Welcome to Proverbs 365! This blogging project is my attempt to read one chapter of Proverbs daily and then share a piece of wisdom or lesson learned from within that daily chapter. Proverbs are God’s version of daily Best Practices: they help us through good times and bad. When life becomes stressful, Proverbs are there to help us make better choices. Feel free to join me in Proverbs 365–either on your blog or by leaving your daily Proverbs lesson in the comments below!
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Today I’m drawn to these two verses:
5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
When you understand the fear of the Lord (anyone notice how Lord has been in all caps, while God isn’t? Interesting.) then you will find the knowledge of God. Normally I’d read this as being the knowledge of God’s ways, his rules for life, how things should work, and so on. But this time I’m seeing a slightly different meaning. Knowledge of God himself. If you understand the fear of the LORD, then you will have knowledge of God. Yesterday I talked about how fear of the Lord is different from being afraid of him–it is respect, love, reverence, awe. In other words, a relationship with him. When you have that kind of relationship, you will have fear of the Lord. And you will have knowledge of Him. If you’re seeking more of God, then delving into that relationship will bring you more of Him.
In verse 6 it continues to talk about how he will give us wisdom and understanding. What struck me is that nothing can come from God that is not a core part of his being. He cannot speak or do something that he is not. He is not untrue or unjust–he cannot be those things. This is also explaining what wisdom is: it is knowledge and the understanding of it. Many people have knowledge, and they can quote lots of figures and stats. But they have not the understanding of it. Knowledge without the understanding of it, is useless. Wisdom combines knowledge with the understanding of what those things mean.
My husband and I were talking about this last night after dinner. We have many bright friends, yet many of them fail to investigate the things they believe. We believe this is the difference between being smart, and being wise. These kinds of people tend to take something that sounds right, that sounds good and true, and believe it fully without ever investigating it. They think they’re hearing truth, they think they’re being wise, but in the end their ‘wisdom’ fails them. It sounds good, it makes ‘sense’ based on basic experience, yet it isn’t true. This kind of common knowledge without understanding is what often leads us down roads that sound like they will make us “happy”–yet in the end we are hurt and feel regret for our decisions. Because the initial wisdom sounded good, but in the end was a bad idea. Later down in today’s reading Proverbs says exactly the same thing. God’s knowledge will keep you off the paths that lead to evil.
True knowledge, true wisdom–these come from God. Knowing him, he will teach you these things. The beauty of this is that his way of teaching you wisdom and knowledge is to ask you to know Him. The more you know him, the more wisdom you will find. The more wisdom you find, the more of Him you will have. It is a never-ending loop, one that will feed you and build you up in ways you could never imagine!
Update: after posting I decided to look up why Lord is written in all caps. It is a common translation of YAHWEH–which means, I am. God’s very name YAHWEH cannot be defined–he is simply “I am.” He cannot be defined by any other, by any description or any words, or described by comparing to other people or gods of this earth. He is who he says he is, and the only way he can be defined is by the things He does.
