Proverbs 2:10

“for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul” (NRSV)

I read this and thought about how many times God had put wisdom into my heart . . . and I rejected it. I think about my kids at school. I teach 4th-6th graders who aren’t doing well. And I see them make such bad choices, even when making a good choice would be easy! They sometimes reject doing what’s right just for the personal control or power of doing what’s wrong.

I think I’m the same way. Sometimes I’m just so perverse in my own willfulness that I insist upon doing it my way even when the Holy Spirit is whispering to my heart that I need to make a different decision.

I can remember teaching a seminar on dealing with anger. One woman walked up to me and said, “What you’re saying is good, but it isn’t for me. I never get angry.” And she just walked away. Well, I would have loved for that to be true (for her), but I knew it wasn’t because I’d seen her react in anger. Not in rage, but in that kind of controlling passive anger that’s more difficult to identify. For some reason, it was more important for her to be considered without fault than to honestly deal with a problem in her life.

I’m exactly the same way. I hate being wrong and will sometimes refute someone telling me I am . . . even when I know what they are saying is true! (It’s a very bad habit.)

This verse says that “wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” It’s one thing to have the wisdom; it’s another thing to readily embrace it, particularly when it’s going to usually mean that we need to deny ourselves (our desires, our lusts, our personal dreams) in order to embrace what it is that God wants to teach us.

I referred to a blog by Pastor Wade Burleson (http://kerussocharis.blogsport.com) a few days ago. It’s a table on the differences between proud and broken people. I printed a copy and have been working through it box by box over the past week. I’m sure it will take me a long time to work through all of it. The sixth set of boxes compares proud and broken people like this:

Proud: Have to prove they are always right.
Broken: Are willing to yield to the possibility that they could be wrong, and thus, yield the need to always prove they are right.

The fact is, we can’t trust ourselves to have the right perceptions, the right memories, the right understandings. Our brains are fallible because they are part of the decaying flesh of our bodies. Each of our five senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling—can deceive us. (Ever see an optical illusion?) And yet, our insistence upon being right is based on these imperfect physical body parts. Just as others can be wrong in their observations and conclusions, so can we. And it’s important that we realize that our conclusion about something just might be wrong.

I wrote yesterday about my own experience of believing a decision I made was right (I had all the right motives) only to discover that, rather than being part of the solution, I was actually part of the problem. While morality is always cut and dry, our interpretation of what is right in a situation may be wrong. Only the Spirit (and a consistent practice of listening to His voice) can help us to truly know in those iffy situations what we should be doing. Certainly, our thoughts should always be in service toward others, not for our own rights. If I had been self-searching in that situation, I would have realized that, ultimately, I was acting out of pride and control, rather than ministry to others. I wanted my way, my rights, my idea of what was right, rather than submitting and trusting God to make it right.

I want to get to the point where, when God gives me wisdom, it is pleasant to my soul. Where I want only what He wants and nothing else matters.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).