The Pursuit of Wisdom

From where, then, does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living… God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.

Job 28:20-21, 23 (ESV)

To have wisdom is to have a certain understanding of life. To have godly wisdom is to have a certain understanding of life as it relates to the ways of our God. Godly wisdom is not a wisdom that comes by accident or by merely living life. It is the result of a life intentionally lived in the presence of our Lord.

There are many times in life that we would say we need wisdom. We need wisdom before we make a big decision, deal with a difficult situation, or talk to an individual who is struggling or needing help. Where do we find such wisdom? How do we make sure that we are proceeding the way God would have us to proceed? How do we know if the advice we are getting from others is what God would have us to do or not?

In order to develop Godly wisdom, three things are going to be necessary: prayer, study, and practice. We must be willing to spend time in prayer with our Lord if we hope to develop wisdom. We need time to talk to Him and to listen to Him; unhurried time. As we talk, and as we listen, we must pay attention to what the Spirit is quietly speaking to our hearts. It might be helpful to keep a journal in order to see what the Lord is saying over a period of days. And of course, as God speaks, we must obey.

We also need to take time to study God’s word, the Bible. If we depend upon feelings alone, what we think God might be saying, we will subject ourselves to the possibility of following our emotions as oppose to the leadership of the Spirit. Read the word of God. Pay attention to the circumstances of those to whom the word was written. Were they struggling? Were the caught in sin? Where they dealing with difficult situations? Who wrote the book? Why did he say the things he did? When was the book written? Where was the book written? As we discern these things, we will be able to properly discern how to apply the text to our lives.

Finally, we simply need practice. The more we base our lives on the word of God, and the more time we spend in prayer, the more we will effectively learn to live our lives in the wisdom of the Lord. There simply is no substitute for experience. In a day and age when we seem to devalue the wisdom of the old, it is exactly what we need. We need to gain our own wisdom by time and experience, but we also need to listen to the wisdom of those who are further along than we are.

As we pursue the wisdom of the Lord, let us make time to hear from God. He alone is the keeper of wisdom. The wisdom that comes from books, from others, or a quick search of the internet cannot compare to the wisdom of the Lord. Unfortunately, there is no app to simplify this search. We must create margin, we must take time, and we must allow God to work.