[Read today’s Scripture in Matthew 7:24-29.]
Are you familiar with the “knowing-doing gap”? It is a common phenomenon in which people talk about an issue, perhaps learn a lot about it, but don’t do anything about it. Many meetings close with participants somehow thinking that, by discussing an issue, they’ve actually done something to address it, even though their contemplations never even approached a resolution, let alone an action step!
Wisdom has no knowing-doing gap. Knowing what is best and not doing what is best is really pretty silly. “Foolish,” we might say. It’s the opposite of wisdom. Solomon knew this. When God told the king in a dream to ask for whatever he wanted, Solomon requested “a discerning heart,”[i] for he needed understanding and insight to distinguish between right and wrong as he governed Israel. Wisdom to Solomon was for a purpose beyond mere knowledge; he knew understanding as something to be applied.
Jesus knew it, too. His Sermon on the Mount was wisdom from God concerning forgiveness, enemies, fidelity, possessions, judgment, faith, and several other life challenges. Then concluding his instruction, He specifically cautioned against any knowing-doing gap: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. . . . But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.”[ii]
Wisdom is both creed and deed; it is acting on what we know to be true. In fact, the apostle James said that if we hear the word and don’t do the word, it eludes us. If, on the other hand, we apply what we come to know, we are blessed.[iii] His simple advice? “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”[iv]
[i] 1 Kings 3:9
[ii] Matthew 7:24, 26
[iii] James 1:23–25
[iv] James 1:22
Today’s blog is an excerpt from: Christ in Me. Paul Nordman. Copyright 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The new ruler was like nothing the people had ever seen before. He was a change agent, an envelope-pusher, and a record-breaker . . . but not in the manner any nation would want. His name was Ahab, king of Israel, and he did “more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him” (1 Kings 16:30), a dubious distinction and difficult to imagine. So I’m picturing Scar in “The Lion King,” for Ahab’s beastly rule in arrogance, weakness, and disgrace was likewise marked by corruption, famine, and malaise.
We’re wise to prepare financially for when the paychecks stop flowing. But the golden years don’t last all that long, and there awaits “the other side,” an eternal Kingdom where dollars don’t spend. How do we plan for that? How do we “lay up treasures . . . as a firm foundation for the coming age,” as the apostle Paul put it?
Paul Nordman—Author 