Wisdom and Understanding

             For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives… (Colossians 1:9)

 

            Paul mentioned that they had received the gospel and were growing in faith and love.  This prayer is one of those prayers that is both safe and dangerous. It’s safe because anything that happens in our lives may be said to increase our knowledge of God’s will. It’s safe because life brings about wisdom and understanding. It’s dangerous because there’s a very good chance that the way God will answer and give us all wisdom and understanding is through difficulties.

            For example, how can we discover God’s faithfulness to us unless we fail to live according to His directions and find that He remains faithful even when we don’t deserve it? How can we discover God’s faithfulness if we don’t experience need, and His meeting of the need is such that we recognize that He has been faithful, rather than the meeting of the need being just chance? How can we understand that it is faithfulness, and not subservience, that causes God to give to us unless He has the right and ability to decline to give something that ultimately wouldn’t be a good idea?

            The wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives is not limited to supernatural speech. In fact, that is often the least effective way God communicates. One of the oft-repeated “rules” given to writers to improve their writing is “show, don’t tell.” When I was studying to become a teacher, I was told that students remember perhaps half of what they see, and less than half of what they’re told. Habits tend to take as long as 21 days to build, but less than three to break. It should not surprise us, then, that God doesn’t just tell us things, and therefore, we should be prepared for experiences with God that are more experiential than verbal.