Wisdom

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My son(daughter) be wise and make my heart glad.  Proverbs 27:11

We all want our children to be wise and to make good life decisions.  We often offer them more wisdom than they want.  Sometimes they listen and heed us but more often they probably think we are weird or just not up with the times and don't understand, so they go ahead and follow their own wisdom,  what they think will work.

But what about us?  God's vast wisdom is available to us freely (James 1:5), do we seek him, our heavenly Father, when making life decisions, even small ones, or do we lean on our own limited wisdom? That is quite an important question to ask.  One of my favourite verses is found in Proverbs 3:5-7 and it says this, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you the path to take."   It's pretty clear advice to God's people.  So often we don't do that because when passion is involved we can make some really poor choices.

Earlier this year we were thinking about how we wanted to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. We thought a European river cruise would be great but then we saw the struggles going on in Europe  with refugees etc and we decided against it.  HOWEVER, we recently received a brochure from one company offering really good deals, we got excited, even went to the travel agent and began to lock some things in, but we did involve God.  We prayed that God's wisdom would prevail: if details all fell into place over the weekend we would go ahead, if not, we would cancel.  Well, details did not fall into place and we cancelled.  We were a little disappointed, until two days later terrorism reared its ugly head again, this time in Belgium, and we felt glad to have followed God's wisdom.

In reading details surrounding Jesus' trial we see clearly how passion can cause people to make very wrong decisions. They put Jesus before Pilate who found no wrong in him but sent him to Herod to make sure.  Herod found no wrong in him and sent him back to Pilate.  He put it to the crowd, "I find nothing worthy of death has been done by him.  I will therefore chastise him and release him.  .....And they all cried out at once saying, "Away with this Man, and release to us Barabbas." Luke 23:13-24.  Three chances were given, three choices made...."crucify him".

In their passion they chose Barabbas, a terrorist; one convicted of insurrection against the government  and murder.   They chose instead to crucify Jesus, the most innocent man of all time.  Yes, we know God's hand was in this to bring about our salvation but it is a clear example of how passion can cause us to make very crazy decisions.

Will you choose to commit your decisions to God and follow his wisdom to make his heart glad?

Prayer:  Father God, forgive me for the times I have gone my own way, relying on my own wisdom.  Help me to remember to hold things loosely and ask your wisdom in life decisions. Amen