Sermon Central
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Only God's Wisdom
Contributed by Tom Tarpley on Apr 12, 2013 (message contributor)
Summary: choosing between worldly wisdom and the wisdom of God.
Seek after God’s Wisdom
Most parents will do everything they can to meet the physical, emotional, intellectual, and educational needs of their children. But many times the most important asset we can impart to our children is to give them a thirst and hunger for wisdom.
Wisdom is not like, intelligence, personality, and talent, wisdom is not in our genetic makeup. The only way to obtain wisdom is from God. The bible devotes one entire book on the subject of wisdom, Proverbs.
My favorite scripture in the entire bible is and has been since I first started to read the scriptures comes out of Proverbs. 3:5-6. Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart and do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in ALL you do, he will direct your paths.
I like the way he says All. Meaning everything, the whole kit and caboodle.
You know the Bible uses that word All depending on what translation you’re using about 5621 times.
Now lets look at our text for today which just happens to come from Proverbs.
My child, listen to me and treasure my instruction.
Tune your ear to wisdom, and concentrate on understanding.
Cry out for insight and understanding.
Search for them as you would for lost money or hidden treasure.
Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God.
For the Lord grants wisdom! From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. This is the word of God for the people of God.
Wisdom is OFTEN confused with intelligence.
To be able to create a computer program that will do some of the stuff that we do everyday takes a great deal of intelligence. Think about it, I type on my computer and people all over the world are able to read what I type in a matter of seconds..
Someone can push a button in NASA and a huge satellite in outer space will begin to turn to a different position.
It is mindboggling to think about how far we have come in the development of technology.
But intelligence does not guarantee us a productive and fulfilling life.
When it comes to raising children, building strong relationships, and growing in spiritual maturity we don’t rely on our intellect we rely on wisdom.
Real success in life, what God will recognize as success comes from --comes through acquiring wisdom that only God offers.
Another popular misunderstanding is that knowledge is wisdom. That is not the case. Knowledge is good but it is not wisdom. Knowledge without wisdom can sometimes be a real problem.
Wisdom enables us to act on the knowledge we have obtained.
Wisdom comes from God and the only way for us to get it is by having a healthy and vibrant relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Most people want a better understanding of the spiritual side of life but because of the temptations on the physical realm most don’t have the time or are aren’t simply unwilling to spend the time necessary to obtain that understanding.
A prime reason that many people don’t have a better understanding of God’s Word is due to their unwillingness to invest time and energy in persistent, and serious bible study.
If we really want to understand the scriptures we need to have a focused and systematic plan of study.
More importantly, after studying the word we need to make a commitment to apply the truths we learn from scripture to our daily lives.
When God sees that we are serious about pursuing truth and wisdom, he will open our minds to understand more and more of the magnificent mysteries of the spiritual life.
But we have to be serious and committed to God Which means we have to .
1. Love the Lord God with our whole heart, not just part of it.
2. We have to believe in the Lord Jesus as our savior and commit to following him with everything in us.
3. We have to be obedient to the commands of God.
These sound pretty simple and in a perfect world there would be no problem. But the fact is, we are not living in a perfect world. And there are many obstacles and barriers to living the kind of life that is pleasing to God.
The Bible is the bestselling book of all time. And you would think that with so many volumes sold that our world would be in better shape.
But buying a Bible and living by it are two different things.
Many of us own bibles but how much time do we really spend in it? Do we even spend as much time reading the scriptures as we do reading the newspaper of Facebook? It is truly amazing that the Bible remains at the top of the bestseller list but so few of them are worn out.
