Seeking God's Wisdom - 1 Corinthians 2:12-13
There are many things we desire in life such as success, fulfillment, healthy relationships, financial freedom, knowledge, the list goes on. Most people wouldn’t put wisdom at the top of the list. For some, wisdom is seen as a lack of innovation or simply reverting to tradition. While there might be some truth to that, wisdom is born out of lived experience or even shared lived experience. In ministry today, it feels as though the challenges of our society and culture are overwhelming and that we don’t possess the wisdom for the way forward.
Scriptures tells us that God desires for us to be wise and possess the wisdom He freely gives. 1 Corinthians 2:12-13 says, 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
The Spirit of God ministers to us and gives us wisdom as we come to him. God in fact desires that we come to Him for wisdom. Now as people in ministry, we can tend to get good at fixing other people’s problems. But what if by doing that, we are doing them a disservice? What if we taught people how to seek God’s wisdom instead of ours? What if we taught people how to pause, pray, and listen to God?
A tangible way that I’ve tried (key word here) to do this is by taking 5 minutes before I have a meeting or conversation with someone about a hard issue in their life to try to seek God’s wisdom. I simply ask that God would help to ask the right questions and point them towards Him. My congregation doesn’t need to hear me more, they need to hear God and His wisdom more.
– Nick Parker, Surrey Alliance Church