Daily Devotional

Transformative Wisdom

"And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."  1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (ESV)

Do you know the United States Marine Corps’ 5th General Order of a Sentry? Do you know the acronym for the USMC’s 14 leadership traits? How about their battles of World War I, Code of Conduct, Core Values, customs, courtesies, history, or the characteristics of an M16A2 service rifle (they've since moved on to an A4 since my time)? These things and many more were all part of the laundry list of information that I committed to memory.  I'm still shocked to this day about how much of it I used to be able to spit off the top of my head faster than Google could give you the answer.  Now of course I don't expect you to have the answers to any of those questions. Truth be told I don’t have the answers to most of those questions anymore because today for me that information is useless. At the time that information was important, relatively speaking, but it's funny how we can learn so much about something that doesn't actually contribute anything to our lives.

 Are there any useless facts, trivia, or knowledge that you have taking up space in your brain that doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with how you live on a day-to-day basis? Spiritually there are a lot of people who know about God, who know historical facts about the church, or about the Bible, and scriptural things, but that knowledge doesn't affect or impact how they live in the slightest. True wisdom doesn't stop at information but rather transformation! We must learn to get true wisdom which is more than simply information.  

In today's text, we see that there's a big difference between wisdom from God and wisdom from man. Paul clarifies that wisdom from man simply puffs us up, inflates us, it makes us think that we are “better than”. But wisdom from God is accompanied with power. Beloved, it's not enough to know a lot about God because information only informs, but wisdom transforms! When we get wisdom from the heart of God, it's the power of God Himself. As we continue to grow in our knowledge of God may we ask Him to allow that information to produce transformation in our lives.
English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Posted in
Tagged with