A Woman's Wisdom: How the Book of Proverbs Speaks to Everything (4 page)

Many of us have lived long enough to know that goals are better termed
hopes
, since we have seen many of our best-laid plans go astray. Over time we might come to think of what we wind up doing as a sort of Plan B. But the truth is that there is no Plan B. There is only Plan A. That’s because

If we think we are stuck in Plan B, it’s because our idea of Plan A was just that—our own idea, not God’s. God has good purposes for us, whether he accomplishes them through the goals we set or through thwarting those goals and leading us along paths we hadn’t planned on. We may not be able to discern his purposes, but Proverbs teaches us that we can rest assured that he has them and that he is overseeing the fulfillment
of them:

And

What happened to the prophet Jonah is a good illustration of how God works sovereignly in the lives of his people. God instructed Jonah to go to Nineveh with a message of coming judgment, but Jonah didn’t like God’s plan, so he embarked on a plan of his own design by boarding a ship for Tarshish. Many of us know what happened: a big storm arose, and eventually Jonah was tossed overboard and swallowed by a large fish. There, in the belly of the fish, Jonah repented of his willfulness. Afterward the fish vomited him onto dry land, and from there Jonah proceeded to Nineveh.

Jonah’s missionary work in Nineveh might have been Plan B so far as Jonah was concerned, but because it was God’s plan, it had always been Plan A. God got Jonah where he wanted him, despite Jonah’s attempts to run away, and God does the same thing with us. Our response doesn’t change the outcome, any more than it did with Jonah; it merely determines whether the way there will be easy
or hard.

Wisdom helps us to shape our plans in keeping with God’s ways, which in turn keeps us from vainly spinning our wheels; and it spares us and others the frustration that inevitably results when plans are made and pursued with little or no knowledge of God. Then, if things don’t go as we had hoped, wisdom enables us to live contentedly in his sovereign ordering of the details of our lives.

Actively Pursue It

Although wisdom is near to us and not too hard to understand, we must actively pursue it. Just consider the active verbs in this passage:

We may think that receiving God’s words is a passive action, something we sit back to read and absorb while sipping a mug of coffee, but if you look at how the passage is structured, you will see that making our ears attentive, inclining our hearts, calling out, raising our voices, seeking, and searching are all part of how we grow in wisdom.

Obey

We also grow wise by obedience. In fact, seeking to live in obedience to God’s Word is a necessary heart attitude for all who wish to
be wise:

Obedience and wisdom go hand in hand because obeying God is always wise. As we pursue a lifestyle of obedience, it will lead us to a deeper understanding of why obeying all God’s ways is the best path. It will also lead to a greater depth of obedience, which will enrich both our walk with the Lord and our enjoyment of day-to-
day life.

Accept God’s Discipline

Growing in wisdom also entails recognizing and accepting God’s discipline:

Job, at the beginning of his hard time, shows us how to live out Proverbs 3:11. After Job lost his livelihood and his children and was struck with painful boils all over his body, his wife said to him, “Do you still hold to your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9
NKJV
). But Job rebuked her for her lack of wisdom, saying, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (v. 10
NKJV
). Job’s submission to God’s work in his life is a hallmark of wisdom.

We tend to think of God’s discipline as being the same as how we discipline our kids: they misbehave, and we punish them to teach them that a particular misbehavior is destructive. God’s discipline of us, however, is often not linked to some specific wrongdoing on our part. When things go wrong in our lives, we are tempted to try to hunt up what we might have done to cause the difficulty. It is true that sometimes a particular trouble is God’s way of pointing out a particular sin we have been ignoring or refusing to repent of, but if no connection is made evident, we don’t have to wrack our brains to dig up something. If there’s a connection, God is able to make it clear. If no connection is evident, we can simply trust God in the midst of our difficulty and focus on this truth:

Rest in Christ

Cultivating such wisdom would be an impossible task were it not for the primary means through which it comes—abiding in Christ. The wisest women are those who have discovered that wisdom and its fruits come most fully to those who seek them not in themselves but in another. Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28–29). The yoke Jesus had in mind was a plowing device. Once placed around the neck of an animal and hitched to the plow, the animal could move only where the cart driver directed. But, unlike the farmer with his oxen, Jesus doesn’t force us to wear his yoke; he invites us. If we accept his invitation, we are going to learn his ways as he steers us along paths of his choosing, and as we do, we are promised to
find rest.

benefits of wise living

The benefits of wise living are too numerous to include in a single book, but let’s look at a few of them. Women who live wisely will experience, first,
security
. Wise women are confident that they rest on safe ground:

Wise women have no fear. Because they trust God, they have no need for anxiety. They are confident that a kind, wise God is in control of everything. As wisdom increases, anxiety decreases. What makes you worry? Is it finances, your kids, your spouse—or the lack of one? Wise women know that God is trustworthy and that he can and will handle all these matters for our good and his glory.

Another result of wise living is
guidance
. Some time ago I heard someone say that wisdom isn’t so much something that God
gives
to us as something he
does
for us, a truth reinforced by this passage:

The link between wisdom and guidance is also made crystal clear in this proverb:

This does not mean that God’s guidance is conditional upon our trusting; he is always actively directing the lives of human beings. Yet it is only as we actively trust God and submit to his ways that we experience his guidance as a straight path, one not filled with frustrating self-made detours, as we saw with Jonah.

Another benefit of wisdom is the calm enjoyment of
sanctified common sense
. There is no issue in life that Scripture doesn’t somehow address. Situations arise in all of our lives that Scripture doesn’t directly speak to—those gray areas. But the Bible does address them somehow, even if indirectly, and wisdom is what enables us to use the Word to make black-and-white application into the gray places of our lives. Wisdom enables us to better discern not only what God’s Word says explicitly but also what the Word says implicitly, and we are increasingly equipped to apply its truths to all areas of life. Sanctified common sense is the result of wisdom.

Still another result of wise living is
generally good living
:

The book of Proverbs reveals to us how God has designed the world to work; so, in general, those who live according to God’s design prosper because of it. That being said, the proverbs aren’t a guarantee for the good life. We all experience times when things don’t go well, despite our efforts to follow God’s ways, and that’s because God has as much to teach us through suffering as he does through blessing us with the practical benefits of wisdom. That’s why it is best to view the proverbs as observations or principles rather than as promises. We must keep both things—the practical benefits of wise living and the spiritual benefits of suffering—in tension, and trust that God knows what he is doing in
each case.

That being said, we tend to be suspect of this whole idea of delighting in prosperous living. It just seems so, well, worldly. But God delights to bless his children, as any good father does. When God blesses us with a season of prosperity, we can grieve God’s father heart if we bar ourselves from rejoicing in it. After years of saving money for a house, a friend of mine was blessed to be able to purchase a lovely home. But she couldn’t fully enjoy it because, she said, “I keep waiting for the ax to drop. If God has given me this, what is he preparing to take away?” Such thinking robs both God and us of taking pleasure in his gifts. If he blesses us in some material way, we are free to enjoy it. As Solomon wrote, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God” (Eccles. 2:24).

Another benefit of acquiring wisdom is
happiness
:

Can you think of a better definition for
happiness
? If we are unhappy Christians, the problem isn’t our circumstances; it’s our interpretation of our circumstances, an interpretation that’s lacking in wisdom. Even unhappy occasions can be experienced with joy and peace when we remember who has ordained them and that he has done so for good reason. Wise women know that lasting and deep happiness will never be found in circumstances but only in Wisdom, which is Christ.

One more fruit of wisdom is
self-knowledge
. John Calvin said that before we can know ourselves, we must first know God. Only God really knows and understands our hearts, of course, but the better we know God, the better we will know ourselves. Self-knowledge, part and parcel of which is awareness of our personal weaknesses, is vital when it comes to resisting temptations, since temptations appeal to us in areas where we tend to be weak. Women who know God are better able to recognize where they are prone to sin and are therefore better equipped to deal with it intelligently. Knowing ourselves is a benefit of wisdom.