Get Wisdom

As a precursor to VBS, we’re doing something in June called Family Palooa. This is going to be new for us. This is going to be in partnership with a church out of North Carolina. Their missions strategy, their kids pastor will bring a bunch of volunteers down, and they’re going to be in Charleston for like a week and a half, and they’re just going to be with a bunch of churches like ours putting on these kind of block parties. We’re going to use this as a precursor to try to get in front of some families ahead of VBS, one month ahead of time. So, this is going to be on a Monday night in the middle of June. What we need is we need to invite people, and we need to bathe this thing in prayer, and we need to be there. So, that church, this church out of North Carolina, they are going to do the music, they’re going to do the games, they’re going to bring their own evangelistic speaker, they’re even going to grill hundreds of hot dogs, but what they can’t do is all the follow-up conversations and connections after because they don’t live here, but we do. So, we need to show up that night just like it’s our own event, and we need to be inviting people to it.

If you are plugged into our weekly emails, I’m sending the graphic out for this. Anybody that lives in any neighborhood, please, I want you to bombard your neighborhood Facebook page with this. Put it on the Ravenel Facebook page, whatever it is. I’m off of all that now. But what I want to do right now is just to pray. Pray for VBS. Pray for Family Palooa that these would be bigger than just successful events, but that God would use these things truly to move the spiritual needle of our community. More information about either of those could be found after the service. Just go to Miss Mickey, come to myself, and we will get you plugged in with all the details. Y’all take it away for a few minutes and praying for these two events, and I’ll put a bow on it. Thank you guys.

Holy Spirit, good morning. God, thank You so much for bringing us here today. Lord, thank You for gathering us. And Father, thank You for planning our salvation. Jesus, thank You for accomplishing it for us. Holy Spirit, thank You for applying it to our souls. Not to us, not to us, but to You be the glory. To You be the glory for calling Mickey to lead VBS. To You be the glory for that church in North Carolina coming to help us put on a Family Palooa. To You be the glory for all the sacrifices that are made for those that die for our country to help us be able to worship You in this comfort. God, we don’t need the comfort. We don’t need all that. But Lord, You have sovereignly chosen for us to live right now in this place where we do get to worship You in this. Thank You for that, Lord.

God, I’d be remiss not to pray for our brothers and sisters in the faith around the world who don’t have this. Underground Christians in China and Iran, in North Korea, places where they’re not protected, not in the ways that we are. But God, we do know that You are a warrior who fights for us. Whether in America or in Iran, all believers have a great God who is working on their behalf. Thank You for that, God. Our freedom. Let us not waste that. But we have a responsibility to embrace it and to use it for the sake of the kingdom. Let us do that.

Well, Lord, I’m begging You to get a hold of us this morning. I’m begging You get a hold of this sermon. Let it be so much more than just my words, my ideas, even my convictions. Let it be a word from the God of the universe to His church. Please let it be that way. Anything that’s not from You, God, would You just let everybody here forget it immediately? But anything that is from You, God, would You pierce our hearts starting with me? Would You get a hold of us, please? God, we love You. Thank You for loving us. It’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, Judges chapter 16 is where we will be this morning. Judges 16. You go ahead and get your Bibles opened up or turned on to Judges chapter 16. I’m not sure that he had Ever considered the role of guard rails along the highway prior to this moment? There’s this young man who was a student up at Clemson University. He’s from Colombia, and he was coming home one weekend to visit mom and dad, coming home to visit family, coming home just to enjoy a little bit of time away from his studies. And he decided not to do 26. He wanted to come to Backway because he had a relatively new motorcycle. This young guy, he’s coming down these kind of mountainy roads, enjoying the twists and the turns. It’s fall, so he’s looking at all the leaves changing color. He’s enjoying the crisp air. He’s really enjoying himself. I doubt he had ever wondered what those metal guard rails were for on the edges of the highways until this moment. He’s coming around a bend. There’s not another car and nothing like that, but he’s coming around a bend, and some dirt and some pine straw had washed over the highway. And as he’s leaning into his turn, his tires lose traction. He puts the motorcycle down on the side. He slides 20 feet along the this little country highway, crashes into the metal guard rails, protecting him from a two or 300 foot fall on the other side.

My younger brother almost lost his life on a motorcycle coming home from Clemson University a couple years ago. And ever since then, he’s had no question in his mind what those guard rails were for. He knew those guardrails were in place to protect him and to preserve his life and to take care of him. The Bible offers us similar guard rails. We may not see them. We may not touch them. Hopefully, we never bump and crash into them. The Bible calls these guard rails wisdom. The Bible offers us wisdom which is meant to protect us, meant to keep us, meant to hold us, meant to make sure that we don’t take our lives off the edge of the highway, crashing to our demise at the bottom of the abyss below.

This morning, we’re going to talk about wisdom. And we’re going to talk about it through the life of a man who seemed to shirk wisdom at every single opportunity it was offered to him. Judges chapter 16, the road map of today’s sermon. We’re going to look at the downfall of a man named Samson. And from that, we’re going to draw three principles about godly wisdom while offering three assessments and applications as well.

The main point of today’s message, what I want you leaving here believing and embracing and recognizing is this: We need God’s wisdom, not just God’s power. We need God’s wisdom, not just God’s power. Often times in churches, we pray prayers according to God’s power or at least asking for it. God, would you please give us a really good VBS? God, would you help us raise all the money that we need to renovate Martin Hall? God, would you please save my friend? Man, these are great prayers. Absolutely great prayers. But honestly, what I don’t hear prayed that often in churches is prayers for God’s wisdom. God, what do you want for our church? God, what’s right for me to do with this money you’ve given me? God, I keep hearing people talking about a certain situation in church. What am I supposed to do here? We pray all the time for God’s power to take care of something. And very rarely are we asking God for His wisdom. Why? Why is it so common for us to start up the motorcycle of church, roaring down the highway of life, asking for all the power and all the throttle, never once wondering, Lord, what are the guard rails You want in place for my life and for my church?

Really, let’s let’s be introspective and honest for a moment. When was the last time you asked God for His wisdom about how you spent your time or your money or how God feels about your relationships or that promotion? When was the last time? You might be in the top 10% of Christians, and you might be like, “Man, that was this morning for me. I can’t relate to that.” I’m all the time asking God, “God, please use Your power to fulfill my request. God, please use Your power to make this thing happen.” And I got to confess to you as your pastor, I’ve got to confess, I do not ask for God’s wisdom to lead y’all well nearly enough. I’m going to get to the end of my life, and I’m going to stand before the throne of Christ, and He’s going to assess me.

On how I pastored y’all. And I know one of the things He’s going to bring up with me is, “Jeremy, you believe real big about yourself and you so rarely ask Me for wisdom.” I’m not—I’m not—I’m not trying to be showy. I’m just being honest. I’m confessing that to you right now. And I also confess that I don’t drive our church to ask those types of questions enough either. Samson is a guy that I’m convinced when he got to the end of his life, he would have been asking, “Why didn’t I seek the wisdom of Yahweh above more?” So, let’s get into the passage.

The first principle about God’s wisdom that we need to recognize from the passage this morning is this: God’s wisdom hitches up to the right people. God’s wisdom hitches up to the right people. This is Judges 16:1-5. Samson went to Gaza where he saw a prostitute and went to bed with her. When the Gazites heard that Samson was there, they surrounded the place and waited in ambush for him all that night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, saying, “Let’s wait until dawn, then we’ll kill him.” But Samson stayed in bed only until midnight. Then he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate along with the two gate posts, pulled them out bar and all. He put them on his shoulders and took them to the top of a mountain overlooking Hebron.

Sometime later, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah who lived in the Sorek Valley. That’s also Philistine country. The Philistine leaders go to her and they said, “Persuade him. Persuade him to tell you where his great strength comes from so we can overpower him, tie him up and make him helpless. Each of us will then give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”

God’s wisdom hitches up to the right people. Something we’ve already seen in the life of Samson is that Samson is love drunk. He is distracted by his lust and his sexual appetite. And these two relationships with the unnamed prostitute and with Delilah exemplify this. See, Samson all the time was hitching his life to the wrong people. Look again at verse one. You see where Samson goes? He’s down in Gaza. Now, you may not know this, but the area of the Philistines, that’s on the Mediterranean coast. There’s five principal cities where the Philistines had their power. Gaza was the southernmost city. That means Samson from way over here at the top of Israel, out of a place called Dan, literally goes as far away from Israel as he possibly can to the heart of the Philistine power all the way down in Gaza.

Now, why Samson had left Israel and was all the way down in Gaza, I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is that he liked what he saw. He saw the wrong type of person for him to hitch his life up to. So he makes a deal with her. He stays with her until midnight. At some point, he’s recognizing that he’s got to get out of the place. And he does something truly astonishing. Verse three kind of just says it. He takes hold of the city gate. He takes hold of the gate post. Pulls them up.

Let me try to explain to you what that meant. So for Samson to get from that woman’s house out, or at least to those double gates, he would have had to walk past four to six guard stations that the Philistine guards would have been posted in. Each of those guard stations would have held four to six soldiers. Samson is walking past dozens of soldiers, let alone all of these leading men of the city of Gaza. How he gets past them outside of the divine help of God, I don’t know. He would have had to walk through that in order to get out.

Samson, though, isn’t content just to make a silent escape. He grabs these two doors of the city gates. Y’all, this gate was two stories high. These doors are solid wood. I’m—I’m—I’m roughly six feet tall. I’ve got roughly a six-and-a-half-foot wingspan. Samson’s probably a little bigger than me. Whatever. I don’t care. I’ve made my peace with that. It’s okay. Samson somehow grabs these doors and the bars that would have held the doors on the hinges, also two stories tall. Samson yanks these things out of the ground. I assume they’re creaking and groaning and grinding as he’s doing it. Puts it all on his shoulders and then makes a walk out of the City up this hill, presumably to just put them on top of a hill somewhere. How does Samson accomplish this? Outside of the help of God, there’s no way. Samson has just spent the night with a prostitute in Gaza, and God presumably is giving him the help that he needs to make this miraculous escape. God’s never let me get out of trouble that way. I don’t understand it. But we begin to see the downward spiral for Samson. He’s revving the motorcycle. He is cruising down the mountain highway. In chapter 14, he married a Philistine, which he wasn’t supposed to do. Now, in chapter 16, he’s just hitching up with any old Philistine he sees, and barely escaping. Man, it is clear Samson is testing fate. He is pushing luck. He is living with no respect to God or God’s wisdom or God’s standards. Yet he is our hero.

But that leads to the second person Samson shouldn’t have hitched his life with. The rest of the passage is about a woman named Delilah. Now, she’s also of Philistine descent. She lives in a place called the Sorak Valley. And Delilah, it’s clear from verses four and or verse five and following, Delilah does not love Samson. She’s just after what Samson can provide. Now, what made her initially like him? His good looks, the stories about him, his persona, the aura. I don’t know. But what she eventually attaches herself to is the the promise of all this silver being offered to her.

Let me ask you a question. The first wisdom assessment, can you be honest? Are you hitched with the wrong people? Are you linking your lives with the wrong people? Man, I’ll just say this from a romantic standpoint, which is taking center stage in this passage. For for believers in Christ, followers of Jesus, the only people that we ought to have our eyes on are other followers of Jesus. For any adult in the room and you are single, if you desire marriage, your only dating pool is reserved to those who profess their faith in Jesus Christ. And I’m not just talking adult singles, man. Boys, I’m talking to y’all. When that day comes, it’s here. Whatever. Lauren, I guess you’ve had that conversation. I don’t know, man. When that day comes, the only one that you ought to consider are other women who profess a love and a faith in Jesus Christ. Man, that’s the only option for us as followers of Jesus. Everybody else, we love them, but we do not hitch our lives to them in that way.

Now, let’s take it out of romance and let’s just put it in friendship. Man, I’ve got some very meaningful friendships with a couple of guys that do not call themselves followers of Jesus. I share my life with them. I confess my struggles. I am honest with them. I want their feedback on some aspects of my life, but because they do not follow Jesus, I do not take their deepest counsel on the most important parts of who I am. I’m going to love them. I pursue them. I want them to speak into my life and to give me their honest take on stuff. But because they do not live for Christ, I cannot take their wisdom and their advice on aspects that would directly confront what they don’t believe in. The way of the world says, “Lift yourself up. Make yourself prosperous.” The way of Christ is lower yourself down. There are arenas of my life that Phil and Michael will never understand because I’m playing by a different playbook. That’s where y’all come in. That’s where followers of Jesus are crucial.

Man, I had a phone call with the guy this week. We’re talking about something and man, he said, “Jeremy, I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve seen something in your life over the past month and you just need to be aware.” Praise God for that, friend. Because without him, I’d keep making the same mistake over and over again. He had the courage to say, “Hey, man, I prayed about this. I I just need to say something to you.” Do you have that in your life? Are you hitching your life to the wrong people? Natural application, surround yourself with the right people. Surround yourself with the right people. For some of us, that means we need to cut off a relationship. There is somebody in your life, romantic or otherwise, that is not helping point you to Jesus Christ. And your calling this morning potentially is to cut that relationship off. Others of us need to start forming new relationships. Guess where you can get that? Here.

Sunday school, Wednesday night, Celebrate Recovery, men’s and women’s Bible studies, over lunch this afternoon at Agave, wherever you’re going to go, let’s start forming some relationships. Let’s surround ourselves with the right people. The other side to godly wisdom hitching with the right people is that number two, the second principle, write this down, God’s wisdom flees the wrong situations. God’s wisdom flees the wrong situations.

During college, I had a foolish friendship which regularly put me in the wrong situations. We’re talking 11:00 Friday night, I’m off campus doing junk I shouldn’t have been doing. I wish that I had listened to the wisdom of mentors and the good friends I had who were telling me to run and I did not. And I I brought myself into some pain. And by God’s grace, He never let me fall off the abyss on the motorcycle, so to speak.

Eventually, Samson found himself thinking the same thing. Let’s look at it. Verses 6 through 15. Delilah says to Samson, remember Delilah is motivated by 5,500 pieces of silver being promised to her. Delilah says to Samson, “Please tell me where does your great strength come from, sweetheart?” You could just see her nuzzling up next to him. “How could someone tie you up and make you helpless?” Samson tells her, “Man, if they tie me up with seven fresh bow strings that have never been dried, I’ll become weak. I’d be like any other man. I’d be like that chump, Pastor Jeremy Simmons.”

The Philistine leaders brought her seven fresh bow strings that have not been dried, and she tied she tied them up with them. While the men in ambush were waiting in her room, SHE CALLS OUT, “SAMSON, SAMSON, THE PHILISTINES, they’re here.” And he snaps the bow strings as a strand of yarn snaps when it touches fire. The secret of his strength remained unknown.

Some time passes. Then Delilah says to Samson, “You’ve mocked me. You told me lies. Won’t you tell me how you could be tied up, sweetheart?” Jeremy’s inspired version. He told her, “If they came up and they tied me with new ropes that have never been used, I’ll become weak. Be like any other man.” So Delilah took those new ropes, tied him up with them, and shouted, “Samson, the Philistines are here.” But while the men in ambush were waiting in her room, he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.

Then Delilah says to Samson, “You’ve mocked me all along. You’ve told me lies. Tell me, how can you be tied up?” And he told her, “If you weave the seven braids on my head into the fabric on a loom,” and some of your translations keep going. Mine cuts off there. Verse 14. She fastened the braids with a pin and called him, “Samson, the Philistines are here.” He awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin with the loom and the web.

“How can you say I love you,” she tells him, “when your heart’s not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great.”

Godly wisdom flees the wrong situations. Delilah three times nags Samson and is trying to figure out where his power comes from so that, quote, “you can be a helpless man.” It does not take a PhD in Hebrew to see what is happening here. She wants to make him helpless. She wants to take all of his power away. Three times Samson mocks her and lies to her about where his strength lies. Yet the third time, Samson’s resolve, you see, it starts to slip as he includes his hair in the lie.

Now, if I’m Samson, I’ve got some warning signs at verse six, where the lady I’m cozying up with literally says, “I want to make you helpless.” Samson, though, does not have those warning signs. He is roaring around the corner on the motorcycle. He sees the dirt on the road. He sees the pine straw and he says, “I can jump it. I can make this thing happen.” He doesn’t care. He’s got this utter arrogant belief in himself where he can see what’s happening yet he doesn’t care.

Wisdom assessment. Are you repeatedly in bad situations? Is there some Delilah in your life repeatedly cozying up, repeatedly happening, purely intending on your downfall? Are you repeatedly in the wrong situation? Give you some ideas. Financially, are you regularly coming to the end of the month not knowing how you’re going to pay your bills? Job-wise, are you just jumping from job to job, always facing some sort of reprimand from your superiors? Relationally, do you go from dramatic relationship or friendship to dramatic friendship? Cutting people off, cozying up to new people constantly. Let’s take it a step further. Substance, man. Are you repeatedly looking to alcohol and to drugs to numb or to escape? Are you repeatedly in bad situations? Is there some sort of Delilah in your life constantly calling you, constantly wooing you, only looking to make you helpless?

Here’s what I’ve seen in my life. See, God will allow me to get me in trouble so that I would learn my lesson and that I would hopefully avoid that same trouble the next time. And I’m not special. God will allow you to get you in trouble hopefully so that you would learn your lesson the next time. Our foolishness will ignore the warning signs of life and will push us toward the edge of bad choices.

I’ve got this buddy from seminary and he had he’s just driving his car one day and he sees a warning light pop up on the dashboard and he does the same thing we all did. We all do. He takes whatever piece of paper is sitting there and slides it over so he can’t see the warning light flashing on the dashboard anymore. Some time goes past and he never addresses what the issue is of the warning light until one day he’s driving down the interstate and he sees some smoke coming from the hood. At that point I think a couple warning lights are starting to fire. He brings the car to the side of the road, gets out of it, which is fortunate for him because within minutes the entire thing is engulfed in flames. He was ignoring the warning lights on the dashboard of his car and it almost killed him.

Man, are you ignoring the warning lights in your life? Are you repeatedly in these bad situations thinking, “I can get myself out. I can buy my way out. I can talk my way out. I can muscle my way out.” If you are repeatedly in bad situations, here’s your application. Write this down. Change your habits. You will habit your way into goodness and you will habit your way into badness. Change your habits. That’s easier for me to say than for you to do. But guess what? We’ve got a ministry just for that. It’s called Celebrate Recovery. Every Sunday night, six o’clock, be here with Robbie. They’ll be here tonight. Celebrate Recovery is totally wrapped around the idea that we can’t save ourselves from ourselves. We need to be rescued from us, not just from our sin and the punishment that that it brings, but also like we can’t be rescued from our own bad habits because we’re the ones that keep thrusting ourselves back into those bad habits. We need some outside help. Come and join Robbie six o’clock tonight and he and a group of others will love you into into greater wisdom and life and flourishing.

See, here’s the deal. Foolishness calls you back to that bad friend who drags you down. Foolishness brings you back to that boyfriend who’s no good. The first time Delilah asked Samson how she could make him helpless, he should have used that divine strength to run all the way from Sorak Valley back to Israel. But instead, he stayed. He was blinded by his lust for her, blinded by his arrogant belief in himself, blinded by his foolishness.

That leads us to the final part of the sermon, the third principle. I want you to write this down. God’s wisdom trusts the right source. God’s wisdom trusts the right source. And what I mean by source is the source of wisdom. God’s wisdom trusts the right source of wisdom.

Verses 6-15, all we see is Delilah nagging Samson towards compromise. Verses 16-20, we see that compromise happen because she nagged him day after day and pleaded with him until she wore him out. Verse 17, he told her the whole truth. He said to her, “My hair has never been cut because I’m a Nazerite to God from birth. If I’m shaved, my strength will leave me and I’ll become weak and be like any other man.” When Delilah realized that he had told her the whole truth, she sent this message to the Philistine leaders. Come one more time. He’s told me the whole truth. The Philistine leaders came to her and brought the silver with them. Then she let him fall asleep on her lap and called a man to shave off the seven braids on his head. In this way, she made him what? Say it. And his strength left him. She cried, “Samson, the Philistines are here.” When he awoke from his sleep, he said, “I’ll escape as I did before. I will shake myself free.” But he didn’t know that the Lord had left Him. You see, undeterred by his lies and mocking, and fueled by her desire for that money, Delilah keeps nagging Samson. And eventually his granite resolve is worn down by the ebb and flow, the tide of Delilah’s constant questioning. And Samson reveals the source of his great strength.

By telling Delilah where his strength comes from, Samson is telling himself that he can get himself out of any situation he gets into. See, the deal is Samson’s hair, it’s not magical. The hair itself wasn’t actually the source of his strength. It was God’s kindness, God’s provision, and Samson’s recognition of it. When Samson tells Delilah that, “Hey, my hair’s never been cut. If you cut my hair, I’ll be like any other man.” What he’s saying is, “I don’t need God to get me out of my trouble. I can do it myself. Have you heard about me? I’m the guy that killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey jaw. I’m the guy that picked up a twotory city gate and carried it up a hill. That’s me. So what about the hair? So what about God? I’m fine.”

Don’t we live like that sometimes? If we could just be honest, don’t we usually have a pretty good trust in ourselves to get ourselves out of the trouble that we put ourselves into? I know I do. I’d be faced with some sort of temptation and the lie that’s in my mind is, “It’s not so bad. No one will know.” In other words, you can clean up your mess. Samson being tempted by this woman towards compromise, towards leaving God, totally takes it. And the passage ends in the most painful way possible. Not with Samson’s hair gone, but with the presence of God gone.

The third wisdom assessment. Who’s your source of wisdom? Ultimately, is it yourself or is it God? You see, the world, the flesh, and the devil will direct your trust to be in you. Culture will be happy to reaffirm that. Be authentic. Be yourself. Live your truth. Jeremiah 17:9 though says that your heart is deceitful above all things. Your heart is more deceitful than slick advertisers. Your heart is more deceitful than fake friends who gossip and backbite. Your heart is more deceitful than Satan, the father of lies. Left to your own devices, your choices and your decisions are unreliable at best. Do not trust you to be your source of wisdom. God must be the one in whom we trust.

The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and they despise discipline. See, we’ve got to trust that God’s ways are higher than ours. God’s thoughts are higher than ours. The best of human wisdom and accomplishments can’t hold a candle to God’s throwaway ideas. The ideas that God has had that He hasn’t acted on are better than anything humanity will ever come up with. You’ve got to believe that. And if you don’t believe that, then God is not your source of wisdom.

So here’s the application. Spend time in the word and prayer. Man, if you’re not regularly hearing from God about how God lives, how He loves, how He’s made this world, man, if you’re not regularly pouring over this book and letting this living book read you, man, like the Bible describes itself as living and active. It’s canonized. It is closed. We will never add to this nor subtract from this. But this book though bound is unleashed whenever you read it for real.

I’m not talking about then she let him fall asleep on her lap and called a man to shave off the seven braids of his head. Now interesting. I’m talking about I will escape as I did before and I will shake myself free. Man, that kind of sounds like me a little bit. Lord, do I trust in my ability to shake myself free from my troubles or do I believe ultimately in You? I’m talking about that second type of reading. That type of reading where you ask God, God, how does this strike my heart today? Man, you have got to spend time in the Bible and in prayer or else you will not, you can’t even hear from God really. Like, man, I’m not, I don’t want to take this too far because God could do whatever He wants to do. But what I can guarantee is that if you’re not reading the Bible regularly, if you’re not spending time with God in prayer, how could you expect to live a flourishing, vibrant life filled with God’s wisdom? Let’s put in a human application. By God’s grace, I am married. What if I never went home? What if seven nights out of the week I did not sleep at my house with Becca and I was off somewhere else? Would you think that I’ve got a very healthy marriage? Come on. Would I have a healthy marriage? >> Would we have a whole lot of intimacy in our lives? If we never talked, would I would I know what she’s feeling? Come on, let’s y’all are waning in your If If I never talked to her, would she know how I am doing? If we never discussed our plans and desires, would we be on the same page in life? If we didn’t talk about our kids and what we see happening in our kids, would our parenting be aligned or what? Gosh, guys. But we do that with God. We do the marriage ceremony. We give our lives to God. We get baptized. And then we stop spending time with Him. We act as if we can have a functional relationship with the God of the universe and we never spend time with Him. I can shake myself free. How arrogant are we? And praise be to God. Praise be to God that when we in our foolishness fail to treat God and His wisdom like we should, God though in His kindness continues to approach us, continues to call us back to Himself. Some of us are here today suffering from the bad choices you’ve made in life. Not because God is holding those consequences over you in His divine punishment because He’s mad at you, but because every choice has a consequence. And God will let us feel the consequences of our choices. The worst part is that when we are making those bad choices, God feels so distant from us and we live like Samson, not knowing that God in His presence has left the room. So, do you want to feel close to God again? Do you want God to guide you and to lead you into flourishing and joy? Do you want that? So, I want to ask you a question. Where do you need God’s wisdom today? Are you hitching your life to the wrong person? Are you not fleeing from bad situations? Are you trusting yourself as your source of wisdom? You just close your eyes and bow your heads. And I want you to ask this question. God, where do I need Your wisdom today? God, where do I need Your wisdom today? Is it a relationship that’s bringing me down? Is it a wrong situation that keeps happening? Is it a failure to trust and obey God as the source of wisdom instead of yourself? You just take a moment. You just pray to the Lord. Just be honest with Him about your life. God, I rejoice in the fact that in wisdom You decided to save us. God, Your word says in Ephesians 1:7 and 8 that in Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of Christ’s grace. That grace that He richly poured on us with all wisdom and understanding. Christ, thank You for giving Your life, pouring Your blood out so that I could be redeemed from all my dumb, foolish choices. God, thank You that every time I’ve wanted to take the motorcycle of my life around the bend and I have laid it down, You have continued to protect me with guard rails. You’ve saved my life time and time again. I think about all these dumb choices I made. I still make that I’m going to be tempted to make in the future and how You protect me from the ultimate consequences of those time after time. Thank You. There’s no good thing. There’s no good reason in me why that should be the case. But it is God. I also know some folks that are feeling the consequences of their foolishness. And I pray that You would get a hold of them. I pray that You would protect them from the ultimate consequence. For anybody in the room, Holy Spirit, that doesn’t know Jesus as Lord and Savior, who is still wallowing in the foolishness of themselves, I pray You get a hold of them. You’d save them. You’d draw them to Yourself that You would redeem them from their foolishness. Lord, make us a church that doesn’t just pray in faith for Your power. Make us a church that prays in humility for Your wisdom. That we would depend on You for how we spend money, for how we structure our calendar, The types of events that we do, the things we say yes to and no to. Make us a church that is driven by Your wisdom. Not our desires, not our wisdom, not our traditions, not even our ingenuity or even the circumstances and the details of what seems appropriate at the moment. But let us be a church that’s driven by wisdom. We know the fear of the Lord is the beginning of that wisdom. Let us not be the fools who despise Your wisdom. God, You’re good. Thank You.