Wisdom Is Applied Knowledge–Where Do You Find It?

Picture this:  A small classroom in a Baptist Church in Nashville, TN.  A few girls, and a firery red-head leading the class.  Now fast forward 10 years.  The same girls still sitting under the teaching of that same red-headed spit fire. I learned so much at her feet.  I can still hear her voice when people start talking about Wisdom.

“Wisdom is applied knowledge.”

It’s the simple concept that knowledge is information and wisdom is experience.  It is the whole “Do it to me once shame on you, twice shame on me.”  It seems to me like a whole lifetime has passed since I sat in that little room, but one thing that keeps surfacing over and over again to me is this:

We have a whole lot of knowledge but very little wisdom in this world.  Information is literally everywhere, but wisdom seems harder and harder to find. I had to really stop and think about where my knowledge is generated, to whom am I listening? Where is the source of my knowledge?

I watch the Presidential debates and I listen.  I sit in church and I listen.  I read information on the internet and take it as sound ( a.k.a., I listen).  I take in knowledge from every side while sorting through all of the junk to find truth.   In realizing the danger of simply taking in information, I figured out something.  People my age need some serious help.

Job 32:7 “I thought age should speak, and increased years should teach wisdom.”

I guess I never read that verse in this context.  “I thought age should speak.”  That got me thinking, how do people my age view wisdom?  Do we even know how to find it?

Enter Mrs. Hazel. She is my new (teacher/spit fire). I met her and immediately knew that I loved her.  She has almost 50 years of life on me, but asked if I wanted to come to her Sunday School Class.  How could I turn down a half of a century in lessons I need to learn?  Now, I realize in the world of small groups, life groups, home groups, etc. that we seem to gravitate toward “like me” people.  You know the ones that are doing life just like me.  Did it ever occur to anybody else that we don’t need to be surrounded by people who are “just like me?” I know this is elementary but, drowning people don’t usually save drowning people.

God put it in HIS word that we are to LISTEN to age.  WE are to find value in their experience.  We are to appreciate their mistakes and victories and LEARN.  That also means we are to find others who we are a few steps ahead of and help lead them. Wisdom cannot be applied unless it is sought.  Information/knowledge is nothing if it is not heard.

We all need our fair share of wisdom.

To whom are you listening?  Into whom are you pouring?