Sunday Echo-Remix 09-16-2007

This is a Sunday Echo-Remix – an opportunity to stay in conversation about the content of our Sunday evening worship gathering.

Yesterday, we took on the theme of humility & the healthy conscience in the book of James. Here’s a snippet that was important for me:

James 1:5 – If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

James is not giving us some magical formula for wisdom acquisition here. Often this verse gets quoted with the implied meaning, “if you need wisdom about that, just say ‘God, give me wisdom’ and He has to give you wisdom because that’s what it says in James.”

I wish it were that easy. But James is not promoting witchcraft here – say the magic words and get what you want from God. Rather, James is calling his hearers to a posture of humility before God because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (as it says in the Psalms and Proverbs). Wisdom comes when we live in proper relationship to God who knows what we can’t know – when we live in a posture of humility.