How to Live Your BEST Life According to the Bible
Tarah Avery
How can we use wisdom to bring health, joy, freedom, and prosperity to our lives and the lives of those around us? How can wisdom benefit our relationships?
When I think of wisdom, an image of an old man with a long gray beard comes to mind. Kinda like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. It’s always the old who seems wise. Sometimes, though, we see people who are young but have so much wisdom. They are “wise beyond their years” or an “old soul,” as some people say.
Not all old people are wise, and not all young people are foolish. Wisdom depends on how one chooses to live their life. Are you choosing to be intentional, or will you choose to be blown by the breeze? Whether you’re young or old, it’s up to you to decide if you want wisdom to guide you.
But first, what is wisdom according to the Bible? Biblical wisdom is the accumulated insight of God’s people throughout generations. It’s the lessons learned from those who have gone before us. They are passing their knowledge to us so that we don’t have to learn the hard way.
So, the wisdom in God’s book is like one of your mentors meeting you for coffee and guiding you toward making healthy and prosperous decisions that will bring you one step closer to living your best life. And who doesn’t want that?
Second, you might be wondering what exactly wisdom has to offer. Well, according to the Bible, wisdom offers prosperity in wealth, health, marriage, family, career, and all sorts of other areas of life. God desires his absolute best for you and he seeks to bring blessing to you and those around you. And so, he gave us the “wisdom books” in the Bible –Proverbs, Ecclesiastes & Job.
Each book brings a different lesson on what it means to gain wisdom. I have found that if we stick closely to these 3 principles, we can find God’s favor and blessing in each of life’s seasons.
Here they are – the 3 lessons that each of the wisdom books brings to the table. Learn these, guys, and you will be on your way to living your best life.
1) GOD IS GOD AND I AM NOT
This lesson is from the book of Proverbs in the Bible. The main point that the authors of Proverbs seek to get across is that there are general rules for how to live a good and successful life, like guidelines. This book is what brings up the concept of “the fear of the Lord,” which is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10) and why I have chosen it as step #1 to gaining wisdom.
So, if “fear of the Lord” is step #1, what exactly does that mean? It has taken me a long time to completely wrap my head around this term I have heard my whole adult life after coming to know Jesus. It’s often been described as hating what God hates (sin & evil) and loving what he loves (righteousness and goodness). But my favorite definition is this:
Fear of the Lord means having a healthy view of honor and respect for God’s definition of good and evil.
We must learn boundaries based on that definition of good and evil and not cross them.
Challenge #1: Start reading Proverbs to learn what God’s definition of good & evil is. Simply read 1 chapter of Proverbs for every day of the month – chapter 1 on the first day of the month, chapter 2 on the second, and so on.
We will essentially learn that God is God and he created the world and everything in it; thus, he makes the rules and if we want a blessed life, we follow them. I am not God, and no matter what I don’t understand, I trust that he is God and he knows what he is doing. To paraphrase, I do not know better than God does.
Coming to this understanding and being confident in it is the first step to gaining wisdom.
The next two definitions were written so that we know that there are always exceptions to the “rules.” Nothing is set in stone. Proverbs is a book of probabilities, not promises. And it is because of those probabilities that we find two other principles of wisdom in the Bible.
2) HOLD YOUR LIFE AND EVERYTHING IN IT WITH OPEN HANDS
This lesson is from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. I never really jived with Ecclesiastes. It always felt like such a “Debbie downer” book. But after learning more in-depth about the wisdom that it offers, I began looking at the book a little differently.
If you read Ecclesiastes you’ll see this common phrase: “Everything is meaningless!” But a better translation of the word meaningless would be smoke or vapor. Smoke starts out looking like one thing and then shifts and changes into another, right? It can look solid, but if you try to grab it, it’s impossible.
What the author of Ecclesiastes is telling us here is that life is ever-changing and it can be unpredictable. So, he is asking us to hold life with open hands because there is only one thing you can control: your attitude toward the present moment.
There is a couple from our former church family who Gordon and I got together with a couple of years ago. They had been married (at the time) for 40+ years, so we asked them if they could clue us in on some marriage wisdom.
This is what they told us: To hold everything and everyone (especially each other) with open hands. For all that we’ve been given is a gift from God and it all belongs to him anyway. We are just his stewards. They told us that they had just been learning this lesson when their son was taken from them.
They said, “If we hadn’t been learning the wisdom to hold things and people with open hands, giving them back to God, then our son’s death would have been more devastatingly painful than it already was.”
We sat there stunned at what they had just told us. If you knew these people, you would see they are some of the most happy, joyful, and loving people you would ever meet. Instead of choosing to hold on to their son with clenched fists, they had learned the value of holding him with open hands, and it allowed God to bring his complete healing and restoration to their lives. And they were able to find joy even during the tragedy of losing a child.
At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, we are told that to gain wisdom, we need to take each moment for what it is – enjoy a cup of coffee with friends, a good meal with your family, or the sunshine on your face. Stop worrying. Stop trying to control people and circumstances, because, in the end, those things are like a vapor. Instead, hold life with open hands and take in the moment as it is, good or bad.
3) GOD IS GOOD
This lesson is from the book of Job in the Bible. The story of Job is tragic. He is a humble and faithful servant of God, blessed with immeasurable wealth and possessions. Then it all gets taken away from him.
The moral of the story is whether or not we understand the ways of God, we trust that he is good and he knows what he is doing.
This piece of wisdom goes hand in hand with the first, God is God and we are not. To trust that God knows better than we do is to understand that he is good, and what he decides is for the best. He knows the end result. He sees what we do not in our small perspective of life.
At the end of the story of Job, he cries out to God asking why his life is now in shambles after being so faithful and loyal and good. Makes sense, right? How often do we do that when our life turns a different direction than we thought it should? But what Job says next is the wise part. He says, “God, I don’t understand; but I know that you are good, and you know what you’re doing. So, I am going to trust you.” And then God blesses Job with three times what he had before. Woah.
You see, it was in Job’s brokenness that he remembered God is good.
And when we can see that silver lining – no matter how broken our lives might be – we can know that everything is going to be ok because God is good, he loves us, and he knows what he is doing.
Gordon and I desire to always be seeking wisdom in our lives. I don’t feel that I truly understood what seeking wisdom looked like until I started watching a video series by The Bible Project called “The Wisdom Literature.” Tim Mackey is the best at breaking down books of the Bible and making them easy to understand and apply to your life.
Check them out! You can learn about any book in the Bible, even all sorts of topics such as, How to Read the Bible, Holy Spirit, and Heaven & Earth to name a few of my favorites.
Wisdom is what guides us and helps us make choices when we aren’t sure what to do. We want to always be choosing wisely in all that we do.
It may be as simple as deciding whether we should get that extra bag of chips at the store even though it wasn’t on our list, or as complex as whether we should move out of state, or when we should start a family.
In the little and the big, seeking wisdom is what God asks of us because he wants to be included and invited into every little aspect of our lives. He delights in getting to be a part! Invite him in today.
What is something small that you could seek God’s wisdom for this week?
Your Friend,
P.S. If you love to read and are eager to find your confidence and embrace this season of your life, please go to: TheBibleProject.com and watch The Wisdom Series in their creative, artistic, and easy to understand videos.
