James 3.13 observes, if you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.

Everyone wants wisdom, or at least we always want to make the right decision. Always making the right decision is not really wisdom from God’s perspective. 

Wisdom from a Biblical perspective is knowing God’s Word and properly applying it to our lives.

Most of the decisions we want wisdom for are things like jobs, spouses, residency, investments, all important to us, all significant to our lives, but not really things for which we need wisdom.

Take marriage for example. Praying for wisdom for the right spouse is pretty common. Again, the fear is choosing the wrong spouse.

Wisdom is praying to apply God’s word to our lives so that we are the right spouse. Wisdom is understanding the character that God defines as godly and seeing it lived in the life of our potential spouse.

God is clear about who we should be. God is clear about the character, nature and behavior of the person who would make a godly spouse. Finding this person and being this person requires knowing God’s Word and applying it to our lives and seeing it in the lives of others.

Wisdom in this case is not some special supernatural revelation that will save us from potential calamity. Biblical wisdom in this case is working to become a life-long spouse and looking for that same obedient-to-God nature in our potential spouse.

This is an entirely different way of understanding and applying wisdom.

God expects us to know His will and do it. The person who does this is wise in the eyes of God. Why is this person wise? Because God knows that He plans to judge every person by how they lived in this life.

The wise person knows this too because God said He would do this in the Bible. The wise person orients their life around the will of God so that they live a life pleasing to God.

It is the fool who doesn’t believe in God or believes but ignores the will of God recorded in the Word of God, the Bible.

God gives us the Bible so we can know Him and do what pleases Him so that when we face Him He can say to us well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.

The person who lives with God forever is truly wise!