Praying for Wisdom

I pray every day, as I am sure you do.  I thought I would share a few of the things I pray for.  This will take more than one post, so here’s the first.  They are not in any particular order.

I pray for wisdom.  I have had a tendency over my 58 years to make some poor decisions.  My life would have been more productive, I would have been a better servant/disciple of Jesus, I would have been a happier person – if I had made better decisions.  The amazing thing is: I did not set out to make bad decisions; I meant to make good ones and generally thought at the time that I was doing that.  I lacked humility and I had a weak faith.  I was starving for wisdom.  Then, I made an amazing discovery:

James 1:5 NKJV 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

I had trusted my own “wisdom” when I should have been asking God for wisdom.  It takes humility to do that, and, as James 1.6 points out, it takes faith.  When I begin to ask God for wisdom, things begin to get better.  I begin to trust more completely the teaching of Jesus about loving God and my neighbor.  I begin to study my Bible more to better learn what loving God and my neighbor meant, and that caused my faith to grow, for:

Romans 10:17 NKJV 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

With a stronger faith and the introduction of humility into my life, my walk with Jesus begin to improve, my feelings about myself also begin to improve, and (I think) the feelings of others toward me begin to improve.  I became a happier, calmer, more confident person.

Here is some advice for the faithful Christian that it took me way too long to learn.  Stop thinking that you have all the answers and begin asking God for wisdom.  Don’t ask for selfish materialistic things, because that’s not an area of approved emphasis for the serious Christian.  God won’t perform a miracle for you, those ended with the completion of the New Testament.    But He’ll do what He said He would do.  My thought is that He does it through His word, His Bible.  When I depend on God for wisdom, I gain a deeper respect for and faith in what He has said.  I find this proverb a succinct statement of this improved attitude:

Proverbs 3:5 NKJV 5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;

A short prayer about wisdom might go something like this: “Grant me, dear Father, the wisdom to trust You and not me.”