How Can I Be Wise?

I've always wished that God would be super clear in where he is leading and directing me. After college, I was faced with the next step to take in my life. I had to do a short-term, two year mission trip and had also applied to go to seminary. I got approved for both in the same day. The next couple of weeks were excruciatingly painful. I had no idea which of the two I should choose! Couldn't God be more clear about it? Couldn't he just give me the wisdom to make the right choice?

In Chapter 10 of Knowing God, Packer sheds some light for us on what true wisdom looks like. He briefly takes us through the book of Ecclesiastes examining vanity and purposeful life. He ends up showing us that true purpose in life is following God and holding fast to him. Packer says, "For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives." God doesn't want to give us all the answers. Like with Job, he is not aiming to show us his purposes in everything that goes on in our lives.

Instead wisdom means we trust him. Wisdom means we know him through his Word and we believe and do what it says. Wisdom says that we believe he is working all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. We believe that even if we don't understand, he is still loving, kind, and good.

We see God's ultimate wisdom when we look to the cross. In his wise and sovereign plan, he displayed his love by putting the wrath for our sins on his Son so that we could be adopted as his children. Packer says it like this, "God's work of giving wisdom is a means to his chosen end of restoring and perfecting the relationship between himself and human beings—the relationship for which he made them." Wisdom says that we should cling tight and hold fast to this God.

God, in his wisdom, never made clear for me whether I should go to seminary or be a missionary. Instead, I ended up making the best choice I knew how and trusting his providence. I have no doubt that was his exact plan for my life. As I moved to New Orleans, I held on tight praying and trusting for him to give me wisdom along the way.