When you get wisdom, you benefit yourself first, and then the effects trickle out from there.
Wisdom
What’s better than being rich?
The accumulation of riches without wisdom would be like building out a hardware superstore in your backyard, while being unclear how to use a hammer.
You can get away with it
It taps into one of the most powerful lies of sin: I’ll get the benefits without the consequences
Playing with fire
To take the analogy of touching a red-hot stove, it’s not as if it only burns you four out of five times, but maybe you’ll get lucky.
Self indulgence is self harm
We simultaneously give too much credit to ourselves in what we can control through self-help and habit modification, and don’t give ourselves enough credit as agents of worship and desire as opposed to victims in need of neurological re-wiring and healing from trauma.
Resolve to make resolutions
Abstaining from resolutions is itself a plan. It’s a plan for status quo, which, given the nature of our world, is an unrealistic one.
Your life is like the dawn
Even if clouds and rain cover your life, and you can’t see the sun, it’s there, and it’s only rising higher, never lower.
Pain is more than weakness leaving the body
Outside of the Christian worldview, mistakes and setbacks can lead to reflection and self-examination…but you can never, without a great leap of imagination, believe that the universe is lovingly correcting you with a determined eye towards your eternal growth and good
Wisdom is like a sherpa
You must know and confess that you need direction from somewhere else – that left to your own resources, you actually won’t travel down the best pathways. You will get lost; you’ll encounter dangers; you’ll run into dead ends.
Fear the Lord to start the game
Fear of the Lord means starting everything with God. It means recognizing God is the central reality in the universe, not me, not even the universe in its past, present, or future form
Great people start with service
In short, it is good to hold the highest view and vision of your spouse, but no man is married to the Proverbs 31 woman, and no woman has Proverbs 31 on her resume.
We’ve all got a boss
Org charts and hierarchical structures matter, and the interplay of those relationships are fragile, precious, and borderline sacred, even if we would prefer that they weren’t there, or we try to pretend we’ve transcended power dynamics
