From The Video Vault: A Teaching On Wisdom

October 11, 2017 by Monica Dennington 0 Comments

Wednesday’s Wisdom Video!

(Watch this 8 minute video!)

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From The Video Vault: A Teaching On Wisdom

(Transcript from May 2006)

I just wrote this song called, “Don’t Make It Easy On Me”…I don’t know why I write things like this. [laughter] Well, it came out of my spirit.

You know, Solomon was the wisest king because God gave him wisdom. Solomon loved God, and God appeared to him and said, “Solomon, ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you.” And God would have given him whatever he asked for— if he would have asked for money, or the death of his enemies, or long life— He would have given it to him, because He said, “Ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you.”

“At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, ‘Ask for whatever you want me to give you.’”

~1 Kings 3:5 (NIV)

But Solomon said, “I need wisdom in order to be able to govern your people.” God loved that because [Solomon] had a heart for justice and a heart for God’s people, which is God’s heart.

So He told Solomon, “I’m going to give you everything. Because you didn’t ask for something (basically selfish), you didn’t ask for money or power or long life, I’m going to give you everything.” Because Solomon went straight for God’s heart by what he asked for.

And it’s interesting because when we get ahold of the Scripture where Jesus says, “Ask me for anything, and I’m going to do it for you,” a lot of times the first things we jump to are our earthly needs. You know, “I’m believing God for a car, I’m believing God for a house, I’m believing God for a job”— which we should do! God wants us to cast all of our cares on Him [because] He loves us, and He wants to take care of our every need.

“You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

~John 14:14 (NIV)

But that promise is an opportunity just like Solomon’s— and if we recognize it, it’s the same question that God asked Solomon. He said, “Ask me for anything, and I’ll give it to you.”

And we see what it did to God’s heart when Solomon didn’t think of himself first, but thought of God first, and what was important to God, and asked God to do what was important to God— then God was able to give him everything.

So I would just encourage you, in our walks, we don’t need to be afraid to go through hard things, because we have the strength of Christ on the inside of us.

A lot of times, what we use our prayers for, because we’re so afraid— I don’t know if you guys have read Hind’s Feet In High Places, but it’s about a girl whose name is “Much Afraid” who’s trying to become “Grace and Glory”— and that’s how we are, we’re just like little scared, pathetic creatures sometimes…or most of the time.

God wants to bring us from that place, to a place where our name is “Grace and Glory”. But we don’t get there without pain, we don’t get there without suffering.

And so when we pray, let’s go straight for God’s heart, and let us trust God to bring us through the hard times.

Instead of just always praying to avoid everything that’s hard, understanding that going through hard times with somebody makes you close to them— and being close to Jesus is the best thing you could ever have.

So let me read a Scripture to you— it’s Philippians 3:7-11:

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

~Philippians 3:7-11 (NIV)

See, Lazarus knew what it was like to be dead and then be called forth from the dead [by Jesus], and that must have been an awesome experience.

But you don’t get to know the power of the resurrection if you’re not willing to die.

So let us die to ourselves, and instead of always asking for God to make it easy, let’s understand this: that when we face Him…I wrote a song once that said,