When I was a boy at my father's knee, the pride and joy of my mother, He would sit me down and drill me: "Take this to heart. Do what I tell you—live! Sell everything and buy Wisdom! Forage for Understanding! Don't forget one word! Don't deviate an inch! Never walk away from Wisdom—she guards your life; love her—she keeps her eye on you.Above all and before all, do this: Get Wisdom! Write this at the top of your list: Get Understanding! Throw your arms around her—believe me, you won't regret it; never let her go—she'll make your life glorious.She'll garland your life with grace, she'll festoon your days with beauty."
Proverbs 4:3-9
We make the mistake of not being willing to establish habits in our lives that allow us to gain instruction or discipline. We look for the fast and quick fix and are not willing to sacrifce our time, our televison, our sleep for the instruction to gain wisdom. We do not take the time to read, to be quiet before God, to examine our thoughts, or to practice being kind. We like to think that we can hear someone else talk about it - the pastor on Sunday morning, the counselor, the television preacher, the self-help book - and we will somehow receive "wisdom" from this one experience without having to receive any further instruction or discipline. Then we think that we can be "disciplined" and act like we have been encouarged to through some form of self-will or trying. We have it backwards! We must first live in discipline to understand the instructions and practice. Once this is done we begin to have wisdom and we act out the instructions.
We must first begin with really understanding the mind of Christ and really knowing God. We must cultivate this relationship and allow things to grow in God's timing not ours. (I call it faith and you can see previous post on this.) When this discipline (instruction) is practiced, we find wisdom (an effective course of action). Then we are told:
Skilled living gets its start in the Fear-of-God, insight into life from knowing a Holy God.It's through me, Lady Wisdom, that your life deepens, and the years of your life ripen.Live wisely and wisdom will permeate your life; mock life and life will mock you.
Proverbs 9:9-11
Bring instruction to your life today. Give up something that you think is so precious to pursue instruction/discipline to gain wisdom. You are not a failure, you are practicing how to be holy. Practice it daily in and outside the game of life. Allow life to grow and go at God's pace, do not try to speed it up because when you do you kill life. Wisdom is found in learning and practicing the instructions.
Namaste'
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1 comment:
I believe you are right about wisdom being the actual application of discipline and instruction. Two Scriptures that come to mind are,
"the fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom" and "If you love me you will keep my commandments"
For me, both of these Scriptures speak of an encounter with God that imparts new insight and from this new insight we have a choice to act in accordance with that knowledge.
Without this starting place of an encounter or relationship with God, (something that takes time through methods like the ones you list in your post) I do not believe that we can put our knowledge into practice and if we seek that relationship through others only, such as the counselor, preacher, book, etc. we lack the power that comes through a personal relationship with Jesus that can empower us. For example:
I sometimes hear people say, "If you love Jesus prove it by obeying Him." But I do not think that they stop to think about the order of both verses above. The encounter comes first. First we encounter and then fear God, which is the beginning of wisdom. In the New Testament verse above we first encounter Jesus and His love for us and experience it as true and real and then having encountered this Jesus we are better able to obey Him. As another Scripture supports, "Not that we loved Him but that He first loved us". Therefore, it seems to me that our willingness to take time to be with Jesus (always through the door of Grace and Mercy given us in the Gospel) is far more empowering than relying on our own willpower to follow any set of rules no matter how good they are or how well taught they are. As Paul says in Romans that all rules, even the rules of God's law, are for the natural man only a ministry of condemnation and that the purpose of these laws was to drive us to Christ (a personal relationship).
Summing up: I agree with you that we need more personal relating to God (recognizing our own natural inability)so as to move from knowledge to wisdom as "Jesus Himself has been made wisdom for us"
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