What happens when an engineer marries a math professor?
For one thing, your kids celebrate day. (If you don’t know what day is you can either simply pray for kids who live with these sorts of parents, or click here.)
Households filled with math are ones that see patterns in life and literature. When I came to Proverbs chapter 2, a pattern jumped off the page at me.
The pattern of an “If-Then Statement”.
Verses 1, 3, 4 all have “if statements”.
· If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments
· If you call out for insight and raise your voice understanding
· If you seek it (wisdom) like silver and search for it as hidden treasures…
Verses 1, 3, 4 also have “action words”.
· If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments
· If you call out for insight and raise your voice understanding
· If you seek it (wisdom) like silver and search for it as hidden treasures…
Those statements are clear statements of pursuing after Wisdom.
“If” you and I do these things “Then” certain things will follow.
The point?
· If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments
· If you call out for insight and raise your voice understanding
· If you seek it (wisdom) like silver and search for it as hidden treasures…
Then look at what God and His Word promises in verses 5, and 10 – 21!
· We will gain understanding.
· God will be our shield, guarding our paths and watching over us.
· Wisdom will live in our hearts and discretion will watch over us.
· We will be delivered from evil.
The promises are amazing and action oriented.
Ponder a life filled with these sorts of things. Do you and I want such a life?
Then we must pursue wisdom—and that begins with God.
If we do not, the noise of this world will dominate us.
The cost for failing to live a wise life seems terribly high.
For now, I am struck by two things.
First, how I awake most days and do not ask God for wisdom—how I fail to pursue it in my morning prayer. I seem to operate as if I am already wise. These early chapters are convicting of my need to daily, even hourly, pursue wisdom.
Second, the clear costs of failing to live such a life.
I have added a prayer into my daily routine—one of pursuing wisdom. How about you?