“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” James 1:5
I love how James was being nice and politically correct here in this verse by saying, “If any of you lack wisdom…” He was trying to make everyone feel smart and wise by wording it this way.
In reality, we all lack wisdom! We all could be wiser! If we were honest with ourselves, than this verse is speaking directly to each one of us. We all need more wisdom.
Another thing I love about this verse, is that it shows that God is the giver of wisdom. Books can help make you smarter, but they won’t make you wiser. Teachers can teach you and grow your education, but they can’t make you wiser. Nothing that is man-made and man-driven will bring wisdom to you, only God can give you wisdom.
Continuing on with the being politically correct theme, James states that God gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not. I looked up these two words and found some interesting definitions, first liberally means in generous amounts and upbraideth means to find fault in someone. So this verse is saying that God is generous with the wisdom He will give you and if you ask God, He won’t find fault in you asking.
An example of this is Solomon. Solomon asked for wisdom. God didn’t hold back and He gave Solomon an abundance of wisdom. We see that Solomon didn’t necessarily use all that wisdom for spiritual gain, he used itself to make himself better also. And we see some of that wisdom went towards things that it probably shouldn’t have, yet God still gave him that wisdom!
According to the verse above, God will give you wisdom just like He gave Solomon wisdom. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are at in life, you probably need wisdom for something in your life, just ask God for it.
I think too many Christians think that God doesn’t care about our job or the daily decisions we make, well He does and He wants us to make the best decisions for ourselves but we have to be willing to ask for wisdom.
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Counted Faithful 