Prayer for Wisdom; James 1:5
The Greek word HUPOMONE [u(pomonh], translated “perseverance,” or “endurance,” has the
idea of a longstanding or continuous obedience in the same direction. This is the
goal in the spiritual life. It is the key to growing to maturity through the
filling of the Holy Spirit.
James 1:5 NASB
“James 1:5 “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives
to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” The
writer of this epistle recognizes that in our spiritual growth we advance
through various forms of testing. As we go through these situations of tests we
get an opportunity to apply doctrine, as we apply doctrine we then persevere
and endure, and the result of that is that we progress towards maturity in our
spiritual life.
We have a pastor teacher in
the church because God realizes that among all of the jobs performed by the
body of Christ somebody needs to have the ability to study the Word of God and
to extract from the Word of God the principles of Bible doctrine and be able to
communicate those to people so that they can grow spiritually, so they can see
how these things apply to their life and they can begin to grow incrementally from
infancy to spiritual maturity. God gave certain people the gift to do that.
There are two communication gifts in the New Testament that continue through
the church age. There is the gift of pastor-teacher and the gift of evangelist.
These two have communication gifts and so it is necessary to recognize that
those with the gift of pastor-teacher have been uniquely gifted to get into God’s
Word, study it, and teach the content of God’s Word to people. This isn’t just
somebody who has been to seminary or Bible college, it
is somebody who is specifically gifted in this arena. The average person is not
gifted in this arena so the average Christian is not going to be able to
extract from the Scriptures the principles they need to really grow to
spiritual maturity.
The Bible refers in 1
Corinthians to the deep things of God. There is an analogy in mining. Just
about anybody can pan for gold. They might find a little speck of gold dust and
think they have found something, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of equipment
to do that. That is comparable to what the average Christian can do, but even
doing that you have to know what you are looking at. How many would know how to
distinguish between fool’s gold and gold by looking at a bunch of gravel in the
bottom of a pan? Not much. You have to know something even to use a pan to pan
for gold. But then you get along to where you need to dig a little, so you now
have a pan, a spade or shovel, a pick, and you start digging into the side of
the mountain to try expose the vein of ore. That is
about the level of a lot of Sunday School teachers,
they have those kinds of skills. But then one man operating on his own can only
do so much work and dig so much into the side of that mountain. Then what is
needed? You have to bring in the heavy equipment, the mining engineers, the
people who really know geology, who really understand how the rock is shaped
and formed in that mountain, who can really blast their way efficiently back
into that mountain to extract the really big chunks of gold ore. That is the
pastor-teacher. He is the mining engineer.
A lot of times people think
that because they happen to get their pan out and they discover a big nugget of
ore here or there that anybody do this. But anybody
can be lucky now and then. Under the filling of the Holy Spirit just about
everybody can see some really great truths of Scripture now and then, but to
really dig into the doctrines of Scripture, the meat of the Word, and to teach
what is necessary for the growth of believers takes the special gift of
pastor-teacher.
So the pastor-teacher communicates
the Word, and under the filling of the Holy Spirit this teaching is made
understandable to the hearers. In this Newt Testament this is called PNEUMATIKOS [pneumatikoj]—spiritually understood data. It is transferred by
the Holy Spirit to the left lobe of the soul, the NOUS [nouj]. This is nothing more than academic knowledge. This
is a staging area, what we have to go through in order to get to the final
product of application knowledge. When we receive it by means of faith the Holy
Spirit transfers it automatically into the deepest recesses of our intellect,
called in the Greek the heart, the KARDIA [kardia].
This is the right lobe of the soul, the innermost part of our thinking, where
our deepest thoughts and convictions are held. There it circulates, and that
process of circulation the Bible calls meditation.
Psalm 1:1 NASB “How
blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of
scoffers!
In contrast [2] “But his
delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates
day and night.” Notice, there is something positive, something effervescent,
something enjoyable about that word “delight.” He is excited about it. This isn’t
drudgery, he is enthusiastic and motivated about Bible
study, about learning God’s Word. His delight is in the law of the Lord, Bible
doctrine. He meditates, focuses his thinking when? In his
quiet time every other morning? No, that is not what it says. He
meditates day and night. This is a figure of speech which means you take two
opposites and mention both of them in order to pull in a totality. So day and
night indicates two opposites, two extremes of the pole. What the psalmist is
saying here is that His law, in God’s Word, Bible doctrine, he thinks about it
continually. Now that doesn’t mean that when you are at work you quit thinking
about what you are doing and think about what you learned at Bible class the
other day. It means that as you go throughout the day you take time to focus on
and remember what God’s Word says, how you apply it in this situation. You
focus on life as a test, as a string of tests, of opportunities to apply the
doctrine in your soul. You are conscious about doctrine. As it is circulating
in your conscious mind you are aware of it, you are thinking about it, you are
focusing on it and you are letting God’s Word sift through your mind
continually throughout the day. You make decisions and you are thinking about
what God’s Word says about them and how you can apply God’s Word to the
situation.
So the blessed man, the
man who has joy, true inner happiness and tranquillity, is blessed. He
continually meditates day and night, and the result is stability. “He will be
[3] like a tree {firmly} planted by streams of water, Which
yields its fruit in its season [spiritual production]. And its leaf does not
wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.” This is
not material prosperity. The idea is that you are successful. Why are you
successful in the endeavours of life? Because you have doctrine in your soul
you have wisdom that plays itself out in the decision-making process so that you
do not make foolish decisions which end up producing calamitous circumstances
and bring about self-induced misery. Instead, you make wise decisions and the
result is that you have success in achieving what you attempt to do because you
understand your limitations, you understand who God is, you are submitted to
the sovereignty of God in the process, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and
you are following His leadership and are walking with Him. So the result is
that you have success in your life. It is not success as man counts success,
which is measured by your bank account or your position in the company, but it
is determined by your spiritual health.
In contrast are the
wicked. In contrast are the wicked [4] NASB “The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.” They are unstable. We see
this same imagery picked up by James when he contrasts the one who asks in
faith for wisdom. If he doesn’t ask in faith then he is a double-minded man, unstable
in all his ways, “like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.”
When we are persistent and
endure in the spiritual life then ultimately it culminates in the adult
spiritual life. We become mature; we become complete. That is when real life
begins, not in the process of growth. Did you think you were in real life when
you were nine years old? No, you wanted to be an adult because you knew that
when you were an adult that is where you could really do things,
that is when you could really produce things, that is where life was.
Adulthood! But most Christians want to wander around with enough knowledge to
be in kindergarten and they have no vision for getting beyond kindergarten, and
they stay there. The goal is the adult spiritual life, maturity. Get to
maturity and stay there. That is where you begin to experience the rich deep
blessings that God has for us.
As we go through this
cycle over and over again towards spiritual maturity, eventually the Lord takes
us home. We are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord, and we
have an eternal soul life in the presence of the Lord. At the Rapture or the
resurrection of the church something takes place in heaven called the Bema seat, the judgment seat of Christ—1
Corinthians