A Little Wisdom Please Series

You Know You’re Getting Old When…

1. You and your teeth don’t sleep together.

2. Your try to straighten out the wrinkles in your socks and discover you aren’t wearing any.

3. At the breakfast table you hear snap, crackle, pop and you’re not eating cereal.

4. Your back goes out, but you stay home.

5. Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio.

6. Happy hour is a nap.

7. You’re on vacation and your ENERGY runs out before your money does.

8. It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired.

9. You are on first name basis with your pharmacist

10. Getting “lucky” means you found your car in the parking lot.

11. It takes twice as long - to look half as good.

12. Everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt - doesn’t work.

SHOULD KNOW YOU ARE GETTING OLDER BY THE WISDOM YOU HAVE!!

1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

• Anybody here not lack wisdom?

• Most serious and most common when we don’t have wisdom in the midst of a difficult situation.

James reminds us that trials are certain and unavoidable.

The question is not what to do if trials come, but what to do when trials comes.

Verse 5, he tells us how to pray and what to ask for when trials come.

James tells us that we should ask for wisdom.

Most always ask for deliverance or revenge but rarely wisdom

What is this wisdom for which we should pray?

First, wisdom is not knowledge. It is possible to have knowledge and not have wisdom.

‘Education without instruction in religion and morals will merely result in a race of clever devils’

We live in a day and time when man’s knowledge is expanding rapidly.

• 1845-1945(inch) 1945-1975(3inches) 1975-today(out of sight)

A new pill that patients can take. It is not a pill that relieves pain or cures some sickness but is actually a camera that will take pictures of a person’s intestines.

Who would have ever thought that the day would come that we would be swallowing cameras?

Man’s knowledge has made him capable of doing things that defies imagination.

Yet the knowledge explosion of our generation does not necessarily translate into man being wiser.

A person can have a PhD from Harvard or Yale and not be wise. You can know a lot about certain things and be considered an expert in a certain field, yet not be wise.

Wisdom is not knowledge - not education - not the possession of information.

Job 32:9, “Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.”

What is wisdom? “the God-given insight into our human circumstances and situations that enables man to see God’s will…”Wisdom is seeing life from God’s point of view.

James talks about seeing our trials from God’s point of view and evaluating from His perspective.

1. WISDOM REQUIRED!

“Unless there is within us that which is above us, we will soon yield to that which is around.” When James talks about wisdom he is talking about something within us that comes from above that equips and enables us to deal with that around us.

A. The Lack Of Wisdom. “If any of you lack wisdom…”

The word “lack” speaks of something that is “absent or missing.” It is very obvious that James views an absence of wisdom as a serious matter.

Wisdom teaches us to that our trials are not without rhyme and reason. ROMANS 8:28

Wisdom equips us to face our trials and enables us to trust God with the purpose and end result.

If we do not see that trials have a divine purpose, our trials can make us bitter, leaving us frustrated, discouraged, and complaining.

We need to pray so we can see trials from a divine perspective and be able to face them.

A lack of wisdom leaves us unable to see the trials for what they are and leaves us without the ability to face and cope with the trials.

B. The Longing For Wisdom. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God…”

“ask” means more than just asking for something. The word carries the idea of “desiring, craving, or begging.” James is telling us that our asking for wisdom comes from a longing for wisdom. When we face the trials of life we should ask God for wisdom.

We should ask with a deep desire that God give us what we need to understand and face our trials.

Wisdom is the ability to understand that trials have a divine purpose and the ability to face our trials and go through them.