027: The beginning of Wisdom

March 14, 2010
Psalm 116, Proverbs 1-4

Wisdom. I’m reading a book titled, Decision Making and the Will of God, and the authors lay out a theory of decision making that relies heavily on wisdom. I guess that makes a lot of sense! I used to be obsessed with the book of Proverbs. At my home church, back in the day when we had enough middle school students to merit having a middle school age Sunday School, our pastor would meet with the pre and early teens to go through the book of Proverbs. It took about 3 years for him to make it through the book, which was about how long the students would stay in his classroom. I always figured if I could store up on wisdom early on in life, I’d save myself a lot of stupid decisions and bad consequences later on.

I suppose it’s worked, to some degree, but I’ve learned in the decade since I sat in the parsonage living room with Pastor Evert that wisdom must be continually applied to life in order to be beneficial. It isn’t enough to just have it as head knowledge and expect it’ll be useful, the knowledge also MUST be refitted to each moment and each decision in life. Otherwise it’s just facts and figures that have no bearing on being common sense.

I wrote yesterday about spending the next couple of days looking at rest in the Bible. I started my search in Psalms and Proverbs. Many of the passages I could remember seemed to be drawn from those books.

Here’s what I discovered today as I was attentively reading through the first couple chapters of Proverbs: rest begins with wisdom. Wisdom starts with fearing God and comes from God.

I confessed to Uncle Greg last night that I have been questioning the goodness of God. I’ve been asking a plethora of “why” questions in my heart. It’s putting me in a place of distance from God, because I’m being proud; I’m putting myself in a higher place than I have any right to be. I want God to explain to me why He’s doing what He’s doing, and why my life is unfolding the way it is, and what He’s planning to do next.

Uncle Greg told me straight up, “You have no right to be asking God those questions.” He’s right. God has communicated to me again and again and again – through the Bible and through my own life and through the lives of people I’ve heard about and know –that He IS a good God and that He IS trustworthy. Once again, like Eve, I’m committing the original sin: I’m questioning God’s word, assuming He’s been holding something out on me, and that I deserve more than what He’s giving me.

Perhaps the reason I’ve found rest so difficult the last couple months is because this has been an ongoing sin in my life. In my arrogance, I pridefully fail to see how I’m similar to sinners who have sinned before me.

I do want to be wise. Proverbs claims wisdom is greater than any kind of riches. In order to continue down a path of wisdom, though, I know I need to change my attitude and allow Jesus to change my heart so I can see my own depravity and come to a place of fearing God.