“Aimless man is worthless man” could be well said of those who wander about carelessly. It is said that every person should have an aim in order to succeed in his time. We notice the many people around us using all their talent or intelligence to be someone unique. Parents aim for their children to be successful people in the society. Students aim for certain elegance to be achieved in their life. We often find people aiming for a higher ground. Success of a person depends on the aim he or she holds, and this is not unusual. However, the unusual aspect is the transformation it brings in a person.
Transformation is all it takes for a person to define himself as good or bad. To be transformed is to put on a new self. The world usually identifies transformation on the basis of fame, wealth and power. If someone holds these qualities he is regarded as unique. However, true transformation does not lie in these that decay as quickly as a dead body, but lies in becoming a child of God. This is what the world is unable to understand concerning its aim. Sadly, most Christians also fall in the same group. Hence, what men regard as wisdom has been foolishness to God and what God regards as wisdom is being regarded as foolishness by men. Most of us are prioritizing our lives for the things that are seen, but not for those seen by God. What is the cause for such apprehension and what does it take to come out of it? “To know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding” (Prov. 1:2) will help us to come out of such anxiety.
Yes, it takes wisdom and instruction from God to be transformed into His people. Wisdom to escape sin and conduct righteousness transforms a person into God’s child. Fame, wealth and power might be essential, but to handle them apart from God’s wisdom will lead us to absolute catastrophe. Mighty men have come forth from wisdom and strong men have fallen by not treasuring it.
Is it not God who instructs us how to conduct ourselves? But why do the children of God still possess the qualities of the devil? It could well be that they are unable to recognize the sayings of God that gives understanding. Lack of understanding turns us in to fools, but where there is understanding there is prosperity, peace and freedom. If God should be our instructor and guide for wisdom, we ought not to be wise in our own thinking. Nonetheless, if foolishness is practiced, God’s wrath will be imminent upon us; for He says, “I will winnow them with a winnowing fork at the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children, I will destroy My people; They did not repent of their ways” (Jer. 15:7).
The work of the winnowing fork is to scatter and God will not hesitate to scatter even His own people. At that moment though we seek for the merciful God He would be available only as an indignant One. O what terror for those that rejected to understand God’s wisdom, for they have committed invariable sin and for the lack of understanding have shattered prudence with their feet! Men seek the wisdom of men to understand God. Has this ever been done by those who feared God even in the past ages? Look through the pages of wisdom to see if there is one man who sought the counsel of man and lived. When we seek men to understand God, we give birth to sin. And the Spirit of God says, “Gilead is a city of wrongdoers, tracked with bloody footprints” (Hos. 6:8).
God’s wisdom, when sought, causes us to repent of our ways and weep for our evil paths. She provokes us to be truthful to God and men, enables us to enhance peace with our neighbors and subdues us with understanding to hold on to the truth. By embracing wisdom we live and work for our Lord Jesus. Hence, we fill up what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings. Furthermore, it becomes our duty to continually proclaim the salvation given to us. “The voice of one crying in the wilderness; ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight” (Mark 1:3). Wisdom still cries out that all should repent and come to God. What a credit it is to be able to make ready the way of the Lord for His coming and what a blessing it is to make His paths straight! In this is God’s wisdom that we strive truthfully to prepare the way for our King. What is man, a sinner, that he should receive such an honor? But God has chosen him to glorify His name. “…Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him’” (John 13:31); and so, as believers of Christ we too are chosen by God to glorify Him.
The question is – are we truly glorifying Jesus our Lord? Our life is demanding death while God is ready to provide life. In order to receive life we ought to have Jesus as the foundation in our heart. We are to be built on that foundation to be steadfast and unwavering; steadfast in truth and unwavering in righteousness. Sin and falsity is what most of us are used to, because they surrounds us. Truth and righteousness are what we ought to be used to, for they revolve around God. If Jesus is not the foundation of our hearts, it would be impossible for us to attain to this knowledge. “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). Many claim to possess Jesus, but their growth in Him is undermining His strength and might. The reason for it is they place their feet in two boats.
If Jesus is our only foundation, a foundation laid by the will of God and not man, in our hearts, we will understand the innate qualities of Christ. It ought to be understood that the foundation laid is not on stone or paper, but on the hearts of those who truly desire Him and believe in Him. This becomes the wisdom we desire ardently for our salvation. Such desire for wisdom helps us to continually seek God with or without fame, wealth and power. For the wisdom of God has the power to transform us into a new being, because “the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy” (Jam. 3:17).