Why Wisdom's Call?

Hello to everyone who is reading these words and thank you for taking the time to look at this blog. This entry is an introduction to this blog and why I believe the Lord has led me to begin this journey. As the title indicates, I would like to share with you why I have named this blog as I have. First of all, it is not because I have attained infinite wisdom or have arrived in any way spiritually when it comes to wisdom. Moreover, I am not an expert on world affairs, I am not a theologian and I am not looking to people to listen to me. What the cry of my heart is to share what the Lord has taught and shown to me over the years and I am inviting all who choose to read this to participate with me. So why name this Wisdom’s Call? There are a lot of reasons, I will write about this later and probably often, but I will give you a few that spurred my heart on more then others. First, I have seen at least from my encounters with people in the world, a lack of spiritual and even earthly wisdom and moreover lack of desire to have wisdom become a goal, one attains to achieve. I must admit that for a lot of years I did not fix my gaze on things that were wise. Probably because I did not understand what wisdom was and did not see that it was even practical in my world. In short I was foolish and short sighted in my thinking about the world and about the Lord in heaven. The Bible tells us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”. Proverbs 1:7. This verse leads me into the second core reason for why I have undertaken the task of diving into this subject. I realized that I did not know what the ‘fear of the Lord’ was. Most people look at that verse and think that it was referring to revering the Lord for His greatness. I used to think that was all there was to it as well, however I was proven wrong in my analysis. Fear is also the kind that you get when you are afraid for your life! Therefore if one is to accept the truth that the heart of humanity is desperately wicked then the proper response to that is not just reverence but also bone chilling fear in the sight of a Holy God. That response will lead one to rejoice and praise the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation from your sin and comfort from that fear, what a blessing that is! That realization in my life produced a desire to truly know this infinite God that I both feared and revered at the same time. Once men allow the Lord to empty themselves of themselves and more specifically their sin, there is room for things from the Lord that are eternal (the promises of God and wisdom). So I challenge you to accept the truth of the depravity of your human condition (reading the Book of Romans is a good start as well as Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 the Ten Commandments). I know the acceptance of what you are is hard for us in our modern day ‘feel good now’ world, but it is essential for salvation and the desire for the things of eternity that our Lord offers such as wisdom. Maybe you do not want all of that ‘fear God stuff’. Maybe you’re thinking that I do not want to hear about how I am going to hell. Well I have good news and bad news the good news is that there will be plenty of things in this blog that you can read that will not be directly related to salvation from sin and hell. The bad news, (which is actually the good news if you choose to accept it) is that my prayer for everything that I type will lead to repentance of sins and a regenerate contrite heart that will lead to life available through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for you on Calvary. The last reason is a desire to have a place to be able to honestly and thoroughly discuss all of the issues of the day and what the Bible has to say about them. As I read the Bible, historical writings like “The Federalist Papers,” “Democracy in America”, “Common Sense” and pastoral writings from Spurgeon and the home spun wisdom of Billy Graham and John Wooden. I am left heart broken as I survey the intellectual landscape of our modern day and wonder where is the next generation of visionaries? Where are the men that will sacrifice everything earthly for the eternal? Where is their courage, perseverance, diligence, brokenness and surrender to Jesus Christ? Are we left with 30 minute worship sessions intended to get you emotionally lathered up? Are we left with a 20 minute sermon meant to make you feel good and give you a gospel of cheap grace and no repentance? Are we relegated to news that is nothing more then sound bites? Are we doomed to be a mile wide and an inch deep spiritually and intellectually? Will we be deceived enough to desire feel good experiences from the world and just passive factual information about the Lord and truth? Anyone who has at least one functioning brain cell knows that answer to these questions is a tragic yes. Not on this blog, we will probe this subject to its bottom and find more and more of our Lord and less and less of ourselves.

I would like to end this post with something that I hope to continue with throughout these entries. First and foremost I want to end with a scripture verse, and what the Lord has shown me through it, but more importantly to hopefully encourage all of you to invest time and exhaustively search out the wisdom of the Bible and find out for yourself if it is truth. Lastly, I love reading about history and how the words that men of the past used gives you an indication of the depth of thought that was prevalent years ago. It seems that more men of yesteryear wanted to attain the goal of being wise and intellectually astute. Therefore there will probably be something from the past incorporated into this as much as possible. Lastly, I hope no one who reads this is a grammar teacher, and if you are, I know that these are all run-on sentences. Cut me some slack here. I was a “C” student in college! Without any further delay here is today’s scripture (Drum roll please!).
Ephesians 1:15-17 Therefore I also, after I heard of our faith in the Lord Jesus and you love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.”

Wow! I think I could write forever on that verse alone, but to save your eyes from bleeding I will just say how it relates to wisdom and why it is important to me. Paul first states that he had heard of their faith and love for the saints. This is important because it goes back to what I wrote previously about wisdom being a result of someone who understands the depravity of their own heart and responds with a heart that is contrite and repentant. How do we know that the church in Ephesus was repentant? Due to, their faith and love for their brothers. Repentance and obedience are proof that you have accepted Christ’s love and your heart is regenerated. This really struck me as I was decided to do this. If I am to write these things I am only qualified to do so if I love my brothers in a Godly way which means I am called to lay down my life for them if necessary. Understanding this truth brought me to a place that I felt disqualified to write about the things of the Lord. I guess that’s a good thing. The significance of this subject matter is to be taken very seriously by me, because I know the Lord does as well. Well, I guess that is the end of my disclaimer statement, let’s return to the book of Ephesians. Paul then seeing their true faith prayed for the spirit of wisdom. That led me to one truth and one thought. The truth we can gleam is that spiritual wisdom about the Lord is from the Lord and cannot be attained by man on their own no matter how much they study His laws. The thought I had was more of a question. How many people pray for wisdom instead of earthly blessings of cars, money, jobs and houses? To look a little deeper we can ask another question. Why would Paul choose to pray for wisdom for such a young group of believers? After all I am sure there were financial and physical needs that were important as well. You guys can ponder that on your own time.

I think I will end with my word for the day. Posterity, which is a word used by our founding fathers and it means descendants children or succeeding generations. The reason I chose this word is because it was used by guys like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams to name a few. The other reason is that it indicates that all of their actions were measured by how it would effect people’s lives long term. I would go a step further and say that they knew that their actions had some eternal ramifications. They were not men who made decisions based upon the cares of the day, but rather on what is eternally significant. That’s why they were great. I’ll talk to you later, God bless!