Jan 28 2018 More Practical Ways to Grow in Wisdom

Lord, thank You that You have blessed us. Our sins are forgiven and we come before You clean in every way – there is no guilt because You have paid for our sins. You make all things new. You healed our brokenness – you took that upon You. You want to conform and transform us to Your glorious image. As we sang – You work all things together for good that we might be conformed to the image of the Son.
As we are going through Proverbs – in this Year of Wisdom - soon Lent starts, when we will go through the book of Job. I love studying it – there is so much there that we have to get into it.
Proverbs 2:1 My son, if you receive my words, and store up my commands within you, 2 by making your ear attentive to wisdom, and by turning your heart to understanding.
As we talked about last week – Proverbs were written for the sons of the royalty – part of a formal training program – even though it says, sons – it applies to all of us – we can all gain much from this book. When the father says – listen to my words, he is not saying – open your ears and hear – or pay attention to your bible – but understand, receive, and apply God’s wisdom to every part of your life. It is not enough to just hear it. We must hear it to understand and apply it to our lives. God’s wisdom for us – as we listen to it properly – should transform who we are as a person.
As we read the Bible – it is not enough to leave your quiet time with an inspiring thought – we must allow God’s wisdom to do its work in the inner parts of our lives.
Today I will go through some practical ways to apply wisdom
To get the most out of God’s wisdom, we must be willing to learn new stuff. Too often, we have our minds made up – we know what we know and that is good enough. But in order to grow, we must learn new things.
Eccl. 4:A poor yet wise lad is better than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive instruction.
As we get older, it is easy to stop learning.
Like a banana: If you’re green you’re growing – if you’re ripe you’re rotting! Or more like an avocado – but there are only like 3 seconds where it is just right. We can be overdone – like this king who stopped learning.
As a pastor, sometimes people come to me and say – God told me to do this – what do you think? And you know what I say? Who am I to argue with God?!
Part of this – I have committed myself to be a life-long learner. I do a lot of reading for my work – and for my schooling – but it is all theological/soul stuff – and I never read a lot of fiction.
She gives me two things to work on and I give her two things to work on – and one that she gave me – to read a book of fiction – her choice.
This is not about just getting an education. I want to be a life-long grower. To always be in a growing process, spiritually, personally – in our marriages – we should always be growing. Whether it is opinions and convictions – we should be growing. You can have strong opinions and convictions yet be open to learn and change!
If you are not open to learn, or possibly, to change, maybe you don’t have as strong of convictions as you think. A person of strong convictions is not afraid of other convictions – thinking about them and pondering them and being willing to listen. It is the person whose convictions aren’t as strong as they think they are that are unwilling to change.
Acts 17:11 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
Paul is speaking of the Bereans – and if you read the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul showers them with praise – but the Bereans are even more so – they took what Paul said and examined it with the Scriptures. So often, our opinions and convictions are formed in our early Christian experience – in those years we have these convictions that are formed, but for many – those convictions stay the same though they may have never been examined. An example – End Times. If you became a Christian when I did – you read Hal Lindsey’s book – and if you were raised in the 90s, you read the Left Behind series. But if those views are never examined personally… - I would say this to you – don’t ever take what I say – and say – Mike said it! But rather, take what I say and examine it yourself.
Plato is supposed to have said (quoting Socrates) – “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And Mike Marette supposedly says – actually, I’m saying it right now: “the unexamined conviction/opinion is not worth having.”
You might think- I don’t have time! I understand that – you don’t have the time I have to examine scripture – and here is what I would say.
Let’s go back to the end times thing – you like what Hal Lindsey had to say – but I would say – hold your conviction in process. If you don’t have time to examine scripture – hold it lightly. If you heard someone else say it – maybe qualify it with that. But we can be very dogmatic about things we are not sure of – not just in theology, but in all kinds of things. People are so right – but don’t know a third of what they would need to in order to be right.
There are certain things that the church has agreed upon from the earliest days of the church – for instance – Jesus is fully Man and fully God. We can say with confidence – the Creeds tell us these things. And the church has hammered it out and Christians have always agreed on certain things. The resurrection – it has been shown over and over again. BUT – there have been many things where there have been disagreements – and those things we need to hold lightly.
Another practical thing to help us learn, receive and apply God’s wisdom.
Listen to and read peoples’ opinions whom you don’t agree with.
If you go to buy a car and all you read is Honda literature, which car will you buy? Honda – but there are a lot of other car makers out there! What I don’t mean – is to read wicked people’s stuff. There are people who deny the resurrection and that will be of no help. There are many different convictions about the varied aspects of Christianity – and many here hold many different views – but we read to understand why someone thinks what they do.
There are 3 or 4 camps about the end times – and there are good solid Christians in each of those camps – but we need to learn and discern – why do they believe what they do. Sometimes reading someone you disagree with will affirm what you already believe – and other times, you will learn something new and discover that your way may have not been right.
Prov. 2:1 My son, if you receive my words, and store up my commands within you, 2 by making your ear attentive to wisdom, and by turning your heart to understanding, 3 indeed, if you call out for discernment– raise your voice for understanding– 4 if you seek it like silver, and search for it like hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand how to fear the LORD, and you will discover knowledge about God. 6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
Store up – treasure – deposit it into your bank account – and then let that bank account build up – build your portfolio of wisdom! We all want our portfolios to grow! But God is saying – Build your wisdom account! Treat wisdom as the thing you consider most valuable. The world counts gold and silver – as most valuable. He is saying – you – count wisdom as that.
Wisdom is so important – use all of your faculties in pursuit of wisdom. Don’t just dabble in it. When He says ‘heart’ – he is not speaking of the physical heart – but the mind/will/passions/and emotions – and it was located in our guts.
But He is saying – our entire inner being. That which makes us who we are – all of those things should be devoted to gaining wisdom.
I have a guilty pleasure – the only reality show I watch – an old guy show - I watch ‘Gold Rush’ on the Discovery Channel.
They get a site – a claim – and the first thing they have to do – remove overburden – all this stuff has piled up on where the gold might be – oftentimes 10 to 30 feet deep. They go in with bulldozers and they haul away all this dirt – massive sites – and they get down to where the gold is. That is how we need to search for wisdom.
How do you dig for gold? It takes a lot of work. You can’t expect to take a few shovels in your back yard and expect to find gold –
This mine was one of the deepest at 3.9 km in 2012. Now it is way beyond 4 Km – you have to go deep. Same thing with wisdom.
If you seek and gain wisdom – you will learn to fear the Lord – so it is circular, in a good way – you fear the Lord, you gain wisdom – and you fear the Lord more and gain more wisdom.
It accumulates – it multiplies within us.
Prov 2:5 then you will understand how to fear the LORD, and you will discover knowledge about God. Psalms – David says I will run the way of thy commandments and Thou wilt strengthen me -
6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
First we need to give all of our effort to gaining wisdom – then in v 6 He gives it.
Tim Keller: “Prov. 2 – there is much teaching in how wisdom develops and grows within us. At the start, we are confronted with a paradox – Wisdom is something we should seek. Just as wisdom calls out in the streets, so we are to call out for wisdom – But after she calls us to the greatest of effort, likening it to searching for hiden treasure – but ultimately wisdom is a gift from God. This is found throughout the entire Bible: Phil. 2 calls us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but then immediately adds – for it is God who works to will and to act for His good purpose.
If it were all up to us, we would labor under crushing anxiety and burnout. But if God only worked apart from us, we would lose all initiative. The paradox gives us enough incentive and assurance to pursue God our whole life long.”
That is what God wants – to pursue Him – and to always be learning and growing. The good news – we can always make progress from wherever we find ourselves.
Prov. 3:13 Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who obtains understanding. 14 For her benefit is more profitable than silver, and her gain is better than gold.
Better than gaining wealth. That is hard for us to believe but it is true in our culture.
15 She is more precious than rubies, and none of the things you desire can compare with her.
What do you pursue? What do I really pursue? Security? Wealth? Love? Go through honestly.
16 Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. 17 Her ways are very pleasant, and all her paths are peaceful. 18 She is like a tree of life to those who obtain her, and everyone who grasps hold of her will be blessed.
In our world, people pursue wealth, stuff, gadgets, - I’m not condemning having those things – but it replaces God for so many – and if you find yourself trapped in consumerism, as we all do at times – it is just part of our culture – it is so ingrained in everything we do – if you find yourself in that situation – here is my advice: begin a furious pursuit of wisdom. Counter that with a pursuit of wisdom from God.
The Proverbs talk about – Old Testament wise people are called sages, a term too hipster for us – early church called them mystics – even more hipster – but simply, Sages are older people who have walked with God in faithfulness for a long time and as a result, they have a lot to say. We need Christians today who have walked faithfully with God for many years.
He who walks with wise people will be wise. It is very simple.
I was visiting with my dad earlier this week – Mom’s dementia is getting worse. Nonetheless – when they moved back – they had to rejoin their church where he was a deacon for years. The deacons came – What is God teaching you? That is easy – I have one job – to care for my ailing wife. That is what God is teaching me.
When I first became a Christian – my mentors were 5,6,7 years older than me – and that was good. But it wasn’t until I was in my late 30s that I had a mentor 30 years older than me – and there is tremendous value in being around people who have walked with the Lord for a long time.
Prov. 7:1My son, keep my words and store up my commands within you. 2 Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. 3 Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Say to wisdom, "You are my sister," and to insight, "You are my relative."
As a young Christian, we kept memory verses. Write them on your heart. That is much more than just read your Bible every day. To write something on your heart, it is going to hurt. You’re going to know it.
Seek wisdom for application - not about being smarter than everyone else – but allowing yourself to be changed on the inside.