#WISDOMSample

Think Differently

The way we see the world changes as we get older.

I don’t think the same way I did when I was a kid. Thankfully.

When we’re eight or nine, the whole point of being alive is tolerating school, then going home to play. Pretty simple really.

That’s fine if you’re eight or nine. The problem is that if we never get out of that way of thinking, and we still feel that way when we’re 20 or 30, that’s when bad things happen.

As we grow, our way of seeing the world has to grow. The first set of Proverbs asks us to realize that God is wise and if we respect that, we’ll begin to gain wisdom. The way some of us think – that you get what you can, no matter what, even sometimes to the point of violence (Proverbs 1:10-12) – is destructive and dangerous.

The greater problems of the world we live in have to do with who we’re listening to and who teaches us how to live.

Proverbs will talk a lot about “fools” – we start in 1:7 where it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” To respect the fact that God actually knows what He’s doing, and that to listen to Him and do what He teaches us is the best idea in the world. To do something different, well, not so great.

Imagine someone tells us that there’s a check waiting for us for $1 million dollars. It’s ours for the taking, in a bank 70 miles away. The catch is that we have to walk to the bank. My guess is that we’d figure out a way to walk that far. We’d crawl, struggle, stumble, whatever it took.

We’d do it because it was worth it.

The writer of Proverbs is describing the fool as someone who doesn’t think it’s worth it. Maybe God’s wisdom will be uncomfortable because it’s different. Maybe we’ll have to give something up to follow God’s wisdom. The question is this: Is it worth it?

As you read Proverbs 1, ask yourself the same question: Is God’s wisdom worth whatever it takes for me to know it and live by it?