Wisdom Matters

Corrie Ten Boom was part of a large family and network of believers who sheltered Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Eventually she and her sister were placed in a concentration camp which only she survived. Her story makes her words of hope all the more meaningful. In her autobiography The Hiding Place, she wrote, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

Hope is one of the most powerful spiritual blessings that God provides. Paul encouraged the church in Rome by saying, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” Paul wrote his important letter of theology to the Christian church in Rome, closing his letter with those words of hope.

Paul and Corrie Ten Boom express a similar message. Our hope as Christians is found in God. Our heavenly Father is the source of all spiritual blessings. For those who know God and believe his word, the blessing of hope produces fruit in our lives as joy and peace.

It’s one thing to hope for the impossible or improbable. It’s another thing altogether when we place our hope in the promises of God. Christian hope is placed in the perfection of God. We have his word and thousands of years that stand as historical proof that God is true to his word. 

We also have within us the voice and power of God. The Holy Spirit is the person and power of Jesus Christ given to every Christian. Paul writes that when we believe, we have “the power of the Holy Spirit” and we are able to “abound in hope.”

The apostle Paul and Corrie Ten Boom would be the first to admit that our hope in God doesn’t mean we will never have troubles, fears, and anxieties. Instead, they would encourage us to know that our God-given and God-promised hope has the power to carry us through the difficult times of life with the promise that every Christian life leads to a joyous, happy ending.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Placing our hope in the God we know is wise. Our faith in God gives us the power to believe and fills us with abounding joy, peace, and hope. Wisdom is knowing God and knowing that he is our hope. 

God wants to bless your life with abundance so that you can then be a blessing to others. God’s blessing can make a nation great. God's blessing can make a person’s character great. Those who have been strengthened by God’s blessings can be used as a conduit of his blessings to others.

Seeing ourselves as others see us is easy. Thinking greatness belongs to a select few is normal. However, according to God, greatness belongs to anyone he chooses to make great. 

We are blessed by God so that we can be a blessing to others. Our blessings have an eternal purpose. Our prosperity has eternal value. We simply need to understand that our greatness is the work of God in and through our lives.

God wants you to live a blessed life. God wants to make your character—your name—great. Consider the impact that great leaders have had in this world. Now consider the impact great Christians have made through their words, actions, and influence.

God wants to bless you and make your name great. God wants to bless our nation so that we can be a blessing to others. God is able to bless our lives so that we can be a blessing to those around us.

How have you come to define greatness? Whose influence has impacted your name, your character? God wants to make his children great so that they can help others understand how to live blessed lives as well.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. And that path is a path to God’s greatness.

If I see someone driving an expensive car, I imagine they work hard and are good at what they do. If I see someone surrounded by laughing friends, I imagine they know how to be a friend to others. If I see the character of Christ displayed in a person’s love and compassion, I usually assume that they have submitted their life to Jesus as Lord and have learned to live submitted to his leadership. 

When you look for the Spirit of God in a Christian, he is often evident. The Spirit of God is the tangible assurance of our salvation. Our job as Christians is to walk closely with God’s Spirit so that we can live an upright life. People who live life with the daily presence of the Spirit find favor, honor, and the blessings of God. 

The psalmist wrote, “For the Lord Gᴏᴅ is a sun and a shield” (Psalm 84:11). Consider what those words meant to their original audience. The sun gave light to the path, provided heat for the cold, and gave direction to the traveler. A shield was the most important protection a soldier had against his enemy’s attacks. God is our sun and shield today, just as he was for the original recipients of those words.

It's important to acknowledge God, who has favored and honored us with our spiritual blessings. God gives “good things” to those who walk in his ways. Our great peace is knowing we have been blessed because those blessings indicate God’s favor in our lives.

When people have worked hard to buy a car, they don’t normally keep it in a garage. When people have wonderful friends, they enjoy meeting them for dinner or spending time with them at a party. Christians have been gifted with the person and power of Christ in our lives. God has favored us by gifting us with his holy character. We should walk through our lives “uprightly,” allowing God’s Spirit in us to be evident to others. 

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. To live wisely is to live an upright life, led by God’s Spirit. God “bestows favor and honor” on the person who chooses to walk in this way. And “no good thing” is withheld. His blessings indicate his favor on those who walk with his wisdom.

We often approach God with the things we want, hoping that God will give us some of the things we ask of him. That approach to God is not what Scripture prescribes. God is our Father and we are his children. Do you want your children to be “partially blessed,” or do you want your children to be greatly blessed? 

If we as parents want to give good gifts, how much more does our Father in heaven want to abundantly bless his children with good gifts?

Our approach to God should be as a child to their father. We approach God:

Confident that we are loved

Knowing that he is worthy of our awe and reverence

Aware that his ways are higher than our own

With the gratitude of one who humbly receives what has not been earned

The apostle Paul told the Ephesian church to praise God, “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.” We approach our Father with the understanding that he wants to give more than we know to ask for. God wants to bless our lives with an abundance that only he understands we need. 

We need to remember that God will always “out-give” our requests. We also need to remember that God’s blessings are about so much more than the “stuff” of life. We want our children to have material things, but, even more, we want them to have the spiritual blessings that mark a life that belongs to and is favored by Jesus.

The Holy Spirit of Christ is at work within us, guiding us along a path of righteousness that God will be able to abundantly bless. God will bless all he can but will not bless what is not blessable.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. His blessings are far more than we can ask or imagine. We need to remember who we are in Christ Jesus and know that our heavenly Father wants nothing more than to pour his abundance into our lives. We can strive to live wisely, keeping our lives on God’s path of wisdom, his path of blessing.

If all of God’s children gave 10 percent of their income to God’s kingdom work, there would be “no more need.” If every member of your church tithed, there would be no need for a giving campaign. If all of those who were blessed by the various content of Denison Ministries gave as God directed them to give, we would never need to send emails to ask for donations. How quickly would this world change if God’s people understood that 10 percent of their income belongs to God.

God told Malachi that when the full tithe is in his storehouse, all would be well. God told us to “put him to the test.” If God’s children tithed, the windows of heaven would open and the blessings of heaven would “pour down” until “there is no more need.” Imagine our world if it were blessed like that!

God has promised to bless our tithe. God has promised to “pour out” his blessings on those who will live with a godly perspective on their funds. God’s children don’t own 10 percent of what we make, but sometimes it’s kept anyway. If it takes more than 90 percent to support your lifestyle, something in your lifestyle is not dedicated to God.

No one likes to hear about tithing except those who tithe. There is joy in the knowledge that we are living obediently to God’s word. There is peace in knowing that God’s favor and blessing are being poured into our lives. It’s why God told us to bring that 10 percent into his storehouse. He knows how to turn that 10 percent into our blessings.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Giving to God’s kingdom work is wisdom and spiritual prosperity.

The Bible has a lot to say about the importance of unity. When Jesus was waiting in the garden for the soldiers to arrest him, he prayed for his disciples, asking that “they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). 

God has always wanted to bless the relationships of his children. Those relationships impact our daily lives and our witness to others. Proverbs 16:7 and the prayer of Jesus reveal the important key to having strong relationships with others. Our first priority is to maintain our strong relationship with God.

When our highest aim is to please God, we will live in ways that cause even our enemies to be at peace with us. It’s important to remember that a proverb is a statement of general truth. In other words, when we live to please God, it will help our other relationships improve as well. We can’t claim the proverb as a promise. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life yet was persecuted by his enemies. Jesus told us that when we walked closely with him, we should expect to be persecuted by some as well.

The proverb teaches us what is usually true for our relationships. Jesus’ prayer in the garden teaches us how to pray when our relationships are under attack. In both cases, our relationship with God, being one with God through Christ, is the path we are to take because it is the path of blessing.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Our relationships with others are important to God, and he has given us wisdom in Scripture to know how best to keep those relationships strong. Who has crossed your mind as you read or listened to these words? Take those thoughts to God and ask that your thoughts would be one with his. When you have God’s thoughts, you have your path of wisdom for every relationship. 

There are some interesting articles that discuss the way our brains have been created to work. More and more, science reveals the perfection of God. Research has determined that worry, fear, and anxiety function on the opposite side of our brains from things like trust and praise. In other words, the way to control our fears is to choose thoughts of trust and praise instead. When we use the opposite side of our brains, fears don’t control our thoughts.

When God told Isaiah “fear not,” he didn’t offer a suggestion or encouragement. Those words in the original language are written as a command. God commanded us to “fear not.” Then God told us how to use these brains he created us with to overcome the fear. He said, “Be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Fears interfere with our blessings when we allow our fears to control our thoughts and choices. God has told us what to do to keep that from happening. We are to move our thoughts away from the anxiety and take those thoughts to the power of God. Then God will strengthen us, help us, and hold us up with his right hand, the same hand that created all things, including our brains.

We cannot escape the fears and worries of this world, so God provided us with the wisdom to know how to control those fears rather than allowing the fears to control us. God’s word is our wisdom. He told the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. God wants to bless our lives, and he has “told us what is good.” To walk humbly with God means we cannot know the solutions to our worries without first submitting those worries to God. Our fears and anxieties will control us and keep us from our blessings unless we follow the path that leads us to the perfection and sovereignty of our righteous God.

We live in a culture that defines the word enough as “just a little bit more.” We fill bags with clothes that are perfectly good but not perfect enough. We read magazines or watch home improvement shows that cause us to look at a piece of furniture we love as something we no longer like.

It is possible to be surrounded by God’s blessings and live focused on what we don’t have instead of all that he has provided. 

I sometimes wonder how God is going to correct our way of thinking. God disciplines behaviors that keep people from understanding his truth. Paul told the Philippians, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” 

Has God met your needs? Has God given you more than you would ever have asked or expected from him? If that’s the case, praise him from whom all blessings flow! We won’t ever have all we want, but that’s because we will always want more than God wants us to have.

Paul taught that we have found favor with God if our “needs” are met. I remember when, as a young married couple, we rejoiced to open our small U-Haul and unload everything we owned into our little duplex. It took about one hour for four of us to get all of it off the truck and inside the house. We opened those boxes and had everything we needed to live. Four-plus decades later, we have so much more. We praise God, not for the stuff we have accumulated, but for all the years that “stuff” represents.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Wisdom sheds the light of God’s perspective on everything in this world. Do your blessings meet your needs? If so, you have been abundantly blessed. Wisdom is knowing you have lived on God’s path of blessing. Joy and contentment are the blessings of knowing you have everything you need according to his riches in Christ Jesus.

I still can’t say, “September 11th” and consider it just another day. But it is. There are news stories, video clips, and other reminders of that fateful day. But this year it is probably just the day that follows September 10. 

We might feel better if we believed that our country was truly “one nation under God.” Our money tells us the truth we need to know and trust. God loves to bless his people whenever he can. 

The prophet Isaiah told his people, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.” Does God still bless nations for the same reasons he blessed Israel? 

The new covenant was a new agreement between God and his people. Israel was supposed to be a land so abundantly blessed that all the people of the world would see the blessings and know Jehovah was the true God. The Israelites’ faith was to be the light that pointed all nations to their Creator.

The new covenant was ushered in after the old covenant was broken. Many of the Israelites had not been willing to honor and worship God and had not been obedient to his law. They had been able to “eat the good of the land,” but that blessing would not continue. 

The famine would come. The Assyrians would come. The land would be taken by others and the Israelites would no longer live under God’s covenant blessings. September 11 was a reminder that, under the new covenant, God’s blessings don’t belong to a land; they belong to people who have placed their faith in God’s Son.

God blesses a land when God’s people live with his blessings. We live with God’s blessings for the same reasons Israel did. “If we are willing and obedient” to God’s new covenant, we will “eat the good of the land.” Christians are the light of the world. Our blessings are supposed to show others that Jehovah is the one true God.

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Your faith can bring blessings to your life and to the lives of those around you. We need to be “willing and obedient” to God and our blessings will become a blessing to our land. That has always been God’s wise plan for his children.

I enjoy those news clips showing people holding a giant check because they have just won the lottery. Most of us have imagined what it would be like to become instantly rich. But plenty of follow-up articles have been written about the realities these lottery winners face. Many discover that money isn’t what makes a life “rich.”

The proverb says, “The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.” God’s blessings don’t come with a huge tax bill. God’s blessings are more likely to strengthen relationships with others rather than break them. God’s blessings should inspire fulfillment and peace, not greed or contention.

We can’t measure God’s richest blessings with a calculator or financial report. Even a good report from the doctor doesn’t guarantee blessing. The great blessing from God is the knowledge that he finds us “blessable.” When we have God’s favor, we are blessed. If God is pleased with your life, your life will be blessed.

When we consider the promise of our “citizenship” in heaven, we are blessed with the promise of eternal riches that include “no sorrow” at all. We belong to a perfect family who will always be our brothers and sisters. We have a perfect Father who has adopted us as his own. We have a home, health, and joyful peace and purpose forever.

Our blessings are often measured by the “stuff” of this world. Instead, we should consider the fact that our blessings come from the knowledge that we have been blessed with immeasurable riches. Every Christian is rich. Our inheritance is guaranteed.

Do you tend to measure your blessings using the standards of this world or by the promises of heaven? Many of the lottery winners talk about the problems their “win” brought to their lives. Having money didn’t make them “rich.” 

Living with wisdom is a path to God’s blessings. Knowing God and living with his promised salvation and the favor of his blessing will make us richer than we can possibly understand or imagine. If you are a believer, you have won the lottery. You are a child of God and you are promised an eternal inheritance. Be blessed today with the knowledge that you have found favor with God.