Understanding and Walking in Wisdom -1 by Abraham Adeyeye

In order for us to be able to exploit the opportunities that are ahead of us in the new year, we need to be able to apply the promises of God for our lives in the most practicable way. That means applying the wisdom of God, in each one of His promises for every situation that we may be facing right now.

Our God is very practical in everything that He does. He will never ask us to do anything, that He knows we cannot handle. There is nothing that God reveals to us to do, that is not practicable for us to achieve.

Unfortunately not every believer in Christ does live practicably, in applying what the Lord reveals to them, in order to prosper the kingdom of God with it.

Many today are struggling in applying their knowledge of the word of God, so as to reap the harvest that is in front of them. If we all practice on a regular basis, what the Lord has directed us to do in His word, we’ll not be worrying about so many other things in achieving the results that brings God the glory in our lives.

Our inability to practice what the word of God says, often stems from the inability to abide in Christ. When we call ourselves Christians, but we do not follow the teachings of Christ; we are in fact ascribing to the fact that we are hypocrites. We may fast and pray about the issues of our lives, that would have been resolved if only we had been practically living by the standards in God’s word. But we’ll rather choose to ignore it for the ungodly substitutes that the world around us has to offer us.

There are those who will spend so much time and money on counseling sessions about problems, which can easily be resolved by just doing what God says in His word. In most cases they will often leave such counseling sessions with the satisfaction, that someone at least does has the courage or the guts to sit down and listen to all their woes. But if they had been smarter enough to be living by God’s standard in His word at the first instance, they would not have had any need for counseling at all. God would had been directing their footsteps on a regular basis in making wise decisions for life.

Neither would there have been the need for counseling by pastors, if only church members would take the initiative to practice what they are being taught on a regular basis by the pastors. In most cases church counseling would have been reduced to the barest minimum, without the pastors having to be involved with it at all.

THE ISSUES

The problem is that many church goers will often abandon the teachings of the church to embrace the wisdom of this world; rather than the wisdom of God that the church often teaches them about. Such people keeps coming back to the pastors over and over again, with the same problems which never goes away.

All that needed to have been done is for them to begin acting on what God says in His word. Are we actually fooling around with ourselves, while thinking neither God nor anyone else sees us? Let’s get this straight, God sees everything and knows everything that we do with regards to His word. Nobody can ever outsmart God. He knows every step and every decision that we make about every issue of our lives.

Godly wisdom is always available for those who will dare to take God for His word and act on it. It is only those who will dare to practice what they had been taught, who will eventually reap the harvest from it.

It is absolutely impossible to combine the wisdom of God with the wisdom of this world. Things do not work that way in the kingdom of God. We are either on God’s side or on the side of the world. We cannot be in between the two. It is impossible to live based on the wisdom of the world, while at the same time live by the principles of the kingdom of God. All that this kind of attitude creates in us is confusion and more problems in life.

Jesus said:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6:24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

We do not need to be so heavenly minded with the word of God either, to the extent that we are not worthy of any earthly use at all. Being heavenly minded does not make us spiritual at all. Being a doer of God’s word is what does make us spiritual.

If we are truly led by the Spirit of God into any new thing this year, we must understand and accept the fact that God is a very practicable God. He wants us to be able to achieve those goals of ours this year.

And as mentioned last week, our commitment to God is our first step into walking with Him to take possession our promised land.

WISDOM AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

Walking in wisdom is therefore very important for us. The Holy Spirit is there to help us always in walking in the wisdom of God. He gives us insights into important things that are vital to the goals of our lives. But however it is up to us to either take the leads from Him, or ignore Him entirely to our own detriment.

And we all have missed it with God in this regard one way or another. We had often failed in following those leads from Him.

Wonderfully enough our God understands that we are humans, who will constantly rely on Him for success in life. He will never get mad or angry at anyone for the mistakes of their lives, especially in the refusal to follow His wisdom for a godly lifestyle.

God is always full of Compassion. He counts nothing against us in every mistakes of our lives in following Him. That is why if we had ever failed to walk in wisdom with Him, we can always go back to Him in repentance and He will fix it all for us.

THE GIFT OF THE WORD OF WISDOM

There are basically two kinds of wisdom from the Holy Spirit, that the Bible reveals to us, and it is interesting to note that they both comes to us through our ability to build a relationship with Him.

The first one comes as one of the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is called – “the word of wisdom”. It is important to note that the Bible calls it “the word of wisdom”, and not “wisdom” in itself (1 Corinthians 12:7-8).

This is a gift that is manifested by speaking words which the Holy Spirit deposits into our spirit man. It has nothing at all to do with what is in our head or in our thought patterns.

The gift of the word of wisdom is a very powerful weapon in our spiritual warfare against the enemy, but it does us no more good than that; if we cannot and do not use it to fight the good fight of faith against the devil.

The gift of the word of wisdom is given to us as a supernatural weapon by the Holy Spirit. And just like anyone giving us a gift, we may reject or ignore the gift. That does not means it is not available for us to receive and use. And many had failed in their refusal to embrace the gift of the word of wisdom in their lives. There are some who will fail to embrace it, because it may seem to them as acting stupid or foolishly before the world. But actually the gift of the word of wisdom has always been applied by many, in leading them to do extraordinary things in the kingdom of God.

THE WISDOM OF GOD

The gift of the word of wisdom is completely different from the wisdom of God which is not a gift, but is Holy Spirit inspired based on the abundance of the word of God in our hearts.

In reference to the wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit takes out of the abundance or wealth of the word of God in us, at the moment of need in helping us to solve real life problems.

The more we get into the scriptures to study it, the more our spiritual reservoir becomes wealthier for the Holy Spirit to pick out from it in helping us.

Jesus once said:

“Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.”

‭‭Mark‬ ‭13:11‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The Holy Spirit can only draw out of the abundance of resources that we had deposited into our hearts in helping us. That is why it is important to read, study and meditate daily on the scriptures.

Paul told the Church at Corinth:

“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2:6-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

As Paul pointed out here, the word of wisdom is meant for our own glory. If he had never trained himself by studying the scriptures, he would never had been able to discover so many mysteries of God that are available to us today. What is meant for our glory through our application of the wisdom of God in us, becomes manifested as we act on the word of God in overcoming whatever the enemy throws out against us. If God’s word is in us, then we do have the wisdom of God within us. We just need to draw from it in overcoming whatever comes our way from the enemy.

We will reap much more spiritual harvest by feeding our spirit man on a regular basis with the word of God, rather than what comes from those television shows.

There are a lot of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ today who really need to cut back drastically from watching the television, so that the scriptures might work through their lives in the wisdom of God to manifest the glory of the Lord through their ministrations.

Now, if you believe you’ll get much more benefit from doing what you’re doing right now, keep on doing it. But there are many other Christians in the world today who know that they really need God to help them through the year, and they ain’t prepared to settle for the world’s wisdom which often comes by watching too much television. They had tried it before and they do acknowledge that it is not working for them at all.

RECEIVING THE WISDOM OF GOD 

The wisdom of God is what the scriptures refers to when it says:

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1:5-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The principle of asking and receiving wisdom is very simple and very practicable. God will give wisdom to anyone who asks for it. And He is generous towards us in giving us wisdom without even finding fault in anyone of us. No matter what our current situation right now may be, God finds no fault or mistake in us that will ever deny us access to His wisdom. God will never look down on anyone for making the most foolish mistakes in life. He never finds fault in those who are asking and seeking His wisdom.

The scripture says above about God’s wisdom to anyone who asks for it – “it will be given to you.” Is it not amazing that He does not even say that one has to be a Christian, in order to ask and receive wisdom? I have had many instances of seeing unbelievers, who often act with godly wisdom. Yet they do not know anything about what they are doing, except that they do acknowledge that it is the right thing to do. But at the same time one will see those who are born of God, doing the most stupid thing that would had been associated with the unsaved; even though they do know better.

One thing that we can get from the scriptures in the epistle of James (above), is that an unbeliever who does receives God’s wisdom will be led into salvation.

When we cannot admit to God that we need His wisdom, we will not have it. This is actually the problem with many people. They often hold on to their own way of figuring it all out, and they will often struggle with admitting before God that they do need His wisdom to help them out with their predicaments in life. So many often trust in themselves and their own understanding of their problems, more than the promises of God to them through His written word.

As pointed out last week, this type of attitude often creates much more problems on top of the problems at hand. The result is the frustration at heart that we do not often need. There are many Christian professionals in the world today as an example, who are struggling in applying their Christian beliefs to their professional skills, so as to benefit their world and the people that they work with on a regular basis.

There are those who may be able to recognize their own lack of wisdom; but it never occurred to them that they could ask God for wisdom. That is the moment many do begin to spend so much time and money on counseling sessions; when all they needed to have done was to have simply asked God for His wisdom and received it by faith. It takes our acting in faith to receive wisdom, and to release such wisdom into action for our own glorification. The wisdom of God is meant for us. We need to use it to benefit our lives here on earth as God’s children.

There are many Holy Spirit filled believers who often do ignore the wisdom of God, while embracing that of the world. But no matter how often you might have been ignoring the wisdom of God, be rest assured today that God finds no faults in you at all. He sees it as your path into discovering more about Him. So do not be discouraged. Just ask God for wisdom today and be rest assured that He will give it to you. He will guide you through the darkness until His light begins to shine upon your pathway.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

You are not alone. I do know of many preachers who had made the same mistakes before. Preachers are human beings like everyone else also. They live in this world like everyone does, and are prone to making the very same mistakes that everyone makes daily. The only difference is that they have learnt to always ask God to help them, and give them wisdom whenever they needed it. And you can do the same also, but you must be ready and prepared to follow through in doing whatever the Lord may be guiding you to do after asking Him by faith.

So, if you will ask God today for wisdom and begin doing what we learnt last week, your pathway to a glorious 2017 will get brighter and brighter.

Remember what Jesus said:

“In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

‭‭John‬ ‭16:23-24‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Wisdom is waiting on you this year. Walk in it.