Friday, Nov. 2

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Friday

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.  - James 1:5-8

Let’s revisit this passage from James 1 about asking God for wisdom in the midst of trials.  As we saw yesterday, it is often in the midst of trials and suffering that we are most likely to need the wisdom of God to help us through.  In verses 5-8, James tells us that we need to do essentially three things to obtain this kind of divine wisdom;

1.  We must know our need

2.  We must know our God

3.  We must ask in faith

By nature, all of us are self-sufficient know-it-alls: “Mom, I can do it by myself!” In America, it’s the spirit of rugged individualism, or the self-made man.  But I’m sure that every culture idolizes the strong person who seems to have it all together by himself, because pride is endemic to the human heart.   To come to God, we must humble ourselves and admit that we do not know what we need to know in order to live joyfully in the face of trials.  In fact, one of the main reasons that God may send us trials is to humble us of our pride, so that we look to Him.
Once we recognize our need for wisdom, we must know where to look for it. This means knowing that God is the source for all wisdom.  To ask God for wisdom implies that we believe He can deliver.  The Bible plainly states, 

Proverbs 2:6 -  For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. 
Proverbs 21:30 - There is no wisdom and no understanding and no counsel against the Lord.

In other words, if worldly “wisdom” contradicts or goes against God, it is false “wisdom.” Only God’s wisdom stands.  I enjoyed taking philosophy classes in college. “Philosophy” comes from two Greek words meaning, “the love of wisdom.”  But I discovered that worldly philosophers are not so much in love with wisdom as they are with their own wisdom! They are not so much interested in how to live wisely before God, whose existence they question or deny, but rather in showing how wise they are in being able to win arguments.

Writing to those who took pride in the great Greek philosophers, Paul contrasted the so-called wisdom of this world with God’s wisdom as seen in the cross of Christ (1 Cor. 1:18-30).  He sarcastically asks (1:20-21), “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar?  Where is the philosopher of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”  The point is, if you have not come as a sinner to the cross of Christ to obtain God’s mercy through faith, you do not know God and thus you cannot obtain the wisdom that comes only from Him.

Finally, James simply says that if you lack wisdom...you should ASK for it!  This might sound obvious or simplistic, but how many of us simply do not ask God in prayer for the wisdom we need to make it through each day, let alone through major trials?  

James goes on to say that we must ask God for wisdom “in faith without any doubting” (1:6), and that the one who doubts is “a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (1:8).  The Greek word, literally, is a “double-souled” man. It refers to a man whose heart is divided between allegiance to God and the allurements of the world.  In other words, he’s not talking about psychological uncertainty, or intellectual questions, he is talking about someone who is not really sure that he wants to know God’s wisdom, because he isn’t fully committed to submitting to it.  It would be nice to know God’s wisdom for his situation, but be- fore he commits to obeying it, he needs to find out if he likes it.  In other words, he’s shopping for answers that fit what he wants to do.  If God’s wisdom sounds good, he’ll follow it.  But if worldly wisdom sounds better, he’ll follow that.  James says that such a person will not receive anything from the Lord.

It is not wrong to have questions, but when we come to God asking Him for wisdom to carry us through, we must believe that God is who He says is and that He will deliver!

Jeff Frazier