Living for Him = Seeking His Wisdom

Wisdom and understanding: can we ever get enough of both? It was interesting this morning to compare three wisdom texts, Proverbs 24, James 3, and Psalm 90.

When people are wronged, oppressed, maligned, we certainly pray for God to deliver them. Perhaps we even seek retribution ourselves; even if we do not, we can tend to feel indignant toward those “oppressors”. God assures us that He will deal with them eventually. We would do best to let Him be that arbiter of justice while we go about our search for His wisdom and understanding.

God does warn those who prey upon the righteous. Again, He will deal with those predators, and the harsh reality is that they have no future, no hope. What more could I possibly do regarding vengeance? I would only be trying to please myself. God’s holy plan is sufficient.

Fear the Lord, judge fairly. The rules are simple.

We all need to be much more diligent in life, when it comes to living for Him. My prayer is that my life, your life, never becomes metaphoric to match that in verses 30-34. Now is the time we have been given to get to work.

James, in Chapter 3 chimes in. This time, my focus shifted to the second half of the chapter. We covered the tongue and related warnings last time we were here. James challenges us to look for wisdom from above. The wisdom of the world is demonic, deceptive. Compare that to God’s: pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, unwavering, no hypocrisy. How do we attain to that wisdom? It certainly starts with His Word, and that healthy Fear of Him.

I then went to Psalm 90, an interesting perspective on wisely dealing with what God has for us. This psalm was written by Moses in the wilderness when Israel was wandering. Previously, Israel had decided not to go into the Promised Land, fearing the inhabitants as opposed to trusting in God. Their judgment was to wander in the wilderness until all those in that adult generation had died off. 38 years of wandering (it took about 1.5 - 2 years to trek from Egypt to Israel as God directed and prepared them), 40 years total. Most conservative scholars estimate the number of those adults was approximately 2 million. In 38 years, there are nearly 20 million minutes, so every 10 minutes, on average, someone was dying. That is a great deal of grief and stress to deal with, and in the middle of that, Moses disobeys, strikes a rock, and is also banned from entering the Land.

So, what does Moses write? “You are God.” “Teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.” Read through that psalm, listen to Moses’ prayer in the face of what he was dealing with. He knows the reason for the judgment, and never slights God in the least for His decisions. Rather, Moses continues to seek wisdom, to the end of His days.

SO WHAT…?

So, too, must we sek wisdom, God's, that is.

So, think about it. If we truly live for God, we will live wisely. If we are not living wisely, according to God’s commands, then we are not truly living for God. In short, we cannot say we live for him, and then not seek His wisdom. We cannot live with a mediocre fear of the Lord and yet say that we live for Him. Please pray and strive along with me to better fear Him and live for Him.