Wisdom for the Asking

James 1:5  KJV

⁵ If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

James switches gears a little bit and addresses the matter of wisdom. Now I say he only switches a little bit because we need wisdom to discern the trials and tests that face us all the time. It is important that we understand God has a reason for allowing things to come into our lives and often this takes wisdom. We have talked about what we gained through trials and tests the last few days. Now it is time to share what we need while we’re going through them and that is wisdom, along with patience, faith and joy.

 James tells us here that when I am going through these trials, or any other time that I’m not understanding, I should ask God for wisdom. To me wisdom means being able to take the knowledge and the understanding that I have and apply it to the situation that I’m in. Believe me there are often times that I don’t have wisdom. Sometimes I get into the middle of one of my posts and realize that the wisdom that I need to continue the train of thought is not present. So I stop, pray and ask God for the wisdom to continue. He always comes through.

What often happens to me though is I get into the middle of a situation and I try to figure it out myself. I go back through every step I to get here and I look at it how it started and  I try to figure out, in our my understanding, why this is happening to me. Now all that isn’t necessarily. It would be much easier for me to just ask God for wisdom in the first place. He obviously has the wisdom to be able to help me. Remember Solomon? When God said he could ask for anything Solomon ask for wisdom. God told him because he asked for wisdom he would be blessed beyond his wildest dreams. I believe that applies to us too. If we will ask God for wisdom the windows of heaven will open and pour out a blessing that we cannot contain.

The Bible tells us that wisdom has been around since before creation (Prov 8:22). It also tells us a fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). It also tells us that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God (1 Cor 3:19). So many people follow the wisdom of this world instead of the wisdom of God and think they know the heart of God. That is literally an impossibility. Without the wisdom of God we stand as fools. We need his wisdom every day. And the funny thing is that He gives it to us liberally if we just will ask.  That means it will flow into us in large quantities at the time we need it. I use the King James version and it says that God upbraids us not when we ask for wisdom. That means He is never angry or upset that we are asking for wisdom. So we should be coming to Him all the time asking Him to give us wisdom in these situations.

And then there’s a guarantee at the end but it shall be given. Now we have to take into account that God does things in His own time and we have to be patient. We just talked about that at length. But He promises that He will show us the reason for the test in the trial in His own time. All we have to do is ask and He’ll give us the wisdom to work through it. This takes great listening skills because we have to cloud out all that the world is throwing at us, including the trial we are going through.  I hope that you will take the time to do the asking

Be blessed!