Tag Archives: being wise

Wisdom is something each of us should desire to have in our lives. It helps us to make the best decisions regarding our life and actions. Google defines it as, “The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement.” It’s more than just knowledge; it’s how to use your knowledge in the most effective way. There are people with a lot of knowledge that have very little wisdom. It’s important that you and I get wisdom.

In my life, I’ve only found three ways to get wisdom: praying to God for it, asking those more experienced for theirs and making mistakes. Of those three, praying to God for wisdom seems to be the easiest for me to do. God knows how flawed I am and where the limits of my wisdom lie. There are no secrets between us because He sees everything. I rely on James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally” (NKJV) I’ve asked Him many times in my life for it, and I’m sure I’ll ask many more.

Asking others for their wisdom seems to be harder. As I get older, I want to prevent those coming behind me from making the same mistakes I did. I try to offer unsolicited insight and wisdom to them, but just like I wouldn’t listen when wisdom was offered to me, they won’t listen either. Pride and stubbornness stand in the way of getting wisdom from other people. We’d rather fail than to ask someone else for their help. When we fail, we get wisdom the costliest way of all. At a minimum, it costs us double the time, double the effort, and double the energy to get what we could have received freely.

As discussed earlier, getting wisdom is more important than getting knowledge. Proverbs 16:16 says, “Get wisdom—it’s worth more than money; choose insight over income every time” (MSG). Getting wisdom should be more important to us than getting money. That’s a powerful statement in today’s world. Money comes and goes, but wisdom stays with you a lifetime. If God or others are willing to freely give you wisdom that’s worth more than money, sit down and listen. It’s a lot cheaper and easier than getting it the hard way.