Christian Living
Get wisdom at all cost no matter what price you have to pay (Prov 4:7). Fill your heart with God’s word and receive instruction from God no matter what you have to do. Consistently memorize and meditate on God’s teachings. Fill your heart with God’s love. Guard your heart from all evil and get wisdom. Without time spent in scripture, wisdom fades away. It takes unyielding continuous effort to keep wisdom in your heart.
Jesus said in the passage Matthew 12: 34b that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. This happened after the Pharisees had called Jesus Beelzebul (spelling in the TNIV) the prince of Demons. The Pharisees lacked wisdom and could not understand that Jesus was the true anointed one that had come to seek and save the lost. Jesus stated in Matthew 13:15, “For the peoples heart has become calloused.” Jesus spoke this after He taught the parable of the sower. Take note that parables, proverbs and riddles are similar for helping us to gain wisdom, for example, “let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance— for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.” (Proverbs 1: 5-6 NIV).
We all have to protect our hearts because the main aspect of biblical wisdom relates to the heart the very center of our personality. It is the wise that hide the word in their hearts. We hide the word in our heart that we might not sin against God. We must be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove (Matthew 10:16 KJV). A person becomes wise by meditating in the scripture on a consistent basis (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2b NKJV).
We must keep our hearts supple and gentle toward God, revitalizing ourselves through the wisdom that’s found in scripture. Our hearts must not become calloused. In the passage Matthew 13, “For the peoples heart has become calloused.” It is easy to harden our hearts and all it takes is time not spent with God in prayer and in the word of God. Another thing that dispels our wisdom is hanging around with the wrong people. “Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful,” (Psalm 1:1 NKJV). It is easy to be influenced by other people. With our jobs we have no choice but to work with certain people and we can be pulled down through profane language, sexual statements, and ungodly counsel. Even our own family can sometime sway us if we are not careful or we can be hurtful to our own family.
At all cost, we must maintain some control over our tongue. Watching what we say is one of the problems with obtaining wisdom. In the book of James, the tongue can be set on fire like hell. Our mouths can get us into big trouble when we say the wrong thing. Many people have had their feelings hurt even when someone means well by what they say. We can easily say something about a person and it can be taken the wrong way. Many times we just speak to others and accidentally say the wrong thing. How many times are people misunderstood by a simple statement? Speaking accurately just to communicate well is also important. More seriously, if we use profane language we can hurt our witness as a Christian. No one can tame their tongue but we can do our best to watch what we say. Wisdom is being quick to listen and slow to speak. Our mouths in part prove the wisdom we have. Even a good tone of voice is a word to the wise.
Only a perfect human being can tame the tongue, (James 3:8 NIV) however, no one is perfect because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23 NKJV). In the passage 1 John 1:18 and 1 John 1:10 only a foolish person and a liar would claim that they have not sinned. The foolish do not care about what they say. Therefore, at all cost, we must try to control our speech because we can stir up anger in others. (See Prov 15:1 NIV). No one has ever tamed the tongue but we can control the tongue to a certain extent to maintain wisdom. Those with wisdom can understand knowledge but a foolish person produces folly (See Prov. 15:2 NIV). Knowledge comes from our mouths the tongue can heal the tongue can kill (Prov 15:4 TNIV). Even a foolish man is wise if the does not speak evil (Prov 17:28 NIV). The tongue is powerful and it can produce both good and bad fruit (Prov 18:21 NIV).
Our hearts affect the kind of things we say. We must guard our heart at all cost; evil thoughts can cause a person to speak evil and good thoughts can cause a person to speak good things. (Matt 15:18-20a NIV) We must understand the tongue is a small instrument which can do great things or cause things to go awry. Great speeches have helped to win wars and sadly gossip has ruined many lives and even cost people their jobs. Even people have lost their jobs due to false claims of sexual harassment in the workplace just out of spite. Gossip is not information about another person it hurts people and their families. We must control our tongue at all cost because our words come from either wisdom or folly. It only takes a spark to start a forest fire. A rudder is a small instrument like the tongue that can boast great things.
We must ask God liberally to give us wisdom. Wisdom can cost us because we will have to learn from our mistakes and our weaknesses, but it is critical to our Christian lives. We will ever be seeking more wisdom and making mistakes along the way. Jesus understands our vulnerabilities he was fully human and fully divine. We need to dig in when it comes to studying parables and proverbs. Jesus spoke in parables when the Pharisees, scribes and the religious rulers opposed Him. We too can speak in parables and proverbs to those that will listen. Though, it is the Christian who must learn hard lessons from the path of life.
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