“Who is wise and has understanding among you? He should show his works by good conduct with wisdom’s gentleness.” (James 3:31)

We all seem to want love, peace, and joy in our personal lives and around the world, but we all want to do it our way.  In fact, we’ve been trying to have peace in our lives, and even bring peace into the world our own way, according to our own beliefs about ourselves, for thousands of years.  So, how has that worked out for us, thus far?  Seriously, is our world today any safer, more peaceful, and joyful than in the past?  If we are as wise as we think we are, wouldn’t things be better than they are?

Christians, how about us?  Are we as wise as we think we are?  For hundreds of years we’ve been working under the assumption that we are as wise as God and don’t really need Him.  I can understand secular people thinking this way, but us?  If we are as wise as we think we are, then why is secularism growing at a faster pace than Christianity?  Could it be that we’re not out teaching the world the truth about God through word and deed?  Have we fallen into believing the lie that people are one day going to start coming to our temples, on their own, looking for God?   Could it be that people are not interested in knowing anything about God because they don’t see the truth about God in us and through us?

God delivers a blow to our egos when He reveals the truth about us, which we don’t like and do our best to ignore:

“The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

There are some pastors and Christian leaders who, because of their scholastic degrees, believe and think more of themselves than they ought to, and because of that, have strayed from the truth of who God is and what He expects from us.  God, through the Apostle Paul, tells us:

“For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one (Romans 12:3).”

Pride, arrogance, and narcissism has taken the place of wisdom in the hearts and minds of many of our pastors and Christian leaders. This has had a huge negative effect on our society.  We Christians have made ourselves irrelevant in today’s society because society does not see Jesus in us.  When they look at us they see too much of themselves and not enough of Jesus.

If we are as wise as we think we are, and our degrees tell us we are, we could not build temples big enough to hold all the new and existing believers, and secularism would be diminishing instead of growing.

True wisdom is living according to God’s standard; in immediate, radical, costly obedience to His commands.  What does your conduct say about you?

In Christ’s love,

Phil