Psalm 111:10 (NIV) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.

Wisdom is defined in the dictionary as "insight; good sense; a wise attitude, belief or course of action." Those are things that everyone would like to have. But many people live in this world without any wisdom at all. That's evident from the bad decisions that a lot of people make. While there may be a lot of smart people among us, being smart is very different than having wisdom. You become smart when you are able to learn and retain knowledge that you are taught in school or other places of learning. You can be a genius as far as being able to solve mathematical equations and being able to understand scientific data but be a fool in matters of life at the same time.

There are not many wise people in the world and the reason for that is simple. It’s because people don’t go to the source of wisdom to get it. They try to be wise on their own. But the Bible tells us that the wisdom of the world is foolishness in God’s sight (1 Corinthians 3:19). Many of the “wise” people of this world say that there is no God and they come up with insane theories about how we, including everything in the earth and beyond, came into being by accident. In other words, they say that everything came out of nothing. Even a child knows that something can’t come from nothing. 

Wisdom comes from God. It is He who set the moon, the sun and the stars in their place. It is He who made the earth in such a way that it would water itself and produce food from the ground to sustain the people that He formed and breathed life into. Most people don’t have wisdom because they don’t go to God. The right way to approach Him is with a holy fear. I don’t mean being afraid of God but of having a deep respect and reverence for who He is and for His unfathomable power. If you reject or ignore the God who made you, you have immediately disqualified yourself from ever attaining to any wisdom at all. You have instead become foolish. We not only serve an almighty and powerful God, but one who loves us so much that He came into the world to take on flesh so that He could die in our place for the penalty of our sins. He desires to bless us as His children and to lead us in the right way in this life until we are safely with Him in heaven. The majority of the population on this earth reject Him or ignore Him to their own detriment and instead choose to live life as they please. As they do, they wind up self-destructing because of the sinful nature that’s in them that drives them to do things that brings harm to themselves and to everyone around them. 

The beginning of wisdom is to acknowledge who God is with a healthy dose of fear and trembling. It then continues as we surrender our lives to Him so that He can direct us and teach us the right way to live that will result in blessings for everyone, starting with ourselves. As He gently and patiently teaches and instructs us in the way that we should go, we continue to gain more and more wisdom to the point where we can point others in the right direction. Do what triggers the start of wisdom, which is to reverence the God who made you and to serve Him with all of your heart. You will be the wiser for it.

Pastor Joey Vazquez