The Path of Wisdom - Part 1

[Gary Petty] We've all heard the story about a man who finds a bottle and rubs it and a genie comes out and gives him whatever he wishes. What would you do if you were offered whatever really you wanted in your heart?

You know, that's exactly what happened to King Solomon. God came to him and said I will give you whatever you want in your heart. And Solomon said I want wisdom.

Now wisdom in Hebrew is an interesting word because what it means is a master craftsman—a person who was a very good stone mason would have wisdom in being a stone mason. Wisdom when it's applied to life, it means to make the right decisions to live a godly life. It means to be a master craftsman at living a godly life.

Now, when you look at the book of Proverbs, what you find is, is here Solomon explains what godly wisdom is—how to live life. Now when he goes through the book of Proverbs, he actually breaks this artful living into three stages.

The first one is knowledge. Of course knowledge is the collection of facts. It is not wisdom in itself. It's just a collection of facts, of truth.

The second stage is understanding. And when you look through the book and read the book of Proverbs, you will find he talks a lot about understanding. This is the ability to take knowledge and know how it fits together. How to take knowledge and say, okay this fact and that fact fits together. But even having that doesn't make you a craftsman in life.

Wisdom, wisdom is the ability to take knowledge and understanding and combine it into decision making—making decisions that work, making decisions that work into the way God designed life.

If you need wisdom in your life, read the book of Proverbs and then go pray. Ask God for wisdom. Ask God for wisdom and study how life works. Look around. Look at how things fit together and look at the way God says it works through the book of Proverbs and learn to apply that to everyday life. Go learn wisdom.