Being Successful, Lady Wisdom’s Gift

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. Does Jesus want you to be successful? Has the question even ever crossed your mind? Success matters to us. We want to have good careers, be good parents, and have a successful marriage. In chapter 8 of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom says that she can bring you success. Let’s join today’s message and see who she is and how she can make such a claim. Let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a complaint. Yeah. So, in 2014, the Canadian government banned the sale of incandescent light bulbs. They could not be imported. They could not be manufactured in Canada. The idea was to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which sounds like a great idea. But in Manitoba, our electricity uh does not come by burning fossil fuels. It’s hydro and that does not produce any greenhouse gases. And the replacement was CFL light bulbs. Um they did not work below -15°. So when we have the coldest weather, which is often below -15°, and we have the most darkness in the winter, the government implemented a plan that left us without the ability to have functional outdoor lighting. This was called progress. So I did what most people did. We bought as many incandescent light bulbs as we could and hoped that some other solution came about before we ran out. And the problem was solved because LED light bulbs came around, the price, the technology got better, the price dropped, and we had lights. But for me, I just kept thinking this was a failure of government. They made a decision without a wellthought through plan. And I just wanted to shout, will somebody please pay attention to what is going on? Uh, this is not smart. Because what I want is a government that leads with wisdom and a government that is successful in what it’s doing. Can you think of a few other topics where being successful matters? Like running a business, you want that to be successful. Parenting, you want that to be successful. being married, having money, maintaining friendships, being happy or joyful. Like we want to be successful in life. Right. Right. So in today’s passage, we’re going to learn about Lady Wisdom and what she offers is success, good government. She offers wealth. She offers goodness and healthy relationships. She offers justice. She actually offers you what your heart really wants. How do we know Lady Justice can deliver on her promise? Well, Proverbs 8 is her resume. This is what she can do. This is the people she’s worked with. This is her training. So, kind of look at Proverbs 8 like a resume. So, when we read it, listen for what she is saying about herself. Um, and therefore, how she can offer you what you most need to be successful with me? getting a lot of weird looks. Let me offer a prayer and uh we’ll begin. Father uh Father, in the gentleness of this morning, would you help us to learn? Would you help us to uh focus and hear what is in this chapter? Would you help us to then be encouraged um being to be encouraged by the good news and the help you’ve given us in this book? um capture our imagination and bring glory to yourself. Amen.

Proverbs 8. All right. Listen as wisdom calls out. Hear as understanding raises her voice. At the hilltop along the road, she takes her stand at the crossroads. By the gates, at the entrance to the town, on the road leaning in, she cries aloud. I call to you, all of you. I raise my voice to all people. You simple people, use good judgment. You foolish people, show some understanding. Listen to me. I have important things to tell you. Everything I say is right, for I speak the truth, and I detest every kind of deception. My advice is wholesome. There’s nothing devious or crooked in it. My words are plain to anyone with understanding, clear to those with knowledge. Choose my instruction rather than silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold. For wisdom is more valuable than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with it. I wisdom live together with good judgment. I know where to discover knowledge and discernment. All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance and corruption and perverse speech. Common sense and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine. Because of me, kings reign, and rulers make just decisions. Rulers lead with my help and nobles make righteous judgments. I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me. I have riches and honor as well as enduring wealth and justice. My gifts are better than gold, even the purest gold. My wages better than sterling silver. I walk in righteousness, in paths of justice. Those who love me inherit wealth. I will fill their treasuries. The Lord formed me from the beginning before he planned anything else. I was appointed in ages past at the very first before the earth began. I was born before the oceans were created, before the springs bubbled forth their waters, before the mountains were formed, before the hills were born, before he had made the earth and the fields and the first handfuls of soil. I was there when he established the heavens. When he drew the horizon on the oceans. I was there when he set the clouds above. When he established springs deep in the earth. I was there when he set the limits of the sea so they would not spread beyond their boundaries. And when he marked off the earth’s foundation, I was the architect at his side. I was his constant delight, rejoicing always in his presence. and how happy I was with the world he created. How I rejoiced with the human family. And so, my children, listen to me, for all who follow my ways are joyful. Listen to my instruction and be wise. Don’t ignore it. Joyful are those who listen to me, watching for me daily at my gates, waiting for me outside my home. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But those who miss me injure themselves. All who hate me love death. So we have this big speech by Lady Wisdom calling folks to listen to her and saying why they should listen to her. At the hilltop along the road by the crossroads she hollers hey you. What happens at a crossroad? You have to make a decision. So when you need to decide something, she’s there trying to get your attention. She’s at the city gates. So that’s a public gathering place. The place where you buy and sell. The place where the elders sit if you need some advice. The place where you might seek justice in a dispute. It’s where politics get worked out. So for us, you might say, “She’s at city hall. She’s in the boardroom. She’s at your kitchen table in the evening. She’s with you when you’re talking at the end of the day when you’re out for a walk with your spouse. She’s in the staff meeting. She’s at the place where you are making decisions and she’s trying to get you to pay attention to her. I was thinking on the topic of trade and politics and justice. Those are topics where likely somebody is hiding information, right? Politics, trade, justice, somebody’s probably hiding. So we’re not getting the whole truth. So it’s really hard to figure out what to do. It’s also where we really want success. And so there is lady wisdom shouting, “Pay attention to my teaching.” Verse six, listen to me. I have important things to tell you. Verse 10, “Choose my instruction rather than silver and knowledge rather than pure gold.” So why is wisdom better than silver and gold? It’s a means to an end. The purpose of silver, the purpose of gold, of money, is to help you get other things, right? Money helps me get food and a home and money helps me be safe. Help money is a way for me to become comfortable. But there is another way to all of those goals and that is the way of wisdom. So you can buy your way through life if you can afford it or you can use wisdom. My friend says that um when it comes to relationships, women want loyalty and men want security. No, when it comes to relationships, men want loyalty, women want security. Uh so with money, you can um uh uh draw the attention of people to be loyal to you. Um and if you’ve got money, you can afford security. But if you lose that money, you might find that some of your relationships also go away and you don’t perhaps feel as secure. And wisdom is saying there is another way than just money. What is it you’re looking for? Because here’s what she can do for you. Verse 14, common sense and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine. So she’s saying the people you know who are successful, I gave them success. The folks who have insight into a problem, the folks who know what’s going on in somebody else’s behavior, folks who always know what the right thing to do is, they get that way because they work with me. Verse 15, because of me, kings reign and rulers make just decrees. Verse 16, rulers lead with my help and nobles make righteous judgments. So if you have good government, it’s because they work with me. Wisdom. 18 I have riches and honor as well as enduring wealth and justice. So folks who become wealthy like real wealth, solid wealth, not quick money, they did it because they worked with me, wisdom. Verse 20, I walk in righteousness and in paths of justice. So the folks that you see who live lives of fairness and goodness, folks who make the world the way God intended it to be, folks who know how to fix problems, and folks who give other people a really fair good chance at life, they do that because they work with me wisdom. 21 Those who love me inherit wealth. I will fill their treasuries. So this passage is saying folks who are successful are successful because of me wisdom and it’s saying folks who pursue wisdom will get money. They might not get rich rich they might. So what’s going on here? Because that’s an interesting line. The idea is that wealth, financial wealth is the natural reward for pursuing and living with wisdom. That is what the text is saying. Working with wisdom makes you successful at your financial endeavors. Which means a paradigm like rich people are bad people is too simple to fit scripture. uh wealth or any kind of success is a reward for following wisdom and is a reward to encourage you to follow more wisdom. Um and Br uh commentator Bruce Walke says those who achieve wealth and power by striving for wisdom will also be humane and civilized. So, remember when Jesus said, “It was harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy person to get into heaven.” Imagine how shocking that would sound if the wealthy were wealthy because they were the ones who followed the Lord. like it would be shocking to that crowd because the rich were rich because they followed wisdom and they can’t get into the kingdom of God. And that’s part of why they their response to Jesus was how is anybody going to get in if those who follow wisdom can’t get in? And the answer to that tension is that wisdom doesn’t solve our problem about sin and our relationship with God. Wisdom is how we live life successful fixing the problem of sin and our corruption that sits with Jesus. So that’s kind of the difference there. But there’s this paradigm shift Proverbs is calling us to. It’s not rich versus poor or good power and corrupt power. It’s those who live by seeking wisdom versus those who reject wisdom. That’s the dynamic it wants us to see. So, let me get back on topic. Lady Wisdom’s calling out, “Listen to me when you make decisions, when you work on your business, when you do politics, when you parent, when you work on your relationships. I bring success. I am so much more valuable than gold and silver.” So, who is Lady Wisdom? Like, how can she make these claims? And we get uh verses 22 to 31. And I’ll read the whole thing again. The Lord formed me from the beginning, before he created anything else. I was appointed in ages past, at the very first, before the earth began. I was born before the oceans were created, before the springs bubbled forth their waters, before the mountains were formed, before the hills. I was born before he made the earth and the fields and the first handfuls of soil. I was there when he established the heavens and he drew the horizons on the ocean. I was there when he set the clouds above. When he established springs deep in the earth, I was there when he set the limits to the sea so they would not spread beyond their boundaries. And when he marked off the earth’s foundations, I was the architect by his side. I was his constant delight, rejoicing always in his presence. And how happy I was with the world he created. how I rejoiced with the human family. Do you know how she can make such a claim to give you success? It’s because she was there from the beginning. She watched it all happen and she knows how the whole thing works. That’s why she can help you be successful. Now, this is a tricky passage that has played a huge role in the history of theology. Um, let me give you a little summary. The question is, the question dances with is she Jesus? Is wisdom Jesus? Because the passage sounds like something the New Testament authors would say about Jesus. But if it’s Jesus, that means Jesus was created. And if he was created, then he is not God. So this actually theologically is a hugely important little passage. So the passage starts with wisdom being created. So if we jump to the New Testament uh we read for example in Colossians 1 and 14:15 Jesus is called the firstborn of creation which sounds like he was the first one born. But we’ve learned firstborn has to do with authority. He’s the authority over all of God’s creation not that he was birthed. And in that famous passage in Colossians 1, it says, “Jesus made everything that can be seen and everything that cannot be seen.” In Colossians 2, it says, “In Christ is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Which isn’t about Proverbs 8. It’s saying in Jesus was hidden God’s plan for salvation, God’s plan for dealing with sin and restoring the planet. That’s what was hidden in Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 1:30, it says the same thing. God made Christ to be wisdom itself. He was the mystery of salvation. And that’s the passage that says, “Trusting Jesus looks foolish to the world, but it’s the wisdom of God is in trusting Jesus.” So, it’s separate, but you can see how, wow, this could get really confusing. So, to bring some clarity, uh, we have to be careful not to read scripture backwards. I’ve said that before. Proverbs was written 900 years before the birth of Jesus. For those 900 years, Lady wisdom was associated with the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, the law of God. Proverbs was the teachings and the commands of God, the Torah, applied to a thousand little situations and taught with short little phrases. So back then, lady wisdom was the personification of the lessons of proverbs. So person personification, it’s a literary device applying human traits to something non-human. So she was a a literary device to say these are the lessons in the books of pro in the book of proverbs. This is lady wisdom. And we have to be clear that the apostles never connected Jesus with pro with the lady wisdom in Proverbs 8. In Luke 11, Jesus says he’s greater than the wisdom of Solomon. He’s greater than the book of Proverbs. And the idea he was getting at was if you if your highest value is the ten commandments, if your authority is the Torah and the wisdom that comes from the Torah, Jesus is greater than that wisdom because the one who wrote the laws is greater than the laws themselves. So even though it sounds like Jesus and wisdom get really close to touching each other, they’re separate things. And a really good separation I found came from a scholar named Karen Jobs. And she writes in John 1, Jesus is the word of God, the logos. The logos was God, was with God in the beginning. What we see in Proverbs 8 is that wisdom was brought into being by God. In John 1, the logos is the creator. In Proverbs 8, wisdom witnesses creation, but she’s not actually doing the creating. She’s just uh watching it and celebrating what she observes. In John 1, the word of God is the judge. Jesus is the judge. In Proverbs, wisdom laughs at people being judged, people who ignored her advice. So Jesus is not lady wisdom. So perhaps see it as wisdom is something like the breath of God or the voice of God. It comes from him. It carries his intent but it’s separate from him. So imagine one day God the father says something like I want to create a world where people would function like I am where the world would carry my values and my priorities. um and the ways of my character will be what makes life successful on earth. And Jesus says, I can build that for you. Those values and those priorities and that character, I’m going to call that wisdom. So wisdom comes from God’s character. And therefore, she can tell you how to live successfully. And her words are what we find in the book of Proverbs. She’s she’s the book of Proverbs speaking to you. And I have to talk about verse 30. Uh because there’s a word there that shows up almost nowhere else that is hard to understand and causes all of this confusion. I was an architect at his side. That’s word architect. I was his constant delight, rejoicing in his presence. Architect suggests designer. Another word is craftsman. I was the craftsman. the guy who knew how to nail the wood and the boards together. Like, you know, not the guy who drew the plans, but the guy who built the finishing work. But that word could also be translated child. I was the child at his side. Don’t you love Hebrew? I was his constant delight. That word can also mean faithful. I was faithfully at his side. I was constantly with him. And if you change a vowel, the word can also mean bind together. I was bound. I was at his side as the living link for creation. The word can do all of those things. We just don’t know which is the best one. Um, but one of the traits of scripture is it’s very repetitive and it has a consistent message. So, we never build our theology from one line of scripture. it has to show up in other places, especially when it has a word that no one quite knows what it means. But with all of these options, the beauty here is we’re taught creation was intentionally planned. It’s a coherent hole. It has a moral spine. Creation is not a bunch of random things that bumped into each other and then poof, we had the planet. It was planned and laid out and guided. It was intentional. It was loved and enjoyed. And because of that intentionality, there is a way to live successfully in life. So, how I’ve come to think of it, lady wisdom is akin to the laws of physics. Charles is a medical physicist. Every day, I’m going to make a guess. Tell me if I’m wrong. Every day, Charles uses the laws of physics to help heal people. He understands those laws. He knows how to work them. So, you could say as Charles does his job, Lady Physics is at his side as his partner, watching what he does and celebrating the beauty of what he can do. And so, Lady Wisdom is at the creator’s side, watching and enjoying the creation of life. and therefore she knows the advice to give you so you can be successful at living. So let’s take take some time and talk about this passage. Let me just uh summarize where we’ve been in chapter 8. We have lady wisdom calling out when you have to make a decision whether you’re a ruler, you’re working on your businesses, you’re doing trade, you have a child, you have a spouse, pay attention to what I say. She’s calling out at a decision point. Hey you, I’ve got good advice for you. Her advice is better than gold or silver. She presents her qualifications. All those folks who are successful, they’re successful because they work with me. She gives insight and power and honor and goodness and justice and wealth. So we need to change our paradigm if we just have it rich people are bad people. Um, wisdom says she gives wealth, which is why folks were so shocked when Jesus said it was hard for the wealthy to get into the kingdom of heaven. Following wisdom is what we can do. Fixing the problem of sin is something that Jesus does and we trust him to do it. Lady wisdom explains who she is. She was the first to be created when creation began. She watched it all. She celebrated it all. She knows how the world works. so she can advise you on what work you need to do. She is not Jesus. She’s not a pre-incarnate version of Jesus. Jesus is the creator. She’s the personification of the book of Proverbs, the lessons it’s teaching. She is the voice of this book saying, “Pay attention.” So, we’re called to read the book and apply the lessons. this is how I act or here is a wise way of acting when I am in a decision needing when I’m in a situation needing a decision. This is how to live. It’s a big chapter. Thanks for following with me for 30 minutes. What catches your attention? What challenges you? What sparks your interest? What I’m wrestling with is the difference between God or Jesus using wisdom to create or God and Jesus creating and wisdom watching or is that just the wrong question? It’s the wrong question. They’re the same. First, so imagine Jesus saying, “Okay, I’m going to create the planet. This is how it’s going to work.” Um, and how it’s going to work successfully, that’s wisdom. So uh he decides when you tell the truth good things will happen and he decides when you lie bad things will happen. Wisdom. So in the process of designing the planet wisdom comes about. I’m trying to remember what the word is for kind of the same idea as when you see animals in the clouds. It’s us taking something that we can’t quite really, you know, grasp or understand and making it into a human or or adding human features to it. Yeah. Yeah. Um I I think back personification anthropomorphization. Yeah. Oh my goodness. That’s a word and a half that kept him up all day. But it’s a a really beautiful way of taking the attribute of God, wisdom, knowing how to do the right thing at the right time in the right way. And that really is a serious attribute of God. Cuz if there wasn’t wisdom, you would see right from the beginning the world fall apart. Yeah. Like it never would have worked. There’s so many things in our world that have to work synchronistically that have to work together and complement each other. And you think of biomes where you’ve got, you know, all of the the right plants and the the right amount of water and and everything works. And if it gets in the right amount of sunlight, that biome it it never the air in there never leaves. And nothing enters, nothing leaves. But it continues to thrive. That is kind of a little spin of our world in that God put it all together so beautifully. So what we’re talking about is not Jesus. What we’re talking about is not actually a person, but it’s that attribute. And how do you describe it? Give it human features. Make it into a teacher. Make it the one that explains this is the way we’re going to do it as opposed to clouds explaining how it’s going to rain. It just doesn’t make any sense to us. Yeah. Yeah. Proverbs is so beautiful in that it takes something so massively difficult and says this is kind of the core of what I am. I look forward to it. Wonderful. That’s great. And I I love that you danced with the idea of beauty. Uh because again, Proverbs is written to a male perspective. And so, you know, men and business can get very um analytical, very sterile, and and to put proverbs in the voice of the woman and say, “No, no, you desire this. You want this.” And when it when you live wisdom, it’s beautiful. There’s joy in lure, right? Yeah. It’s a great lure. There are two places in there where it talks about being joyful as a result of wisdom. The word of success is also used. Success, we think of successful businessman. What’s our first thing that comes to our mind is that this guy’s got a lot of money, right? But money doesn’t bring happiness and it doesn’t bring joy. There are business people who use wisdom to certain some extent. There are a lot of uh things that they can do for people so that they’ll appreciate them and do business with them and they become wealthy that way. And then there are a lot of business people who are crooks and who are cheating people and they become wealthy. Well, they’re certainly not using wisdom. But the question isn’t who’s got all the money. The question is who is joyful and I think that’s uh I like that really special you know that we can be joyful no matter how poor we are and we can be joyful also no matter how rich we are because we don’t take those riches with us anyway. That’s great. I think part of our problem with interpreting this scripture is the way we view success. Yeah. Oh yeah. Success is money. That’s our cultural view. Success is money. And if you make that connection really this is makes no sense. It’s not our experience in their world. It becomes a lie. I think of presidents of the United States. Jimmy Carter was the only president who didn’t start a war. The only one really. He lived by his faith. But he’s viewed as not successful. That he was a weak president. In reality, he had great strength. But the general view of things is that if you’re honest and so on that you’re not successful. Yep. Yeah. Trump’s successful and we all know what he is. When we look at somebody like George is talking about who just does good, we seldom see those people as successful. Even if they undoubtedly are successful, it’s looked at h they just did things differently. They would have had more. Yeah, I appreciate your comment because I think we said this before a couple weeks ago that part of the characters we see in wisdom is that people with wisdom spend themselves on the well-being of the community. So, they might be wealthy, but they’re not hoarding. They’re not like it’s it’s about the community blessing. Yeah, def definitely part of the story. In reading the the bit of the creation account there, it reminds me if anybody has read the Chronicles of Narnia where Alan is walking back and forth and singing things into existence. It’s neat. Very beautiful. I find it intriguing that early in the passage that wisdom is separating out those people are acting with wisdom and these people are not. She says like fools and there was another word like these guys who are not acting with wisdom. And but she’s not saying you guys are are doomed or you’re hopeless. She was calling them too. Like she was very open and open-handed in her offer. Um she wasn’t saying well you guys are the smart guys. Way to go. And you guys you are obviously you know I’m I’m brushing my hands of you. She was still calling to everyone very very evenly. And I thought that was very encouraging. So even if you’re like I have no idea it’s like you too can are being called by wisdom. And so I was looking in the book of James and for the first chapter of James. Sometimes it’s like, okay, I read all this and yeah, I get it. I get it. Wisdom would be a good idea, but where the heck do you find that? Like especially if you didn’t grow up in a house that demonstrated wisdom or you didn’t grow up in a community that acted wisely. And so you feel like I don’t I didn’t see it. I don’t know what it looks like. I I feel like it’s out there. I see I see every once in a while I see it working. Somebody doing something that’s like that is not just brilliant because it’s smart, but that actually took care of people. That solved the problem. You go, that was wise. is that thing that that person did. How did they figure that out? In the book of James. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really straightforward book. Right near the beginning of the book, chapter 1 vers5, it says, “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.” Holy is that a simple sentence, right? Like, and and I have I have gone to this and used this lots of times. It’s like, “Okay, I don’t get this. I don’t think I have access to the information that I need here or I don’t know how I just don’t know how to do this. I I need wisdom here. And go I think God is tickled. I think he’s quite thrilled when somebody says this to him like I I need wisdom. Please help. Just ask God. Don’t just be like I’m going to hum a harmonic and I’m going to get wise. It’s like no, it’s just ask God. Ask him. Be be humble enough to be like dude I seriously need help here. This is I need I need wisdom because this is not going to work otherwise. And God, I think he’s thrilled when he hears that. I would say, by the way, I’ve seen him answer stuff in my my life. It’s not just like, “Oh, yeah, sure. Here’s a little drip or drip.” It’s like, he’s very he’s very excited, I think, when humans ask for wisdom because he knows that we have so many other things that we try instead. Anyway, it was great. So I just wanted to apply this part of the passage where you were talking about how wisdom is at all these decision points calling out calling out and how I found this happen in my world even yesterday. So I’ve talked to you guys a lot about there’s just work and there’s work and there’s work and so Fridays I have off from the clinic but I’ve lately been spending them working and again Saturday was looking pretty much the same way but it’s beautiful out. It is summertime and it is wisdom that says that the work will always be there and you need to take these opportunities to set that down and revive and grab some rest. So yesterday instead of only working. There was time for work, but there was also time for a beautiful walk in the park and time for some yoga and and time for sitting around the table with the family and having some really good discussions. So, I wanted to reflect on that because of Charles’s situation and a situation that I and a lot of us find ourselves in is that when we walk around and we see the dire state of our world, there is never ending things to care for, to fix, to try and make better. And it will not stop. It is so large and especially right now. But God’s call right now is to trust him. Kind of like I was talking about my friend whose world is massively shifting. We as Christians looking at the world as it is right now really need to be paying attention to this wisdom that is going to allow us to engage with the world as it is, but take refreshment and reprieve and rejuvenation from God to go back out again. So there’s this beautiful wisdom and so we’re just going to reflect on Eugene Peterson’s words, God, teach me the unforced rhythms of your grace. That’s when he was paraphrasing that call of Jesus. Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you strength. So by wisdom, that’s great. It was funny. The thing that I was struck by this morning was not what I expected because it was the fact that they chose to personify wisdom as a woman which seems unexpected until you think about so the culture at the time women had a different role. It was a very home-based role. And so, you would not expect the average young man who’d be reading this to have had women professors and women teachers. But there is one place that every single one of those young men would have been taught by a woman and it is their mom. And it’s that those base things. It’s this is how you clean yourself so you stay safe. this is how you do this thing so you don’t chop your foot off. This is how you do these base level things. And I was thinking about we’ve been running into this issue especially this week of adding wisdom on top doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work. It makes things fall down. It works for a little bit and then everything goes. But when you swap things around and you put wisdom at the base, you start from there, then everything stacks right. Your your Tetris works. You don’t fail horribly. And so, yeah, just thinking of wisdom as that mom with the Come on, you got this. We’ve been over this 20,000 times. So, you’re saying moms would holler at us? Never. Hey, you. But I will jab that particular phonics card really hard sometimes. That’s great. Jess, you’re actually hitting a big point because in Proverbs, Proverbs is voiced by the royal father and there is the male fool and then there’s the strange woman and then there’s lady wisdom and they’re meant to be pairs. Um, so you have the royal father and you have lady wisdom both parenting you. Yeah. So, absolutely. It’s great. Years ago, I was a sports coordinator for a different church. We had this young man. He was very very good when his painting of the storytellers that he learned from his grandfather. Other kids that were drawing at that same day. Everybody was praising him. But there was other kids that were drawing too at that time. And this young girl was trying to get this lady’s attention because of how proud she was for her drawing of her mom and dad being together and how they are now together instead of being apart. He was trying to tell this lady about that painting of hers. But while they were praising that native artist, that lady just pushed Amanda aside. That’s nice, dear. which is very disappointing to that young girl being pushed aside cuz they were all praising this native artist of how wonderful exposing his culture to other people is. So we took her and give her extra treats and saying, “Oh, that was wonderful.” Because of how disappointed she is when working with other people without wisdom. It’s hard to see things like that and it’s very emotionally worry not being able to look don’t do that to the kid or say your opinion to somebody that thinks very highly of themselves instead of applying wisdom not to hurt other people. I may be doing that too sometimes cuz we all do things that we don’t know and we hurt others. But we all should seek wisdom to better understand each other. Let me offer a prayer.

Father, I’m not even sure what to say. Um, this has been such a neat passage to dig into. It’s such a neat passage to to see the good news, the hope that you put in your word, calling us to understand not just the big picture of who you are, but how to follow you and just the dayto-day little decisions. Thanks for Proverbs. May we uh as we read it, as we engage with it ourselves and as a group, may we grow in wisdom. May we find answers to those questions of what do I do here and what’s the best way forward here? Yeah. And by doing that, may we have joy, may we come to see more and more of the beauty you have put into this planet, into your design. And may we praise you and live lives that honor you and bring a smile to your face. We love you. Amen. Thank you for listening to our podcast today. New Life Ministries is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You are invited to join our service in person or over Zoom. Please use the contact us link to send an email to the church office and request the address or Zoom link. If you would like to use these podcasts as part of your home church or local church gathering, you are free to do so. We do request that you let us know if there is any other way that we can help you in your ministry. Please send us an email.