We must begin by fearing the Lord and trusting entirely in Him. That’s the beginning of the Christian life. Proverbs 3:5 and 6 say, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” That is the beginning of the Christian life. Trust is the essence of faith. Trust is a willingness to submit your life to God’s ways.

I once was driving around with my kids, and one of them asked me a great question. They said, “Dad, what is a mature Christian?” In that question, I felt a desire in their heart to be a mature Christian! So, I’m driving my truck and thinking, “That’s a great question.” I responded, “Well, a mature Christian is somebody who understands the gospel and where they stand in Christ. A mature Christian is someone who has read their Bible cover-to-cover. A mature Christian is a man or woman of the Book (the Bible), and they know the God of the Book.” After saying that, I kept thinking. ‘What else should I say?’ I asked myself. Then I said, “Paul addresses believers to use their spiritual gifts in the life of the church, so another mark of a mature Christian is that he or she is a churchman or a churchwoman—that they are members of a church, that they are using their spiritual gifts in the life of the church, that they love the Lord’s people.” After saying that, I kept thinking! I replied, “Even more than trusting the gospel thoroughly, even more than knowing the Bible, even more than serving in a local church, maturity involves knowing how to apply all these things in our daily lives. Jesus did not say, ‘Teach them all I have commanded you,’ but ‘Teach them to obey all that I have commanded you!’” So, I explained to my children this element of practical theology we sometimes call wisdom. Knowing how to live Coram Deo (before the Face of God) in the fear of the Lord.  “If you can put all those things together in life application, that’s wisdom, and then you will be a mature Christian,” I told them.
“But what does this wisdom look like exactly?” they asked. My kids are very persistent. “To answer that question,” I said, “we need to go to Proverbs!” Solomon gives us four qualities of wisdom that must be mastered if we are going to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel as mature Christians.
First, we must understand that we must learn wisdom.
Solomon says in Proverbs 22:17, “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise.” Solomon is saying that wisdom is outside of us, and therefore, we must seek it out.
This was not true of Jesus Christ. Christ is the essence of wisdom, but for us, it is true. Wisdom is NOT intuitive. No one is born a wise person. Proverbs 22:15 says, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.” Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Therefore, the first thing to understand about wisdom is that we must seek it outside of ourselves.
How often are we told to ‘Follow your heart,’ or ‘Trust your instincts,’ and ‘Just do what feels right.’? The self-help section of every local bookstore is filled with books telling fools to be more foolish by looking inside themselves for wisdom.
Moreover, those who realize they lack the necessary wisdom often search for wisdom in the wrong places. Job asks in Job 28, “Where can you find wisdom? You go and dig into the depths of the earth, you won’t find wisdom there. You go to the bottom of the sea, you won’t find wisdom there. You go and find all the greatest treasures in the world, you won’t find wisdom there.” He says in Job 28:21, “It [wisdom] is hidden from the eyes of all living And concealed from the birds of the earth.” But then he says, “God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.”
Wisdom is only to be found in God. Hollywood does not have it. Washington D. C. does not have it. The Ivy League Colleges do not have it. Social media experts don’t have it. Only God possesses wisdom! As a result, if you want wisdom, you must go to God.
The apostle James said this: “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” (James 1:5). The first step to wisdom is realizing that outside of God’s gift of wisdom, we are all fools. We must find wisdom through God’s divine revelation!
Second, we must understand that wisdom is the applied knowledge of God.
Solomon also says in Proverbs 22:17, “Apply your heart to my knowledge.” Solomon means that wisdom is the applied knowledge of God. You can have knowledge without wisdom. There are a lot of foolish geniuses in the world.
Read More
Related Posts:

Capitol Commission exists not only to convert the ruler but also to warn the ruler that they are accountable to God. We need leaders who are declared righteous. In seeing a righteous God, we come face-to-face with our own unrighteousness. We see ourselves as sinners. Paul says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom 3:10, 11). That bad news leads Paul to expand the good news that man can be counted righteous by another’s righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. We need leaders who become righteous. Those leaders who are declared righteous in Christ are called “saints” in the New Testament.

Last night, I had the honor of giving the keynote address at the Capitol Commission annual banquet. Capitol Commission is a ministry whose aim is to reach government officials with the gospel. They are not a lobbying group or a policy group. Rather, they commission well-vetted, faithful Bible teachers and evangelists as “ministers” to serve at the state capitol as a chaplain, so to speak. In that role, they lead Bible studies that everyone is welcome to attend, and they proclaim the gospel at every opportunity. GraceAnna and I have personally supported this ministry and commend it to you and your church as a ministry for your consideration. The following is a loose transcript of my message.

Neil Howe has written a fascinating theory of American history entitled The Fourth Turning is Here. He argues persuasively that American history has progressively moved in cycles called “saeculum,” which essentially last the average length of a lifespan, 80 to 100 years. Within each saeculum are roughly four periods, each at least 20 to 25 years. These periods are called spring, summer, fall, and winter. Without breaking down each of these periods, as you can imagine, “winter” is a period of death and disintegration. The old order passes away, and something new emerges, where the nation emerges in a new period of history. Howe argues that we are now in this “winter” period or “fourth turning.” He begins this “winter” period with the 2008 financial crisis and cites the political polarization, the COVID-19 fallout, and the social disintegration we have experienced. He argues we are a national tinderbox, so to speak, which will burst into flames when we face a natural crisis, whether that be a global war or a great economic difficulty. Out of this crisis moment, he argues that a new order will emerge.
Though mainly agreeing with his argument for a cyclical history, Howe did not address the spiritual condition of the nation. I point this out because America’s problem is much deeper than political discord and economic debt. America’s problem is spiritual. America’s problem is ethical. The problem is that America has turned her back on God. Rather than fearing the Lord, we have crafted idols of our own making. It is a hard and fast rule: God honors nations that honor Him. Nations that do not honor Him are eventually given over to judgment. It struck me as I was reading Howe’s descriptions of America’s cycles, which roughly go from the Revolutionary period to the Civil War, from Reconstruction to World War II, and from the 50s to the present crisis. The thought struck me, though, in analyzing this, that America is not guaranteed a rebirth. America is not guaranteed another “saeculum.” In many ways, God delivered our nation through our previous crises by His kind hand of providence. But does America deserve to be delivered from another? She doesn’t. America deserves the judgment of God, not the kindness of God. There is nothing to prevent God from marching on America.
That is why this year’s banquet theme of “Empowering Leaders for Righteousness” is so important. We desperately need leaders to stand for righteousness in local, state, and national government. In thinking about this theme, I keyed on the word righteousness. Righteousness is an attribute of God. When we are talking about righteousness, we are talking about the character of God. Psalm 111:3 says, “Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.” Psalm 116:5 says, “Gracious is the LORD, and righteous.” Psalm 145:17 says, “The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. Psalm 4:1 reads, “Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness!” In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is called “the Righteous One” (Acts 22:14). Righteousness (Heb. sedeq or Gr. dikia) can be defined as “God’s divine holiness applied in moral government and the domain of law.”[1]
If righteousness is an attribute of God describing his holy rule, then we desperately need those who are intimately acquainted with God and His rule! That leads to the first point this evening. We need leaders who know the righteous God. We need leaders with a glimpse of his holiness. We need leaders who make decisions with God’s righteousness as their standard. It seems to me that this is the main problem today in government: people don’t know who God is. Therefore, their ethic is not fixed but relativistic. Leaders make decisions in the dark in the service of their man-made idols rather than in service to their Creator. I saw a picture recently of the astronaut Bruce Mccandless doing the first untethered spacewalk.
Read More
Related Posts:

The Lord is with me. He had not abandoned me. He had not abandoned GraceAnna or our son. God is sovereign. He put me in this closet. He had put GraceAnna in the surgery room. He had prepared us for this moment. And He was with us. I realized that all I could do in this moment was to “wait for the Lord.” He must act. Whatever seemed good to Him would be right. His will for GraceAnna, our son, for me, and our family was all that mattered. 

My worst possible fears played out before my eyes. My wife, GraceAnna, and I were in the delivery room for the birth of our fifth child. But this delivery would be different from the others. Our previous deliveries were relatively smooth. Textbook deliveries, you might say. Speaking of textbooks, when our second child, Evangeline, was born, I even studied for a Greek exam for seminary while we were in the delivery room (only in the early stages, I promise)!
Nothing would be textbook about this delivery. Our son had been breech, and there had been discussions about a possible scheduled c-section. However, he ended up turning into the head-down position on his own, and GraceAnna went into labor naturally at about 2 AM on a Sunday morning. Even though this was our fifth child, once we checked into the hospital, we were never able to truly relax. Maybe it was because we were older. Maybe it was because GraceAnna went into labor a week early. Maybe it was because it was our first delivery in North Carolina. But it didn’t feel like the previous deliveries. It never would.
After GraceAnna’s water broke, something disturbing begin to happen. Every time she had a contraction the baby’s heart rate would dip on the monitor. The first time it happened, it alerted the nurses and the doctor. That had my attention. “What could be causing the heart rate drop?” I thought. The doctor, seemingly reading my mind, explained that the umbilical cord could be compressed during contractions. So she asked the nurses to move my wife into different labor positions to see if the situation would resolve itself. Through all this, I thought to myself, “Should we just go ahead and ask them for a c-section? After all, I would rather be safe than go through a risky delivery.”
Code Green
Sometime later, the doctor came in and told GraceAnna, “I wasn’t comfortable with that last heart rate dip. We need to move you again.” When the nurses started to move her, GraceAnna suddenly felt very lightheaded. She told the doctor, nurses, and me that she was about to pass out. The doctor quickly asked for some meds to be given through her IV, which helped stabilize her. At this point, the doctor noticed that GraceAnna was bleeding significantly. Almost simultaneously, the baby’s heart rate plunged on the monitor and didn’t bounce back up. Everything seemed to be going wrong at the same time.
What was I doing during this time? I wish I could say I was sitting at GraceAnna’s side, calmly reassuring her. But instead, I was pacing the room, praying out loud. How could this be happening?
The next thing I knew the doctor initiated a “Code Green,” which is an “all hands on deck” signal for an emergency c-section. GraceAnna told me later that the doctor had told her, “Everything is about to happen really fast. But we need to get him out.” When she issued the Code Green, seven or eight nurses hurriedly entered the room and began unplugging the IV and all the other electrical cords. Though I didn’t know what a Code Green was at the time, I knew enough that it must mean an emergency c-section. The Marine in me kicked into gear, and I started moving all obstacles that stood between the hospital bed and the door. The doctor then came to me and said, “Everything is going to be alright.” I didn’t know if the doctor was just telling me that to try to reassure me or if it was because she meant it. I have seen too many war movies to know that sometimes you tell someone it will be ‘alright’ to calm their fears, even though nothing is right! There was no time to explain more. They then rushed her out of the room. It happened so fast that I quickly moved GraceAnna’s leg as she was going through the door so it wouldn’t hit the door frame. I knew we were in a serious moment.
The Testing Room
I sat down in the chair in the now empty delivery room and began to pray, but before I could pray for more than a minute, a nurse came and asked me to follow her. She took me to a very small room down the hall. It was so small it was almost a closet. There was a small sofa on one wall, and it faced a television maybe five feet away on the other wall. Underneath a small table was a mini-fridge filled with drinks. Against another wall was a locker filled with medical scrubs for dads to scrub up (apparently to go into c-section surgery). I realized that this little room was, as I have jokingly called it, “the daddy timeout room.” It is the room where they take dads awaiting news or needing to change to go into surgery.
Read More
Related Posts: