Have you ever been a little bit jealous of someone else’s spiritual maturity? Maybe that’s a strange concept to you, but I can remember as a young wife and mother watching others worship, or hearing them teach about the deeper truths of our faith, and wondering to myself, “Why can’t I be like that” or “Why don’t I feel that excited about Jesus” or “Why can’t I understand the Bible like that?”

Unless someone did a really good job of discipling us as new believers, we might get the idea that spiritual maturity and growth just sort of “happen” to us, just because we believe. That’s not true at all.

Proverbs 2 tells us that if we want the wisdom of God to affect our lives and our hearts, we must actively pursue it.

Receive my words…

Treasure my commands…

Make your ear attentive to wisdom…

Incline your heart to understanding…

Cry for discernment…

Lift your voice for understanding…

Seek [wisdom] as silver…

Search for [wisdom] as for hidden treasures…

Then…and only then…will we be able to discern exactly what it means to fear the Lord and discover His knowledge! (See Proverbs 2:1-5). I’ve seen this in my own life; my faith has deepened, and my spiritual life has grown in direct proportion to the time and effort I put into engaging God in His Word.

I recently read an interesting analogy in Andrew Murray’s Waiting On God that applies here. I’ll paraphrase it.  He tells of a king who promised all the subjects of his kingdom anything they needed. All they had to do was ask for it, and it would immediately be dispatched from his great storehouses. The one caveat was that they had to be looking for it – watching for its delivery. After a man died, he was taken to the king’s storehouses and there found many many packages – all things he desired and needed for life, addressed to him, but marked “undelivered.” When he asked why, he was told, “You weren’t looking for them!”

God’s wisdom is like this. Unless we are looking for it – digging for it like treasure in God’s Word, we won’t find it. Unless we ask God for it, listening with intent to obey it, we will be left with the results of our own weak knowledge.

James 1:5-8 – But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

The last half of Proverbs 2 describes a key aspect of what God’s wisdom does for us.

It protects us.

When we listen to God’s wisdom and apply it to our lives…

He is a shield…

He guards our paths…

He preserves our way…

He helps us discern righteousness and justice…

He helps us discern equity and what is good…

Discretion guards us and understanding watches over us to deliver us from the ways of evil, and from men who speak perverse things, and from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness.

What does it mean “men who speak perverse things?” I want wisdom, so I looked up that word. The KJV uses the word “froward” to translate the Hebrew tahpuḵôṯ. It means fraud, especially an utterance, slander, thoughts, and devices. The root word is hāp̄aḵ, and here’s where it’s super interesting. The root word means “to turn about or over; by implication, to change, overturn, return, pervert.”

When a man speaks “perverse” things he turns what is good into a perversion. He changes it into something that may sound good but is either a subtle perversion or an outright, obvious untruth. We need God’s wisdom to discern and to protect us from perverse things.

Earlier today, I reposted an article from the Anchor For The Soul Facebook page. The article asked, “Should Christians watch ‘The Chosen’?” This is a perfect example of where we need God’s wisdom. We should evaluate all media that we allow into our minds and hearts, but we should especially care how our beloved Savior, Jesus, is represented to the world. (If you want to read it but don’t have Facebook, you can find it here.)

That’s just one example of many many things for which we need the protection of God’s wisdom. And I know some of you will disagree with this perspective in this particular case, but the opinion of men (or women) doesn’t matter. All things must be held up to one standard – the wisdom from God’s Word. He has the final say.

Wisdom says, “Search for me…ask God for me…and seek me with the intent to listen and obey once you receive wisdom.” If an issue is important, we should be willing to ask God with open hands and hearts, even if we don’t necessarily or immediately like what we find. He will show us if it is good – ours to consume – or perverse and should be avoided. If we really want to know.

Wisdom is ours for the asking. For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up sound wisdom for the upright (2:6-7a). God’s storehouses have all the wisdom we need, but will we ask for it? When He sends it our way, will we be looking for it, and will we heed its advice?