ATLANTA (BP)–God assures us and instructs us to know that all of life must have wisdom.
It is out of wisdom that our life flows with meaning and effectiveness. Wisdom is basically what we need to rightly understand and apply knowledge. We have certain knowledge “about” marriage, for example, but we must have wisdom to know how to live out our marriage relationships successfully.
Without the wisdom to apply what we know, we leave our lives in jeopardy and risk utter failure.
For this reason, God clearly teaches us that “… the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding….” (Proverbs 9:10). This is stated several different ways in Proverbs, such as “… the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction….” (Proverbs 1:7).
Job, the oldest book in the Bible, states: “… and to man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding….” (Job 28:28). David, a man who faced many tragedies in his life, especially at the hands of his enemies, said: “… the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all those who do His commandments….” (Psalm 111:10).
The fear of the Lord is a deep and profound reverence and awe of God. It is what comes over a person in the realized presence of Holy God — an immediate denial of self and a spontaneous response to Him as Lord. Everything else in life comes out of such an encounter with God.
God is no longer the “last point of reference” for our life but He becomes the first. This immediate relationship with God in the midst of life becomes a preventive to disaster and failure.
All too often we live life in a corrective state. After we make poor decisions in our own wisdom and experience failure, pain and suffering, we call on God to make our mistakes right. We must go to God first if we are to gain His wisdom and avoid failure.
The challenges we face today certainly create a tremendous need for God’s wisdom: global terror, economic uncertainty, broken homes, church division and bewilderment, and workplace stress. Thus, it is imperative that our relationship with God be the initial starting point for all of life.
A healthy sense of God and His presence will always bring an immediate wisdom with which to live.
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Henry Blackaby is president of Henry Blackaby Ministries in Atlanta. For more information about Henry Blackaby and the ministry, visit www.henryblackaby.com.
