Actually Ask For Wisdom
If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.
James 1:5-8 (NLT)
Here we have a verse that encourages us to ask for wisdom… So why often don’t we? You know what I think? I think we talk a lot, and don’t actually get to the ‘doing’ part of things. Let’s dig in a bit together. The verses just before these are some that I personally struggle to understand. I can read the words and get an idea of them but the application is what is really a huge struggle for me. Do you know what they are? “Consider it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you suffer trials…” Ugg. It is so hard to consider trials joyful, isn't it? Yet there it is in scripture calling us to align with this truth. I have been spending a lot of prayer here the last few years. Asking the Spirit to help me embrace this truth. Regardless, these verses give context for the passage that we are considering today. When we are in trials … we need to ask for wisdom. But do we? Or do we get lost in the trial? I often do… I get so focused on my pain that I often forget to look up and seek God for wisdom in the midst of what is hard. Pain and suffering often have us looking more at ourselves than at the Lord. Pain hurts. We want to protect ourselves. We pray for pain to be removed, but do we ask God to reveal its purpose for being there in the first place? Self-pity, blame, and too much introspection are evil traps. Instead, let’s be a people that learn to stop, remember the truth of God’s Word, and ask. Then let’s wait on God before we move, because He says He is generous and wants to give us wisdom, so expect it to come.
Another thing that is highlighted to me today is that we have to know that we NEED or LACK wisdom in the first place. The human race is not great at this either … admitting we need or that we lack what we don’t have. Pride is a stubborn pain in the butt. It keeps us from seeking the very thing we need most in hard circumstances or heck in even seemingly easy ones. What if we actually confessed that? What if we said out loud, “Wow God, I am so sorry, I am filled with pride, and I need You and Your wisdom.” This could start something big in us! What if we started asking regularly ( with regular confessions of our pride) and asking God for wisdom to be poured out on us. What could happen if we did that? We see that Solomon was granted wisdom when He asked… and it was lovely at first, so profound and God-glorifying. As soon as He refused to heed the wisdom given, he got comfortable in his pride, and got lost in the life God had blessed Him with. Let’s be a people who continually set aside our pride, ask for wisdom, and then walk it out in obedience, making sure to give God the glory for His wisdom. We could be a church filled with the wisdom of Solomon.
I have also noticed that later in James 4, it says that ‘we do not have because we do not ask, and we often ask with the wrong motives.’ Above in our current verses it says something similar! We often ask with ‘divided loyalty’ it says in verse 6, divided between our own ideas or the worlds ideas, and the real wisdom of God. If we truly want the wisdom God has - the truth, the right way, the pathway that will take us through the storm - then we must set down our ways, our thoughts, the world’s ungodly wisdom, and learn to be needy for God and His ways. Our posture must change, our heart must look up and admit we are in desperate need of something we do not possess. That needy posture should feel like someone desperate for a drink of water on a scorching hot day. Water is the only thing that will truly sate us, just like wisdom is necessary if we want to glorify God, and serve the people God has given us to love. Anything else we give will simply not satisfy, so why bother?
This seems easy right? Practical truth usually is pretty simple. NOW we must actually apply this! We must go through the actual steps, so don’t just think about them, or wax poetic in a small group. Speak it out! Confess your pride, ask for wisdom, and then keep doing it! Ask for the big and the small things, and then actually do what is asked of you, and be obedient. Lastly, don’t forget to give God the glory for the beautiful gift of wisdom He has given you!