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This update is from a recent meeting of ASK Daegu. Each member contributed something to the message that follows. We pray that our group encourages you in the same way that it encouraged all of us.

Read Proverbs 8

Why do good people do bad things?  Why do intelligent people do foolish things?  Why is there a desire in our heart to shun wisdom for the sake of personal pride and ambition?

The truth is, they do and we do.

The heart of man is under a powerful delusion that nothing is more important than the self and the world.  From within this delusion it is not only difficult to pursue wisdom for wisdom’s sake, but we often view wisdom as the antagonist in our own stories.  We don’t like to be told what we need to do.  Even though we might quietly agree that the wise advice is good, for the sake of our pride we will pursue a path of potential destruction just so that we can ultimately discover and validate the advice on our own.

Ironically, even while we shun wisdom we lash out in anger that wisdom seems so far away when we need it.  We cry out, “Where is wisdom?”  We proclaim, “If only I had known.”  In doing this on a regular basis we come to the root of the issue at hand.  The heart.

Until we are willing to investigate thoroughly the shortcomings of our hearts, we will be trapped between self-sabotaging ego one day and hopeless vulnerability the next.  Until we realize that we are not simply lost, but that left to our own desire we will seek division and not peace, hatred not love, and death not life, we will continue down a path of a self-imposed delusion from which God pleads for us to break.

In Jesus Christ we have the embodiment of God’s character, word and wisdom.  We are, inevitably, offended by his words, because they are rooted in the reality that he is King and we are not.  However, only by accepting his authority will we discover that not only do we desperately need his wisdom, but also that his wisdom is for our benefit, personally and collectively.  His words judge, but do not condemn.  The wisdom of God in Jesus Christ identifies the disease in our heart, and offers the cure.  Why do we shun his words?  Why do you?