Tag: Growing in wisdom

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When Straight Paths Turn Hard

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“Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first produce of your entire harvest; then your barns will be completely filled, and your vats will overflow with new wine. Do not despise the Lord’s instruction, my son, and do not loathe his discipline; for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.” (Proverbs 3:9-12 CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the uniquely American contributions to religion around the world is the Prosperity Gospel. This is an insidious, heretical movement that masquerades as a kind of Christianity. The truth, though, is that it has little to do with the Gospel, but instead uses Gospel concepts to inflame greed and envy. Mammon is the real god it worships. It is one of the more cunning deceits the devil ever created to keep people out of God’s kingdom. The challenge is that verses like these exist which seem to give credence to its central claims that God wants us to be happy, healthy, and wealthy. Let’s talk about what we should do with sayings like this in the Bible, and why taking things fully in context matters so much.

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A Shield Against Perverse Paths

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“For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will delight you. Discretion will watch over you, and understanding will guard you. It will rescue you from the way of evil—from anyone who says perverse things, from those who abandon the right paths to walk in ways of darkness, from those who enjoy doing evil and celebrate perversion, whose paths are crooked, and whose ways are devious.” (Proverbs 2:10-15 CSB – Read the chapter)

Kiefer Sutherland’s famous character, Jack Bauer, from the series 24, made a really interesting observation at the end of the first season. When it was revealed that a former good guy had become a bad guy, he noted that the villains weren’t simply bad people. They were once good people who made a bad choice that was then followed up with another bad choice. It’s frighteningly easy to fall down a rabbit hole of bad choices that finds us winding up somewhere entirely other than we meant to go. Wisdom helps us avoid that. Let’s talk about it.

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The Fruit of Pursuing Wisdom

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“For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up success for the upright; He is a shield for those who live with integrity so that he may guard the paths of justice and protect the way of his faithful followers. Then you will understand righteousness, justice, and integrity—every good path.” (Proverbs 2:6-9 CSB – Read the chapter)

As we talked about last time, Solomon said to his son that following his instructions would lead him to understand the fear of the Lord. They would lead him to come to understand who God is. That seems like a pretty good deal all by itself, but Solomon goes on to give us a lot more than that. Over the course of the rest of the chapter, as well as the next several that follow, Solomon goes on to explain what are the results of coming to know the Lord. The results are, in a word, wisdom. As for what that wisdom brings, let’s start talking through it here.

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Unlocking Wisdom: A Journey Through Proverbs

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“The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: For learning wisdom and discipline; for understanding insightful sayings; for receiving prudent instruction in righteousness, justice, and integrity; for teaching shrewdness to the inexperienced, knowledge and discretion to a young man—let a wise person listen and increase learning, and let a discerning person obtain guidance—for understanding a proverb or a parable, the words of the wise, and their riddles.” ( Proverbs 1:1-6 CSB – Read the chapter)

Wisdom is not something our culture thinks much about. Knowledge, yes. Experience, perhaps. But wisdom, not so much. That’s too bad because we could use some wisdom nowadays. The choices we face as a people, as a nation, as a world are stark and filled with potential for great good or great harm. The answers to our biggest questions won’t be easy to come by—they rarely are—but the path to the best end will always be one lighted by wisdom. Today we begin a new journey. This is one I have wanted to take for some time, but have always put it off because it has seemed rather daunting. Yet daunting or not, we are going to begin tackling the best source of wisdom we have in the Scriptures. It won’t be a short journey, but, Lord willing, it will be a fruitful one. Let’s begin a trip through the Proverbs.

Let me add one more thing before we dive in. I’m trying something a little different today. You may have noticed this post doesn’t have what has been one of my standard post titles for nine years. Those two titles told you about how long a particular post was going to be, and they told you what Scripture we were going to be exploring together, but they weren’t particularly engaging. While the reach of this blog is global in a way I never could have imagined it would be (it has been viewed in something like 190 countries over its lifetime), it’s also not very big. I would love to see it grow from where it is, and if a search-engine-optimized title will help accomplish that, I guess I can change some. So, titles will look a bit different going forward, but hopefully they’ll be a bit catchier. In any event, on to the focus of the day.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 4:15

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“For you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When was the last time you got advice from someone else? I suspect it was fairly recently. Oh, it may have not come directly from a person – we tend to be far too isolated from one another these days for that to happen – but if you engage with any form of media (especially social media) you’ve probably received some advice. We live in a world in which there is no shortage of people waiting to tell us how we should live our lives (including, I suppose, this very blog). Some of the advice is general, some of it is very specific, but it is all looking for an opportunity to be given to us. And for all this advice, how are we doing as a people? Are we healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Maybe what we need is not more advice. Maybe Paul is onto something here in what otherwise seems like a stray observation. Let’s explore this a bit together this morning.

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