Ancient Wisdom for Today: The Wise Person Strives to Understand
The knowledge of the Holy is understanding (Proverbs 9:10).
Knowledge without understanding is like a car without gas.
The possibility is great, but the missing element is essential.
At some point in every person's life, there are questions to be answered.
Who is God? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Where do you go for the answers to these questions? How can you understand life? The wisdom book of Proverbs states its purpose from the very beginning.
In the first six verses of chapter one, the word understanding appears three times.
There are only five chapters in the book (Proverbs has thirty one chapters) where understand or understanding does not appear.
In the chapters where it does appear, many have multiple entries.
Understand or understanding is used either in the positive as a wise person who understands or the negative as in a foolish person who lacks understanding.
It is clear that it takes work to understand life.
The easy, lazy way of life leads to a lack of understanding.
Ordinarily, we associate understanding with our mind - our intellectual discernment.
However, God examines our hearts, knows our hearts and judges our hearts.
In the Bible, the heart is equal to the seat of our emotions, our inner being, who we really are.
Often in Proverbs, the wise person is instructed to apply your heart to understanding.
If our understanding were only intellectual, we might not apply the principles we have learned for service.
In order to answer the questions of life, we must get to know the one who created us.
We need to get to know God.
There is no one like Him.
Jesus, God in the flesh, allowed us to know Him intimately.
There are some excellent resources to help us understand the nature of God and His attributes.
My favorites are The Knowledge of the Holy by A.
W.
Tozer and Knowing God by J.
I.
Packer.
The primary source is God's Word itself.
Tozer advises us to throw away every comparison word like trait, characteristic or quality when we think of God.
We cannot know everything about God, but we can discover those things He has chosen to reveal about Himself.
Then, and only then, can we answer the questions, "Who am I" and "What is my purpose?" Those answers are tied to who God is, what He has done for us and what His plan is.
Knowledge without understanding is like a car without gas.
The possibility is great, but the missing element is essential.
At some point in every person's life, there are questions to be answered.
Who is God? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Where do you go for the answers to these questions? How can you understand life? The wisdom book of Proverbs states its purpose from the very beginning.
In the first six verses of chapter one, the word understanding appears three times.
There are only five chapters in the book (Proverbs has thirty one chapters) where understand or understanding does not appear.
In the chapters where it does appear, many have multiple entries.
Understand or understanding is used either in the positive as a wise person who understands or the negative as in a foolish person who lacks understanding.
It is clear that it takes work to understand life.
The easy, lazy way of life leads to a lack of understanding.
Ordinarily, we associate understanding with our mind - our intellectual discernment.
However, God examines our hearts, knows our hearts and judges our hearts.
In the Bible, the heart is equal to the seat of our emotions, our inner being, who we really are.
Often in Proverbs, the wise person is instructed to apply your heart to understanding.
If our understanding were only intellectual, we might not apply the principles we have learned for service.
In order to answer the questions of life, we must get to know the one who created us.
We need to get to know God.
There is no one like Him.
Jesus, God in the flesh, allowed us to know Him intimately.
There are some excellent resources to help us understand the nature of God and His attributes.
My favorites are The Knowledge of the Holy by A.
W.
Tozer and Knowing God by J.
I.
Packer.
The primary source is God's Word itself.
Tozer advises us to throw away every comparison word like trait, characteristic or quality when we think of God.
We cannot know everything about God, but we can discover those things He has chosen to reveal about Himself.
Then, and only then, can we answer the questions, "Who am I" and "What is my purpose?" Those answers are tied to who God is, what He has done for us and what His plan is.
Source...