How Can Man Know He Lacks Wisdom

January, 2009

by: Tom Barker

You ask another man to back up his truck. He looks in his rearview mirror, looks at the steering column to put his truck in reverse and without another glance he stomps on the gas. You watch in amazement as he slams his vehicle into the car behind him. What’s more, he’s amazed such a thing could happen! The man looked once into the mirror and never looked back again. This is exactly what James says can happen to us when we are in the middle of trials: we never look back and never look around, but proceed to do as our own thoughts would serve us without any consideration of a godly response to our trials.

James begins his letter with the encouragement that we should see our trials as the means by which God perfects and matures us. In James 1 we read:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

He says that in our perfecting we will lack nothing. In the following verse, he contrasts this completeness, with what it is that we could lack. What is it that we might lack when we’re in a trial? It’s wisdom. As he says in the next verse:

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

We see we need to pray, but this brings us to at least two questions: “What is the wisdom we need to pray for?” and “How do we know when we lack wisdom?” first, what is the wisdom we need to pray for? In James 3:13-18, Wisdom is “deeds in gentleness.” It is “pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.” It is character. It is how a man acts under trial. It is the works that come from faith. It is behaving as we believe. Wisdom is not only knowledge, but also acting on knowledge. Wisdom is using a mirror to help us see where we are going. God’s Word is that mirror.

Second, how is it that we might know that we lack wisdom during a trial so that we would pray for it? In James 1:25, James tells us:

But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

The way we know we lack wisdom is to look intently at the Word so that when we do not have the Word in front of us, it still goes with us, guarding us against being forgetful. James is talking about reading the Word, praying the Word, memorizing the Word and meditation on the Word. He is talking about making our thoughts to be those that are God’s thoughts. He is saying to actively look into the Word, intent on understanding it, in order to know the Word so well that it is our own. And what keeps us from realizing we lack wisdom and praying for it? James says we deal with our trials by not being humble, by blaming our trials on God, by not acting on the Word, by judging each other and by not controlling our tongues. He says we also misguide our asking when we do pray and seek our own pleasure, not wisdom towards endurance. Spiritually, these things that keep us from praying properly should sound like fingernails scraping a chalkboard. They should be to us the kind of wisdom that is earthly, natural, demonic (James 3:15).

Only when we make the Word our standard in thought will we ever be aware of deviating from the standard. Only by striving for the fullness of the knowledge of God can we be aware when it is lacking in the way we act. When you find yourself being disrespectful, angry or impatient, or when you do not live with your wife in an understanding way, do you catch it? Does it occur to you that you are sinning against, first of all God, and then next, against your wife or another person? Praying for wisdom starts with remembering everyday that the Word of God says for us to be gentle, peaceable. Wisdom comes by our intently looking at the Word and praying not creatively excusing our lack of works and blaming. Otherwise we will end up like the man in the truck: immediately forgetful and unaware of the coming misery.