How to Become Wise | 4 Ways to Gain Wisdom and Understanding

hey this is Todd Phillips your online pastor and personal life coach and I'm talking today about wisdom wouldn't you like to be more wise and how do we become more wise well this is one of the first questions I asked when I became a follower of Jesus when I was 24 years old I knew I had made a lot of mistakes in my life and maybe this maybe you can relate to this you know I've made a lot of mistakes into the age of 24 I I'd failed I'd you know put together a pretty good resume of mess-ups right and and I gave my life to Jesus I came to understand what a relationship with God was through Jesus Christ and I said you know what I'm in and and the intimacy that I begin to develop with God through that process was pretty overwhelming pretty powerful and just a wonderful way and in that process I began to read the Bible just several days after I became a follower of Christ and I came across a passage in the Old Testament of the Bible about King Solomon and I'm going to tell you that story in just a minute but it was really profound because Solomon did some great things for God and then God comes to Solomon and asked him Solomon whatever you want I'll give it to you I want you to think about this what if God if he's real right I know he is but maybe you don't right maybe you're just checking out the claims of Christ or you're wondering if God is real and if he is does he want to know you personally I get those questions but just go with me on this if he's real if he came to you and said anything you want I'll give you what would your answer be I mean I know that's a big question but oh my gosh right I mean would you ask for a million dollars would you ask for a big house would you ask for world peace I mean you know this question has been ongoing you know if a magic Genie or God or whoever asks you what do you want what would you say well that's exactly what God did with Solomon Solomon had had been an incredible servant to God and God was saying whatever you want you get and I want you to be thinking about that you know what would you say as we look through this story and find out what Solomon asked for so I want to read this to you right now that night God appeared to Solomon and said to him ask what should I give you he's just saying look whatever you want you got and Solomon said to God you've shown great faithful love to my love to my father David and you've made me king in his place Lord God let your promise to me father David now come true for you've made me king over a people as numerous as the dust in the earth now grant me here it is this is what he wants now grant me wisdom and knowledge so that I may lead these people for who can judge this great people of yours now before we go any further in the story I want you to get a grip on this right he didn't ask for wealth he didn't ask for popularity he didn't ask her a big house he didn't ask to enlarge his kingdom he said look give me wisdom and knowledge so I can lead the people that you've placed under me well are you kidding I mean come on so the guy's asking for wisdom now whether we would have asked for that or not I want to I want you to see what happens next so he says God you know what of all the things I could ask for I want wisdom and knowledge so God says back to Solomon this is 2nd chronicles chapter 1 verse 11 God said to Solomon because this was in your heart and you've not requested riches wealth or glory or for the life of those who hate you and you've not even requested longer life but you've requested for yourself wisdom and knowledge that you may judge my people over whom I made you King wisdom and knowledge are given to you so it gives him exactly what he wants but it gets better God says to Solomon I will also give you listen to this riches and wealth and glory such that it is not like this for any Kings who were before you and will not be for anything look here's the deal Solomon asked for wisdom he blows off all that other stuff that many of us right would be asking for and he says look just give me wisdom and God hooks him up with wisdom and that says you know what since you didn't ask for that other stuff I'm going to give you wisdom and here's everything else man that just blows my mind you know I read that as a brand new believer and said you know what God and it was just it was something there's pierce my heart I said God look I've been making bad decisions all my life on my own I've been trying to run my own life and I've been failing at it and your Bible tells me that if you run my life right you're batting a thousand on that you can run this thing better than me so take it and then he leads me to this passage and it shows me that all the things that Solomon this great king of the Old Testament could do or could ask for he asked for wisdom and so just in that moment I want to read this passage I said you know what God that's what I want to be I'm days into my experience with you I just started my relationship with you but I want to be a man of wisdom I don't want to be a foolish man anymore that's not gotten me anywhere in my life I want to be a man of wisdom and what's amazing about that is ever since that day that I asked that God has been blessing me with with insight and understanding about his word he's allowed me to apply that many times rightly to my life in my career and ministry and my family and my only in my own personal time with him in my ability to impact others that all comes from God you know the Bible goes on to say in another place in the Bible it says this the fear of the Lord the respect for God is the beginning of wisdom right and so I learned that for whatever reason God shared that with me early on and I've been I've been pursuing wisdom ever since so that I could just like Solomon right I'm not comparing myself to him or you or anyone else I'm just saying for me for me to be able to serve God well I needed to be a man of wisdom that's what the Bible told me and that's what I asked for so what I want to talk about today is it that if that pierces your heart if that gets you to think in a certain way I want you to be thinking I want you to be thinking about this how do we become more wise how can I take the things I'm about to share with you and apply them rightly to my life how can i with wisdom apply these things and so number one is whether you believe in God or not and this is an important distinction I want you to hear this you might assume that the first thing I say and this is it time in the Word of God will bring wisdom right now you may be thinking right now well I don't believe in God you know I just found you on Facebook or online or I'm on your blog and and I don't believe in God well here's the deal whether you believe in God or not I want you to consider this the Bible is the best-selling book of all time some of the greatest artists and scientists and kings and queens and leaders of nations have all said that the Bible was the most profound book they ever read now whether you believe in God or not wouldn't it make sense right of all the books that are available in this world that have been written throughout history that the best-selling book of all time that kings and rulers scientists and the greatest artists of all of history have said was the most profound book maybe it's something y'all look at right I'm not saying it's the only book you read I'm just saying why not read some of it so as we think about this one of the greatest opportunities to gain with them is to simply read the word of God to engage in the word not just listen under someone else's teaching like you're even doing right now but opening the Bible for yourself and getting inside the Word of God reading the passages the words that are on the page because the Bible tells us God tells us through the Bible that the words on the page of the Bible are eternal it's an eternal wellspring of wisdom right we gain wisdom by engaging with the Word of God so if you've never opened the Bible before in your entire life I just encourage you man there's a lot of free Bibles around you can go into any church anywhere in the town that you live in right now and say can I have a free Bible and they will hook you up if they don't email me and let me know I'll send you a free Bible but check them out first let them know that you want a free Bible and begin to read the Word of God so that's a number one way to gain wisdom number two time with wise people and I can't spend enough time on this but I only have a limited time so just kind of hang with me in the next few minutes about this this is one of the biggest things that I think we we miss out on in our culture and I think it's because of social media and the disconnect that we have in our culture right now because of electronics and social media we feel we're connected on Facebook or on Twitter or Instagram but we're not in fact that's not a real relationship right it's face-to-face one-on-one developing and interacting in physical contact with one another sharing our emotions through our facial expressions and engaging with one another in just that way but let me talk about this this is this is time with wise people this is this is finding people who can act in some sense as mentors for you but if that that word seems to too much right now these are just people that are further along in life that you can learn from it's really that simple they've gone through the experiences you've gone through maybe they've failed the same way you've failed and they've come out on the other side better and stronger and and wiser right and you can learn from them so that your learning curve to wisdom the the length of time it takes you to get wise in a given area it can be shorter you can shorten your learning curve by just learning from wise people I want you to think about this for a moment who are the wisest people you know not the wisest people you read about or see on TV but who are the wisest people you know is it your father as your mother is it a co-worker is it someone that were down in your organization who actually reports to you who's the wisest person you know and this is what I would challenge you with number one if you can think of that person right now if that individuals name and face is in your mind I want you to think about the opportunity you might have to go have lunch with them and say you know I know this sounds crazy but can we spend a little time together I mean very informal but getting yourself in the presence of people who are further along right then you are who have greater experience than you do in life I'm not talking about older and dumber I'm talking about older and wiser people that have made right decisions that you can learn from so spending time with those kind of people is a real key to gaining wisdom look I tell my son all the time and my two daughters you're going to be like the people you hang out with the most the five people you spend the most time with are the people that you're going to be most like so if you hang out with idiots you're going to be like them but if you hang out with people of wisdom you're going to be like them they're going to pull you up they're going to bring you closer to wisdom and insight and understanding and experience so that you can live life more fully right so spending time with wise people number three to become wise we need to have time for reflection but this is one of the things that most of us miss right besides spending time in the Word of God and finding wise people to spend time with as well learning from them it's just this time for reflection we are so wrapped around the axle man we are so busy all the time right we are just never never stopping to quote/unquote smell the roses but how to be more specific they're not just enjoying the moment it's it's reflecting on the moment reflecting on the experiences of the day having a time at the end of the day are at the beginning of the day to reflect on the day before to take your experiences and your challenges and your failures and your successes and reflect on what have I learned from that actually asking those questions in your own mind and heart we gain wisdom from that we gain understanding from that but if we don't allow ourselves to learn through that process if we don't allow ourselves to reflect on those truths we're going to miss out on that wisdom we're going to miss out on that insight reflection time for reflection let me tell you how I do this just very quickly one of the things I find that's very very helpful to me is that after the kids go to bed at 9 or 10 o'clock at night sometimes I'll just go out on back porch and I just sit on the back porch in the chair if it's a nice breeze outside and of course I'm a follower of Jesus so I spend time just praying with God and asking God right to give me wisdom to help me understand what I'm supposed to learn from both the successes and the failures of the day and I just allow myself to reflect on all of the meetings throughout the day the relationships I built the challenges I had the failures that I experienced when I fall on my face what kind of learn from that and I allow myself time to learn and time to gain wisdom boy it's huge you got to give yourself that time you got to give yourself an opportunity to reflect on that and gain wisdom through it or else you're missing those opportunities and here's the crazy thing and I don't want to depress you but here's the deal if we don't learn from our mistakes and our challenges we don't learn from life the first time man we're doomed to repeat it until we do boy if you hear nothing else for me today hear that that that we need to understand that as we go through failure we need to learn from that failure and apply that the the lessons from that failure rightly to our lives or we're doomed doomed to fail again so it's very very important in that time of reflection to learn from our experiences throughout the day and then finally number four I would say time with great people from all generations that this is this really comes down to reading in and videos but but mostly reading right because when I talk about all generations I'm talking about great men and women throughout time people who have stood the test of time their wisdom their insight their understanding the way that they teach and engage us and and allow us to learn from them great artists again great scientists great leaders of corporations and nation's great pastors and theologians who can teach us more about the Word of God it's allowing ourselves to gain wisdom by spending time in books mainly in books that allow us to learn and to be mentored by the greatest people in history one of the saddest things I've seen in younger generations is that that they're spending a lot of time on Twitter and Instagram and even Facebook and watching videos and that's good and these little two minute increments or five minute increments and again that's okay but if that's the only way that they're learning right about the world and about life they're missing so much there's huge amounts of pearls of just go platinum insights just freshly cutting in beautifully hewn diamonds of truth that come out of these books if we read them but many not just a few but many of us right many of us whether we're 20 or 60 or 90 many of us just don't read regularly and not only that we read we're not reading the great people of history we're just reading the latest fiction book and again those things are ok but they cannot dominate the moments of our life we have to find intentional times where we're reading from people who made a significant impact on this world so be thinking about that here's my challenge for today of all the things we talked about right time in the Word of God time with wise people that are living today that we can interact with time and reflection right where we're learning from our mistakes and also time with great mentors through the great books of history but challenge you to do two things number one if you don't read the Bible just go pick one up at your local church yeah I don't even pay for it go into the local church and ask them for a free Bible they'll provide that and just start reading out of the book of John just start there and if you're a follower of Jesus and you feel like you're engaged the Word of God please continue to do that right or if you're not go back in there let this be a convicting moment that that's the primary place that you gain wisdom but also I would challenge you with this find one book go on amazon.com and say greatest books of all time you'd be shocked to see the list of things that come up and just begin to look at those see mainly biographies what is it who is a man or a woman you want to learn more about their life their leadership their legacy and just buy that book online maybe an e-book or physically if you like physical books just have that shipped to your house and just start reading that book until the next time we talk live passionately give generously and impact the world for God you hey it's Todd did you get something out of the video you just watched I really hope you did I mean that's my passion to give you something that can be applied rightly to your life right now listen if that happened I want you to go right here and just click on this subscription this subscribe button and it'll take you straight to the page so you can subscribe to my blog and get this content coming to your inbox every week I hope you'll let me do that I hope you allow us to be on this journey together we'll see you soon

Channel: TODD PHILLIPS

Views: 40,715

Rating: 4.8083334 out of 5

Keywords: wisdom, insight, understanding, more wise, wiser, Monday Devotional, Online Pastor, Life Coach, Bible, Bible reading, Bible study, Christianity, God, Word of God, Gospel, Scripture, knowledge, read, reading, self-help, wise, wednesday wisdom

Id: nDQ5ZmJJJGA

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2016