Wisdom Week 2: What is Wisdom?

Lord,
Come. Open our hearts and minds that your wisdom would pour into and through us as we study what wisdom is. Help us to grasp what wisdom is in Your book. Help us to gather skills and to have open eyes and ears to notice patterns in the world that others may miss. Teach us to understand ourselves and others better, that we would be able to make better judgment calls in our lives. I have gone off the rails because I wandered away from you in the past. Forgive me. Help me to stay aligned properly as I move forward. Help me to know when and how to say things to benefit not only myself, but others more and more as time goes on. In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
There are 2 Hebrew words that often get translated as “wisdom”:
Chokmah – related noun which is usually translated as “wisdom”
Chakam – wise or crafty in word, action, or mind

If some one is chakam, they have skill in some area or other, whether as a politician, plumber, or proctologist. It has to do with having information to recognize patterns reliably so that you can make good decisions.
If one has chokmah, it takes skill and adds a spiritual dimension to it, as one has to have a right relationship with God in order to have true chokmah. This is the form of wisdom we will focus on in this series. We will also talk about the kinds of folly and fools, as that is a fun topic, and as we get better at recognizing them, even in ourselves, we can understand how to handle different kinds of people better. That is a large part of why we should want to have chokmah, rather than simply be skilled in certain areas, though that is a part of the picture. That kind of skill does not require God to accrue, but to turn that skill into a more generalized wisdom, at least in reference to the Bible, that is, we need to be in constant relationship with the Lord. Let me give an example:
Say you had a friend who was a patriot, but had been forced to sit through some leftist indoctrination as a part of his or her job in sales. Now imagine that they had stumbled their way through a rough deal, then got to 4th and goal, only to have their clients turn on them, accusing them of being manipulative or somehow “forcing” things to happen in a way that would only benefit your friend, but not their client. Now say there were things that the friend could have done better, but that was water over the dam by then, then the friend comes to you, hurting over what the client was saying, and freaking out over possibly losing half of their commission on the deal. On one hand, the friend readily acknowledges their errors over the course of the deal, on the other, they neither wish to destroy relationship nor lose money. What would you tell them?
Do you have the wisdom and discernment to navigate that situation without making it worse? I didn’t. I was the conservative equivalent of the screaming liberal, and I not only blew up that relationship, but lost money on top of it, because I chose to throw that liberal claptrap in the client’s face. I was going to let it ride, but couldn’t leave well enough alone. I even thought hard about simply giving them what they wanted, as these were some of my wife’s acquaintances whom I was helping. I am more broken up still over the broken relationships there than I am about the lost commission. Money is just money. People matter far more than money. That is wisdom, hard won. Take it for what you will.
So, what is wisdom? On a basic level, it is the ability to recognize patterns in people and situations, then insight to know what to do about those patterns to turn them for the greatest possible benefit for all involved. On a Biblical level, it is that, plus a constant relationship with the God of the Universe. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Wisdom, He is the personified wisdom in Proverbs 8, calling out to the simple and the fools as they go on their way. In the Bible, there are 3 options, you are either growing wise, becoming a fool, or very early on, you are probably simple. We will talk about those other two options starting next week.
The Simple one and the Fool. We will talk about the state of being simple next week, then start talking about folly the week after.

This week, we will be doing a series of memesplanations on humility, what it is, and how it benefits us to be humble.
On the main channel tomorrow, we will be talking about BlendOS, Elementary OS, and Escuelas Linux.
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Be Blessed, and choose Wisdom this week.
Thanks for watching!