Month: May 2013

Last month my son went to Washington D.C. with his 8th grade class. It was a full trip with lots of new places to see but for my boy, he was drawn in to the war memorials. His great grandpa served in WWII, so to see the memorial opened his eyes and heart to the value of his family heritage. He came home with a new found passion for discovering more about those medals he had heard about. He wanted to get his hands on the dog-tags that hung around his great grandfathers neck, he wanted to know what each medal meant and searched for answers to bring greater understanding and insight.

You see, those medals always existed, the history was always there but when my boy began to uncover these things, he had new found value and understanding. The history became real to him and the possibilities became endless. He was hooked, he now knew the value of those items and it created an insatiable desire to know more.

My son, if you will receive my sayings, and treasure my commandments within you….Proverbs 2:1

When I first set out on this search for wisdom I was looking forward to finally being wise enough to fill the shoes of a 40-something. I figured it was time to add some depth to my knowledge and get a little of what that King Solomon had, into me. Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding….yadda yadda yadda…yes yes yes, get wisdom.

Little did I know the depths of wisdom or the value of it. I didn’t know that searching out wisdom is painstaking and you are to seek it like a treasure. I don’t even think I saw wisdom as a treasure to be found but something to be gained. I thought of wisdom as knowledge that is accumulated by learning and time. I had no idea we were going on a paleontology dig in the desert to uncover and resurrect dry bones.

If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will discern the FEAR OF THE LORD and discover the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:4

Seeking silver is no small task, it is tedious and meticulous. Wisdom is the same, seeking her as a hidden treasure takes time and tenacity and patience and pains, but the reward….with each sweep of the brush more of the rubble is removed, with each burn of the silver more of the impurities are brought to the surface, with each part of wisdom that is uncovered the reward is a treasure. The reward is understanding the fear of The Lord and the knowledge of God. As we uncover each piece of wisdom we are becoming more defined in our character.

Then you will discern righteousness and justice and equity and every good course. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; Discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you. Proverbs 2:9-11

Understanding the value of something is everything. Its one thing to know that wisdom is good and you want to be smarter, its a whole other ball game to have wisdom come alive and present itself as more precious then silver, a treasure that must be sought out and discovered.

Knowing the value is everything.

Imagine that your door bell rings and when you go to answer it, there is God.

or

Sit for a moment and think about what it would be like if you were having your quiet time with The Lord and as you sit and contemplate His truths, God just appears in your living room.

How would that blow your mind? How would that change your whole world? How would that take away all worldly fear and give you the true essence of the Fear of The Lord?

As I started out on this journey to discover WISDOM I never imagined it would open my mind and heart in the ways that it has. God is the one that gives wisdom, but the fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). Without a healthy understanding of the Fear of The Lord we won’t understand the rest of it, the rest of God’s truth, the Bible. It just won’t add up and it won’t do the work it is intended to do in your life.

In Hebrews 11:6 it says But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
Faith in God, believing in God, is the beginning of it ALL and then The Fear of The Lord comes from faith and the fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The fear of Lord would transform your life and if God just showed up for 5 seconds in your living room, just think how real the Fear of The Lord would be for you and for me. I tried to pretend that this actually happened and suddenly the mess of my home didn’t matter, my grey hairs were insignificant…even the box of color that restores them to their natural color no longer beckoned me. In a moment my earthly desires passed away, the shoes I had looked at the other day were no longer calling my name, the longing to get my master’s degree passed away, the want of Hot Tamales and chocolate was gone and my clothes didn’t matter.

What I wanted was to fall on my face and worship Him. What I longed for was to gather up my children and my husband and bring them to Him. Now my thoughts were consumed by His Glory, overtaken by his greatness and I was filled with everything that I ever needed, or wanted, or mattered. Fear of everything and anything else passed away. God was here.

5 seconds in the physical presence of God, or just the thought of it, redirected my course for this day. It has aligned my thoughts with the one and only living God. I am humbled to be given even the opportunity to think on this…it blew me away. My writing doesn’t do it justice, my tears are the proof of the power, my shaking hands as I write are telling that even the thought of such things change us and rock us to the core.

Will you take 5 seconds today, lay down the thoughts in your mind and just imagine if God showed up in the flesh….WHAT IN THE WORLD WOULD THAT DO TO YOU?

Now be careful not to let that go, don’t let the earth shaking moment and the impact it had on you disappear. Hold on to it carefully. The Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom, you need it to get it. When God isn’t in your tangible day to day life, you loose a little of the heaviness and power that God intends for you to hide in your heart. Don’t loose it….seek that fresh awareness every morning, every afternoon, every evening, every chance you get. I am convinced that this will change our world if we seek it!

Psalm 114:7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,At the presence of the God of Jacob

This Solomon guy in the bible is simply wrecking me and messing up my plans to gain wisdom.  I set out on this journey 4 weeks ago to have a gathering where we study God’s word, discuss it, go home and study some more and come back and chat about it.  The Lord dumped the word wisdom into my lap and off we were studying about wisdom.

My dad has always said “Your not tall enough for…” going to prom, moving to college, managing a business…etc.  It’s just a little joke between us and he doesn’t really mean that I must grow some inches before I can do the thing, he is probably more referring to wisdom(and the fact that watching his baby girl grow up is hard to fathom).  Perhaps what he was meaning to teach me was that, you are not yet wise enough to …

The problem is wisdom doesn’t add inches. And wisdom isn’t just about getting wise or smart or more sure.  Wisdom is one big can of worms that will keep our little group of women busy digging up for at least the next year, if not two!

Feel free to read back a post or two to get caught up but basically, we’ve learned that God is the giver of wisdom.  The beginning of wisdom is the Fear of the Lord.  The Fear of the Lord is not being afraid of God but having a reverence and awe of God that leads you to deep devotion for him and in a sense becoming afraid to do anything that would grieve him.  Time with God, studying his word, increases our hatred to sin and thus increases our fear of the Lord and the Fear of the Lord is the fertile soil where wisdom begins to grow.

Got that?….

OK, so as I get to know the writings of this Solomon, this ‘wise man’, of the bible, he’ starting to mess things up for me.  Wisdom no longer is about getting wiser and smarter and taller…apparently it has not eternal value and will cause much sorrow.  Its true, check it out in Ecclesiastes.  Just read the first chapter and you’ll be sitting with:

Because in much wisdom there is much grief and increasing knowledge results in increasing pay.  Ecc 1:18 

***don’t you just love autocorrect, and don’t you wish the word said increasing knowledge would result in increasing pay?  well it doesn’t, it results in increasing PAIN>  I couldn’t just correct this because I laughed and laughter is good for you.

The good news here is this conclusion stems from experimentation with purely worldly knowledge and learning which is what causes much grief and that increasing in worldly knowledge by itself (apart from divine knowledge and revelation) increases sorrow. This is because the very process of learning expands our awareness of our ignorance. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ makes more sense to me now.

It is God who has sewn into us the restless quest for meaning.  Our search for wisdom should be that of God’s wisdom not the worlds.  Our uncovering of things and the gaining of knowledge and wisdom can bring about discoveries of pleasing things but then there are 10 other things that we discover that will increase our sorrow.

…have patience to break through the sorrow of it…to find increase in heavenly wisdom brings joy and SECURITY.

As we left The Gathering we were charged with two action points.

(1) Continue to ponder the idea of wisdom that you had before we started studying it (getting smarter, wiser, knowledgeable) and the understanding that now growing in wisdom will cause some sorrow.

(2) Move into Proverbs 2 and chew on some stuff there a bit.

As for me, I’m gonna keep learning about Solomon, he is intriguing me….

**Meetings are Tuesday’s at 6:30….All are welcome!