We just finished a short series on wisdom and one of my hopes is that it gave the hearers an appetite for God’s Word, specifically the book of Proverbs.

Here’s a truth: if you lack wisdom, the book of James says to ask God and He will give it liberally to you.  So, get busy asking God daily to fill you with His wisdom like Solomon did.

What else can you do to increase wisdom in your life?  I would suggest reading Proverbs over the next month.  There are 31 chapters in this book, therefore you can read a chapter a day and completely cover it in one month.

Be sure to have a writing instrument or device with which you can make notes while you read.  You never know what the Spirit of God may reveal to you while you are reading and you’ll want to have it written down for future reference.

You might want to get a partner to read along with you so you can compare the takeaways you get each day/week or end of the month.

Have you ever wondered what people will say about you after you die?  Would you like to be a fly on the wall to listen at your own funeral?  The fact is you are determining those conversations right now.  By the way you are currently living your life, opinions and influence is being formed.

What do you want them to say?  Things like:

“You know I think he really cared about people.”

“I believe you could always depend on her.”

“His stand for truth was unshakeable.”

We live in a very shallow culture that is all wrapped up in what’s in it for ME or what have you done for ME lately attitude.  A person wrapped up in themselves makes for a pretty small package.  How can we break away from this to become the person we want others to remember?  Here are a few thoughts:

• Think about the consequences of every decision you make
• Don’t just think less of yourself, but think of yourself less
• Remember that a good name is worth more than any money or possessions

Do you have a good name?  What are some things you could change about yourself to rewrite your future eulogy into what you would want said?

It can be difficult to define wisdom, but most of us know it when we encounter it.  Where does wisdom from?  I believe there are a few sources:

• Experience – some say “experience is the best teacher”.  I would say it works well only if we learn from the experience.
• Knowledge – what we know can help us to make wise choices, just as what we don’t know can hurt us.
• God – is shown to be a giver of wisdom in the Scriptures.

The difficulty is that most of us live such hurried lives that we don’t take time to learn from the experiences we’re having.  For example, you date a person only to discover that the reason you were attracted to them was not a good reason, so you break up.  Problem is you tend to go back after that same personality again only to be hurt like before.  In that case, experience is not teaching you any wisdom.

Because no one knows everything, it behooves each of us to listen to those around to glean information that can help us make wise choices.  But, what often happens is we reject correction shared with us because we think we know it all, don’t like the person telling us what we don’t know, or they shared it in a way we didn’t like.

That leaves God.  The problem here is that we are more tuned into the wisdom of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and email than we are to God.  Most get up in the morning and see what all the chatter is about that we missed while we were sleeping.  In the meantime, God patiently waits for us to pick up His Word so He can highlight some things.

My point is, we all would say we want to have more wisdom in our lives, but are we making room for it?  What is your weak area when it comes to gaining wisdom?

This weekend begins a new series called WISE GUYS that will feature two important principles from Proverbs on this very topic.  Services begin at 9 & 10:45 and I hope you can be there.