We have now all types of the way to measure ourselves. We have now scales to measure our weight. We have now thermometers to measure our temperature. We have now blood assessments to measure all types of issues. We have now charts to measure our physique fats index—why would any of us wish to try this?! Past our bodily state, we will measure our monetary situation, retirement planning, insurance coverage wants, and what number of steps we take every day.
We’re a tradition obsessive about evaluation. Along with bodily assessments, nowadays, there are all types of assessments to measure our character, emotional state, mind, productiveness, and relational capacities.
Have you learnt what we’ve by no means been capable of finding a software to measure? Our knowledge. How are you aware when you’re sensible or not? Are you as sensible as you might want to be? In a time once we appear to admire individuals who communicate their minds and do issues their very own method, are we admiring knowledge? How will we measure that?
I sat on a jury one time in a really severe legal case. Over the five-day trial, all of the jurors spent numerous time collectively. One man was actually intelligent and had snappy issues to say about the whole lot. His humor made the week rather a lot simpler. After we reached the top of the trial and wanted to decide on a foreperson, the jury members voted for him as a result of he had been the preferred member. He was horrible—all he knew do was be humorous. Actually, the jury had neglected one other individual with expertise as a jurist in favor of somebody all of them preferred.
Luckily, the joking juror had the humility to acknowledge he wasn’t as much as the duty, and we elected the one member who had completed this earlier than. It was sobering. As a jury, we didn’t rightly measure knowledge, and it might have been very pricey for a simply end result to the trial.
The Bible doesn’t enable us to make that mistake. It commends knowledge at each flip. But it surely does greater than that. The Bible instructions us to get knowledge.
The start of knowledge is that this: Get knowledge, and no matter you get, get perception (Prov. 4:7).
Within the biblical view, all of us start easy—we lack knowledge. However over time, we should search to build up knowledge in life. Those that do are referred to as sensible. Those that don’t are referred to as fools.
How will we get knowledge? The Scriptures provide two methods.
We Obtain Knowledge as a Reward
We learn in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks knowledge, he ought to ask of God, who provides generously, who provides generously with out discovering fault.”
This manner of getting knowledge isn’t my major focus right here. However it’s fantastic to know that God is a cheerful giver (notice the repetition of the phrase “generously”) with regards to knowledge. If you realize you want knowledge (and, let’s be actual, not all people is aware of they want knowledge), He guarantees to generously give it if we ask.
We Accumulate Knowledge by way of Life
As grateful as I’m that God will give knowledge, the overwhelming emphasis within the scriptures is on accumulating it. Life expertise ought to produce a sort of knowledge. I’m penning this put up sitting in an house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My first time right here, I had no thought navigate the tradition or adapt to the sensible variations in staple items like why it’s necessary to sleep underneath a mosquito internet. Repeated visits have helped me adapt and performance higher once I’m right here—I’ve gotten wiser as a worldwide traveler.
This sort of sensible knowledge occurs naturally to a sure extent. We must always be taught from life. However there’s one thing extra at stake. You’ll be able to have individuals who determine handle life on this world however don’t know put together for all times on the earth to come back. If you’re a real Christian, there may be one factor you might be conscious of—this world will not be all there may be. You might have been given an consciousness of eternity in your coronary heart. That’s what actual knowledge is about—dwelling on this world effectively in preparation for the world to come back.
Moses was a person who discovered knowledge, although he typically took the painful route of presumption and impulsiveness to get there. On the finish of his life, Moses had begun to coalesce his checkered previous right into a coherent prayer: “So train us to quantity our days, that we might get a coronary heart of knowledge” (Ps. 90:12).
To quantity our days is to comprehend, as Pastor Mike Bullmore interprets Moses’ level, “Life is brief, and apparently the whole lot is at stake on this quick life.”[1] Day-after-day of our lives issues to God. God has functions and plans for us that require us to concentrate to what He’s doing in how we live. God is at work in, round, and thru us on a regular basis. He isn’t detached to how we spend our time, make our plans, and handle our lives. To “quantity our days” is to view them in gentle of God’s everlasting functions and plan. It’s one other method of speaking concerning the concern of the Lord.
The concern of the LORD is the start of knowledge, and the data of the Holy One is perception (Prov. 9:10).
Numbering Your Days
Not everybody who has lived numerous days has numbered them effectively. You see these folks in every single place. You’ll be able to inform by them that they aren’t all that totally different at 65 than after they had been sixteen. They is perhaps profitable, in style, and wealthy, however in the end, all of it is folly. Knowledge by no means took root as a result of the concern of the Lord was by no means a precedence. The data of the Holy One was not the data that obtained their consideration. Let’s quite observe the counsel of the Apostle Paul:
“Look fastidiously then the way you stroll, not as unwise however as sensible, making the most effective use of the time, as a result of the times are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16).
Accumulating knowledge, as theologian Graham Goldsworthy says, “will not be primarily a perform of how intelligent we’re, nor of how a lot info we’ve got managed to cram into our minds. Reasonably, it’s a ethical option to be impartial of God or to be topic to him in our considering in addition to our doing.”[2]
There’s a giant distinction between “our days are numbered” and “numbering our days.” Acknowledging that our days are numbered is simply assenting to the truth that we gained’t be round ceaselessly. Numbering our days is the biblical knowledge that seeks to squeeze God-fearing perception out of all the times we occupy this life as we see them in gentle of God’s everlasting functions for us on this world.
Quantity your days. Look fastidiously at the way you stroll. Get knowledge.
Questions for Reflection
- How do you acknowledge knowledge in an individual? How do you search for it in your self?
- In a silly world, how a lot of your thought life is given to assessing what is smart so that you can assume, do, and say?
[1] Mike Bullmore, “Numbering and being Glad in Our Days: A Meditation on Psalm 90,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed Could 17, 2024, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/numbering-and-being-glad-in-our-days-a-meditation-on-psalm-90/.
[2] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Knowledge, (Paternoster Press, 1995), 528.
