What I Lack is Wisdom

As I have grown older and wiser, the more I realize that I am lacking wisdom. If I depended on what appears to be the best course or best solution, I can often choose what has momentary benefit only to discover that it was faulty and sometimes even harmful. All of life is like this. Whether it is a project in my workshop, relationships, goal-setting, investing, or anything else of significance, I am prone to choose what is obvious to me. However, what is obvious is not always best or even advisable. Even when I have knowledge, I may incorrectly apply what I know in a situation or choice that requires some more careful thinking before acting.

Where to Go for Clarity

One clarity resource is the Old Testament book of Proverbs. I plan to teach a series of lessons to some friends in India in a couple of weeks. Because I have not mastered Proverbs or wisdom, I ordered some more books from authors I trust to help guide me in my studies and in the creation of the syllabus. One such resource, that is now in my Logos library on my laptop is by Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.: Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works.

A book about the book of Wisdom

God’s Enabling is Found in the Gospel

If I want to be equipped and enabled for life, I need to examine life at the cross. This perspective is quite humbling. It tells me that I am loved and that God’s work, even when it seems painful or hopeless, is for good. Here is one of the first things I saw in Ortlund’s book when I opened it for the first time on my laptop:

When God wants to drill a man

And thrill a man

And skill a man

When God wants to mold a man

To play the noblest part

When He yearns with all His heart

To create so great and bold a man

That all the world shall be amazed,

Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects

Whom He royally elects!

How He hammers him and hurts him

And with mighty blows converts him

Into shapes and forms of clay

Which only God can understand

How He bends but never breaks

When his good He undertakes

How He uses whom He chooses

And with mighty power infuses him

With every act induces him

To try His splendor out—

God knows what He’s about.

Ortlund wisely observes that “Wisdom is the gospel of Christ reshaping us for royalty, as God places us on his anvil and we trust him enough to stay there until his work is done.”[1]

  Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works, ed. R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 19.

The work God is doing is enabling me for what is best for me and for everyone in my life. To God, therefore, be the glory.

Five Minute Friday

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up.

[1] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works, ed. R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 19.