It’s May!! Wow, this year is flying by, and what a year it has been. It has had some amazing moments and quite possibly some of my very lowest moments, too! This year, which started with my theme word for the year of steadfast love, slowly morphed into a year where two words – steadfast love and wisdom – (thus far) are making the framework for how I view everything. I still am learning to see everything in life through the steadfast love of God; which by the way is a great viewpoint to live from. Then, slowly, wisdom crept into my line of sight. There has been so much that I don’t know how to respond to, or I simply respond in my own ways -which usually lack wisdom and end up making a mess of the situation. So I found myself creating the monthly memory verse this month and hoping I could return to steadfast love but found wisdom swirling in my heart and mind. So here it is.
James 3:17 “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”
I want to live with God’s wisdom in all situations – never my own. I fail at this a lot, but I promise it is a goal. So I am learning to distinguish my wisdom from God’s. That, my friend, involves prayer. Before I go any further in what I believe this verse to mean, I must disclose that prayer is the key to the whole thing. You can’t have wisdom from God if you are not talking to God about whatever the situation may be. Ok, now that that is established, let’s look at the verse a little deeper.
Being true to me I looked at what all the different words that describe wisdom mean. Some mean exactly what they say, and others had deeper meanings. Let me show you. Wisdom means intellect. Uh, could have guessed that. But pure means in a condition prepared for worship. So when I am seeking wisdom from God it will come in the form of intellect that puts my heart in a place of worship. That is not all that pure means. It also means not mixed with guilt. Meaning whatever I feel the Lord saying to do will not make me feel guilty for doing it in the end.
Peaceable means God’s gift of wholeness – knowing the Lord’s will and obeying it. God will make clear the best way to respond to the situation, and your job is to obey it. Then it is gentle. I just loved what I found this to mean. You would expect it to mean easy or soft in some way; but not so much here. It means truly fair by relaxing overly strict standards in order to keep the spirit of the law. God won’t hold us to some impossible standard. He will never change what is right and what is wrong, but how He leads through wisdom is usually a curvy path rather than a straight line.
Then comes open to reason, not meaning that you are open to being swayed by what you feel the Lord has said in a given situation, but rather that it is easy to obey. When you spend time seeking God in prayer, you place yourself in a position to obey. He moves your heart to that place of obedience. Mercy means what you would expect mercy to mean. But good fruit means something amazing here in this verse. It means everything done in true partnership with Christ resulting from two life streams – the Lord moving through our lives to yield what is eternal. Lastly, impartial means being certain, and sincere means free from hidden agendas.
Ok, that was a lot. Let me put all of this together for you. Life bombards us with decisions. Some have no impact on our life beyond that moment. Others have an impact that lasts years, and some for eternity. When those big decisions need to be made, God will give you wisdom. James 1:5 tells us God will give us wisdom when we ask. When He does, it brings peace and makes us stand in awe and worship God. It isn’t a strict and heavy burden to carry. You won’t have doubt. You will approach the whole thing full of mercy. It will yield eternal impact, and you won’t have hidden agendas in your heart.
This year has led me to make HUGE decisions I never imagined having to think about, let alone decide the right thing to do in the situation. They have been heart-wrenching hard choices, but I have been able to make those decisions in peace because I leaned into God and sought wisdom from above.
Click Here for the May memory verse
