Word of God and apply it to specific, sometimes tangled circumstances and relationships where we need wisdom the most. 

Wisdom is not something that occurs naturally in your day to day actions. Wisdom must be prayed for and sought after with diligence. It takes time and effort to truly seek and ask the Lord for the wisdom to navigate even the smallest things in our lives, that we feel like we can do on our own. That’s why it’s not till our lives are spiraling out of control that we stop, throw our hands up, and look to Jesus to restore order in our situation that we thought we had the knowledge to handle without His wisdom.

The book of Proverbs was intended to create a group of people with wisdom who were skilled at living life consistent with God’s law. In Proverbs 9:10 it states “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” So if you are sitting there wondering where to start, there it is. Fear the Lord. To fear the Lord is to have an awe or sense of respect for Him as the holy one. If you respect someone, you most likely listen to that person or go to them for advice. The Proverbs is telling us to first go to Christ and ask for wisdom. In Proverbs 24:30-34 — Solomon, the man known for his wisdom given to him by God, “saw and considered it, looked and received instruction.” It spoke strongly to him about being more disciplined and diligent. It warned him about becoming careless, apathetic, or negligent about the important things in life. 

As a whole, we are all responsible to God’s laws and principles. We are not able to do this on our own. The world tries to do it without Christ and they continue to spiral more and more out of control. The more knowledge the world seems to obtain the less wisdom they seem to use. Wisdom from Christ restores order. The book of Proverbs shows us the contrast between a life lived skillfully in the Kingdom of God and a life lived apart from the knowledge of God. 

I encourage you to add wisdom to your prayer list and bask in the knowledge of Christ.