Gaining A Heart Of Wisdom Series

What do you value most in life? The question is not what you should value most. The question is what do you value most in life?

The answer to that question is not found in what we say we value. The answer is found in how we invest our lives—how we invest the precious minutes, hours, and days of our lives. Every day we make multiple decisions about what we will do with our time, energy, and money. Will I read my Bible, or will I listen to one more news broadcast? Will I visit that friend in the hospital, or will I watch one more TV program? Will I give God a tithe of my salary, or will I use that money for something I want? Decisions ultimately determine destiny. And those decisions are always driven by our value system—the value we place on various opportunities before us.

Are you valuing the valuable? Or are you selling out cheap? On the Jewish calendar we are in the Ten Days of Awe that end Thursday September 16th at sunset. It is a time of reflection as we move into a new year. It is a good time to ponder questions like this?

The most valuable thing you have is time. Each one of us only have so much time to live out our life. In various ways the Bible exhorts us to think about that fact and invest every moment wisely. How will you invest next week? Do you have a plan? How will you invest the next five years of your life? Will you give yourself to the accumulating of things? Will you give yourself to pleasure and comfort? Will you work hard to insure a secure future? Will you make time to serve others? Will you make time to pray? Will you invest in your family relationships? These issues challenge every one of us. There are no exceptions.

You have in your possession something very precious: time: minutes, days, months, and years. We use that currency to pursue the things we want. We pursue personal goals whether those goals are objectively thought out and defined or simply general desires in our minds. But here is the subject we will focus on today: You will set goals and invest your life toward those goals based on you consider to be valuable. What are you reaching for in your life? You will reach for that which you deem valuable.

Moses addressed this subject in the prayer he prayed in Psalm 90. In verse 12 of that Psalm, he asked the Lord: “. . . teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.”i Gaining a heart of wisdom was a high priority for Moses. He considered that something worth pursuing in life. And in that passage, he says a key factor in gaining that heart of wisdom is that we learn “to number our days.” We recognize that we have only so many days in this life to gain that heart of wisdom.ii Then we don’t waste them on vain pursuits.

In the Hebrew mindset, wisdom was tied to the fear of the Lord.iii Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”iv The source of wisdom is “the knowledge of the Holy One”—knowing the Holy One. We gain wisdom as we come to know him more and more intimately. The Greek concept of wisdom is found in intellectual ability to put facts together logically. It centers on intellectual capacity. The Hebrew concept of wisdom is found in living in right relationship to God and others. It centers on how we live. And Proverbs 9:10 teaches us that biblical wisdom comes through relationship with God—learning about him from the revelation he has given in his word and learning his ways through experiential interaction with him. We get to know him as we commune with him in our hearts. We learn of him and learn from him as we hear his voice and follow his guidance That’s “ the knowledge of the Holy One” this verse is talking about.

And where does that understanding begin? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The fear of the Lord is a major theme in Scripture. What is it? It has to do with our attitude toward God, how we think about God, who we understand him to be, and ,therefore, how we relate to him.

The fear of the Lord begins with an appreciation of his greatness and majesty. Psalm 33:6 tells us something about that. “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” Think about the vastness of all the galaxies in the universe. It includes billions of stars that extend beyond our ability to even see all of them, let alone create something comparable. The majesty of that creation alone should cause us to stand in awe of God. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”v