The greatest hindrance to wisdom is pride

I’ve been thinking about this and testing this quite a bit lately.

One of my most frequent prayers is that for wisdom.  I daily need wisdom from God.

When I see a wise person, I see a humble person.

Now, you know that wisdom is way different from knowledge.  It’s true that “knowledge puffs up.”  Knowledge and pride can go together hand and hand.  And often does.

But wisdom is the long process of working knowledge and experience into practical forms of perspective and truth.

Pride insists on a perspective that centers on self.  This perspective will intentionally disregard opposing views, gentle suggestions and a world view that spreads wider than one’s own territory.

But as a person is open to the thoughts, feelings and experiences of others and constantly looks beyond self embracing ego centricities, this person can eventually look into a perspective that goes beyond one’s self.

OK, the creator of the world, of you and me, can see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  As we grow closer to Him, our life centeredness migrates from ours to His; our perspective shifts from one’s self to His; our wisdom grows from ours to His.  Pride has no room in this scenario.

Recently, I was sharing these thoughts with my parents.  We talked about a previous neighbor who certainly knew how to make a pond!  He was a grader operator and told me more than once how to properly make a pond and that our other neighbor didn’t know how to do it but he did!  “Yeah, he knew how to do everything!” my parents remembered.  He was forceful, full of self and confident in the pond HE made.  Until the next year.  It didn’t hold water.

I Corinthians 1:25

“For the foolishness of God

is wiser than man’s wisdom,

and the weakness of God

is stronger than man’s strength.”

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