How generous are you? On a scale of one to ten, how well do you do? I imagine that all of us would put ourselves somewhere above 5. In fact, studies have shown that most people consider themselves in the top ten percent of generous, kind, and caring people. Think about that for a second, because I’m not a math wizard but those numbers don’t add up.

None of us would ever call ourselves selfish. Well, maybe you would. In a moment of clarity, you may realize that your current choice is self-centered and confess. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about naming ourselves as selfish most of the time.

“I’m a selfish person.” Usually, we don’t hear someone say that. Rarely. If ever.

At the same time, though, I think that most of us live in an area in between selfish and generous. None of us are totally selfish…but none of us are totally generous either. It’s all circumstantial.

We’ve been looking at Proverbs lately. And that word really helps describe these riddles of the wise – circumstantial. Depending on the circumstances, here’s how you should live. And depending on any given set of variables we will either be kind and generous or selfish and miserly.

But this week’s Proverb doesn’t really teach us to consider our circumstances and either withhold or give. No, instead it teaches us about a state of mind we should have at all times. We need to honor God with what we’ve got.

Proverbs 3:9

Honor the Lord with your wealth,
with the firstfruits of all your crops;

If we live in a sort of back-and-forth between those two poles, though, how do we fulfill this scripture? How do we live lives that honor the Lord? It can be tough.

Paul talked about the back-and-forth life a lot. In Romans 7 he gives an example of someone who wants to do the right thing but just can’t. In Ephesians 4 he encourages us to throw off the old self and put on a new self. And in Galatians 5 he gets to the heart of the matter.

Galatians 5:17

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want.

There is this struggle inside of me. It’s between my true self and my false self, the me I want to be and the other “me.” In the letter to the Corinthian church, Paul lays it on the line – “That old self is dead, it’s gone for good!” And you read that and you think, “Wait a minute…I know what’s going on inside of me. And that doesn’t match up.”

What is happening inside is a struggle. It’s a battle. It’s a war! The flesh on the one side (selfish) and the Spirit on the other (generous, life-giving). And we live in that tension.

It is a tension that causes me to be outrageously generous at times and outrageously selfish at others. It means that sometimes I just want to be left alone with the TV remote in my hand and not answer the phone. It also means I sit down and listen – really listen – to how my wife’s day went. It means that I really want to spend that money on me. It also means that I follow my thankful and broken heart and give a little bit more to that need.

It’s a tension. And we don’t resolve it, we live in it. And we lean into the Spirit. Notice it’s a capital “S.” In the original Greek, there were no cases. At least in the documents that we have of these letters and books. So the English translators have made a call that what Paul is talking about isn’t some inner working of our own human selves. It’s not the interior counterpart of our exterior flesh. It’s capital “S” Spirit.

That means when we lean into the Spirit, we aren’t leaning on some other part of ourselves. We’re leaning on God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune, three-in-one. The living God living in us.

When we lean on ourselves, whether our flesh, our minds, our self-will, we will invariably end up losing out in the tension. But when we lean on God, we can live generous lives. That means I give more, I save more, and I enjoy what I have left. I can’t do that on my own, though. It can only come from God.

Do you believe?

When my kids were little and they were trying something new, like diving off the high board, I would encourage them. “I believe in you!”

I wasn’t saying, “I agree and give intellectual assent that you exist.” Believing in them was based on a relationship.

When I first met my wife, I believed that it was the beginning of something amazing.

Not that I had studied it and could answer all the right questions when it came to a test about who she was. Believing was based on a relationship.

So when we come to God, and I ask that question, “Do you believe in him?” Why is it that we immediately start looking for the scantron or the answer sheet? We pick up a number 2 pencil and start scratching our heads.

“What do you mean by believe? What am I supposed to believe? Which version or translation of the Bible do you want me to use? Which set of catechisms am I supposed to confer with? What creed do I memorize?”

All of those things have their place. But they remove one very important – the most important! – aspect of belief. Relationship.

The word believe means more than thinking right thoughts about God it means to have confidence in God. To trust in God doesn’t mean we pass the test with flying colors. It means that we put all of our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and affections on him. We have full confidence that – even though we don’t have all the right answers – he will see us through.

Trust is the foundation of any relationship and when you lose trust it is a long difficult road getting it back. Do you know the only way that you can 100% be sure you can trust someone? It’s by trusting them. Only then can you know if they are trustworthy. Sounds like a risky proposition.

But when it comes to this life, we have two options – God or ourselves. The writer of Proverbs 3:5-6 says that when we put all that trust in God, he in turn makes our paths straight. That doesn’t mean every obstacle is removed from our path or every road is easy. It means that our outcome is secure in him.

On the other hand, when we put all of our trust in our own understanding we are left with a shaky foundation and an unsure future.

Jesus put it this way:

²⁴ “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. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ 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. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Matthew 7:24-27

To hear Jesus’ voice and respond to it. That’s the ultimate measure of trust in him. And trust is the ultimate expression of belief.

So let’s get back to belief. It’s not the content of Jesus’ words that made the difference. It was the person’s willingness to follow through. Both people heard, they understood, they knew the right answer. But one failed to put it into action while the other one went all in on Jesus’ words.

What made the difference? It was relationship. The one closest to Jesus was willing to go all the way and put them into practice. We spent a few weeks talking about those practices. They aren’t some spiritual short cut, but a full expression of our relationship with God. It’s the same with wisdom.

I’m never going to have all the answers on this side of eternity. I don’t need to. Sometimes I think I do. When the path starts to get a little bumpy, maybe even curvy, I tend to panic and grasp for the answer key. But then that’s putting my trust in my own understanding.

Instead, when I throw all my trust onto God, I know he’s going to see us through and everything will be all right. How do I know that? Because of my relationship with him.

“While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.”

– Stephen R. Covey

Consequences are inevitable. Consequences are unavoidable. There is no action on our part that does not have a consequence attached to it. When we make a choice, we put in motion a series of events that will lead somewhere or to something – an endpoint that can be good or bad, beneficial or harmful.

That’s the thing about choices. They have consequences.

We don’t like it. We’d much rather do what we want and bear no responsibility. I’d be happy if eating half a pizza had no strings attached. I’d love it if staying up late watching TV and sleeping until noon led to no bad results. Life would be great! Or at least it would be fun.

But we can’t eliminate consequences. Life is all about the results of our choices. Life is made up of a chain of cause and effect. We choose and then we live with the consequence. That’s the way it is.

We might think it would be fun to live without consequences. We think life would be great. But look at it again. How would we learn? How would we grow? How would we get better from one day to the next if we never felt the pain of a bad move or the joy of a good one?

Here’s the deal. If consequences are inevitable, then why not embrace them? Think about it. Our choices have tremendous power. How about harnessing that power? How about using the inevitability of consequences to improve our lives? That would be the wise move.

Consequences can be your teacher. When we make a choice and experience the result, it’s instructive. Go all the way back to when you were a kid. Did your parents ever give you some instruction to follow, some warning about life? “Don’t touch the hot stove!” “Stay away from them, they’re a bad influence.” “Don’t eat that, you’ll ruin your appetite.”

Now, it would be great if you had followed every wise instruction your parent ever gave you. And as parents, we really want our kids to do the same. But let’s be honest. You and I both know that we didn’t follow every rule our mom and dad laid out. We broke one or two…and we often suffered the consequences. A burnt hand, a bruised bottom, or just a sore stomach. Or maybe, for you, the consequence was much worse.

However you lived out those consequences, you learned, didn’t you? And often those lessons were cemented into your mind even more fully than if you had simply followed the rules. Living out the cause and effect of our choices can be a great tutor for wisdom. It reinforces our past successes and failures, our current situation, and our future goals. Those three areas we always need to keep in mind as we make choices.

Your power to choose is incredibly powerful. How will you use it? Will you let it be a teacher? If you do, then you will find yourself in a much wiser place.

I’m really excited for the next several weeks. This summer we’re doing a deep dive into the book of Proverbs. We’re going to focus on wisdom, something I think we really, really need to focus on. And I’m saying that from experience. My own.

If you look around, it’s clear that wisdom is not the same thing as intelligence. You can be the smartest person in the room and still make the dumbest mistake. Just simple, unwise stuff. Intelligence is really about the gathering of information. But wisdom is much more than that. We have access to more information than at any other time in the history of mankind! But are we any wiser for it?

One of the reasons we lack wisdom is that we aren’t looking for it. We misjudge our situations, our experiences, and we’re left without learning anything from it. So we need to lean in, ask God for that wisdom, and be ready to learn when things don’t go our way – or when they do go our way.

Another reason we lack wisdom is that we don’t really grasp what this book is all about. We misunderstand wisdom when we read the Proverbs the wrong way. Let me share with you three ways we misread the book.

We look for a promise instead of a probable.

We talk about the power of the Bible, the inspiration of the Word, or the strength of scripture. Some use words like “infallible” or “inerrant.” But what does that really mean? We often think that whatever is in the Bible is absolutely, positively, 100% right all the time.

The thing is, the book of Proverbs is not a book of absolutes. It is based on the absolute truth of God’s powerful Spirit in our real lives every day. But that doesn’t mean each line is a promise to us. A better way of looking at it is this: “Here’s what will probably happen if you do this.”

Take the Proverb so many of you know by heart, Proverbs 22:6

“Start children off on the way they should go,

and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”

If that’s a promise, then all you have to do is put your kid in church from the day they’re born and never worry again. But you and I both know kids who were raised in good homes who made some major mistakes later in life. This is what will probably happen, but there’s no absolute promise involved.

We think of them as commands rather than recommendations

God wants you to live wisely. He offers it to anyone who asks. And Jesus himself is called our wisdom. So should we take every single proverb in this book and follow it line by line?

Not necessarily. You see, our command as Christians is to walk in the Spirit. If we do that, then God will work out of us. We will have love, joy, peace, and so many more good things.

But living wisely can’t come from memorizing a list and following it to the tee. It’s more about how you respond in each situation. Do you want to respond wisely? Start by creating space for the Spirit to work.

We view them as timeless and not timely

The Proverbs are so great. But they are more timely than timeless. The wisdom of Proverbs is about the skill of living. In other words, how do we wisely respond at any given time and place?

Wisdom is what we do at a particular moment in our life. It means we gather enough skills so we can make great decisions. We don’t commit the playbook to memory. We learn habits and attitudes that will produce the best results.

In order to be wise, I need to make a place for wisdom in my life. I create an environment for wisdom to grow when I trust in God, recognize that it comes through experience, lean into the relationships I develop, and learn to see things differently.

At every step in my journey, I have the chance to learn or not learn. If things go great, I can either say, “Look how awesome I am!” Or I can ask, “What can I learn from this?” If things go bad, I can beat myself up. Or I can ask, “What can I learn from this?”

Wisdom is asking. It’s asking the right questions. I invite you to ask the right questions as we continue through this great book full of Riddles of the Wise.