Our Desperate Need for the Wisdom That God Gives

From the desk of Dr. R.L. Taylor, Th.D. As Christians, we need God’s wisdom to get through life successfully because it’s hard to distinguish what is truly right with leaning to our own understanding. We need God’s wisdom to help us discern and make good decisions. Otherwise, we’re just floundering around doing what we think is best (which isn’t really best), or doing whatever we want (which is really worse). We are human. We can only grasp so much of how the world works and how God’s intricate plan fits into it and includes us all. Because of our limited understanding, we have to rely on God, who knows everything, to guide us through all of life’s circumstances… even the ones we think we know how to navigate through on our own. The Bible defines heavenly wisdom a little differently than Merriam Webster. James 3:17 says: “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” Two things that stand out here as distinctly different from our earthly wisdom are the words “pure” and “without hypocrisy.” By nature, we as humans are not pure. As Christians we have been made new and holy by the grace of God and Jesus’ sacrifice, but the sinful tendencies still remain. We are imperfect creatures who are anything but spotless. My point is apart from God, we cannot have pure wisdom if we ourselves aren’t pure. We also can’t be without hypocrisy. Our life experiences and personalities make our perspectives skewed to a certain degree. For that reason, everything we see in the world is colored by the lens of our perspective. Therefore, we can’t look at something and make a decision with the complete objectiveness that heavenly wisdom has! God’s wisdom is the only perfectly objective and accurate way to look at situations in life and make decisions. We have a desperate need for God’s wisdom. James says to you and me, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). How gracious is our God?! Be encouraged!