5 Benefits of Applied Wisdom
My son, obey your father’s commands, and don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. Keep their words always in your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you walk, their counsel will lead you. When you sleep, they will protect you. When you wake up, they will advise you. For their command is a lamp and their instruction a light; their corrective discipline is the way to life. – Proverbs 6:20-23
In Proverbs 6, Solomon is about to instruct and warn his sons against committing adultery. Before he gets there, he says to remember the wisdom and instruction that he and their mother have given them throughout their lives and how it will aid them going forward.
In these insightful verses, Solomon identifies 5 different benefits that applied wisdom brings to one’s journey:
1. Leadership
Solomon told his sons unequivocally that the wisdom gleaned from his commands and their mother’s instruction will lead them as they walk.
If we don’t forsake wisdom, it will lead us into the proper perspective while we are discovering who we are and what kind of people we want to become. It should go before us into every arena, endeavor or activity we undertake.
2. Protection
Solomon also wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:12 that wisdom and money can get you almost anything, but only wisdom can save your life. Money can get us out of some tight spots and afford us some luxuries, but it can’t protect us from ourselves or from moral disaster.
Wisdom is the real life saver. It can protect us from bad choices and situations that compromise integrity and if applied to the gauntlet of cultural temptations, wisdom can safeguard our future and legacy.
3. Advisement
Author, James MacDonald once wrote, “I have never, not one time in my life, trusted God’s wisdom and regretted it. But I could fill pages with stories of the times when I’ve gone around him and made bad choices.”
Wisdom is a great counselor. It is the greatest thing we can seek while making plans. It processes sound advice that helps us navigate situations both small and profound.
4. Illumination
Wisdom has a luminary effect. It acts like a big flashlight that keeps us from stubbing our toe along the way. It shines into the dark corners of our lives where insidious things tend to hide and gain strength. It reveals peripheral blind spots that we can’t quite see but continue to give us fits.
Ephesians 5:15-16 encourages us to be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Wise people walk on a well-lit path that facilitates a vigilant, sober life.
5. Correction
Wisdom can bring about the redemptive part of failure. It gives us the opportunity to begin again the right way and helps us take remedial action. We need wisdom to reevaluate, plan, adjust and grow through a setback.
Aldous Huxley was famous for saying, “Experience is not what happens to you. Experience is what you do with what happens to you.” Wisdom helps us do something with it.
©2014 Jason Autry. Originally posted at jasonautry.com