Left and right decisions are different. These are the kinds of decisions in which there is no decision that is inherently more moral than the other. These are times when you just have to choose – to choose this home or that one. This town or that one. This job or that one. Neither choice is sinful, and that’s why these decisions are more complex. And these are the decisions in which you move from morality to wisdom. 

What is wisdom?
It’s a word most of us are familiar with, and yet might have trouble defining. It’s also a word we encounter more than a few places in Scripture, but probably most notably in the Book of Proverbs. That’s kind of what the whole book is about:
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: for gaining wisdom and instruction; for understanding words of insight… (Prov. 1:1-2).
Throughout the proverbs, we see that wisdom is something to be grown in, sought after, nurtured, and treasured. We see that it’s not only useful, but extraordinarily valuable – so valuable, in fact, that Solomon himself when given the chance to ask God for any single thing, chose wisdom. And the Lord was pleased:
The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be (1 Kings 3:10-12).
So, then, what is it?
I’ve always found J.I. Packer to be helpful in this respect, not only in understanding what wisdom is, but what wisdom is not:
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The Lord is with you, mighty warrior? Now that is a shocking statement. It is shocking because Gideon was not a mighty warrior. He was threshing wheat, a common and necessary practice, but the usual practice of threshing wheat was to cut the stalks and then beat them with a rod. You would then discard the straw and then toss the mixture up into the air. The wind would catch the chaff and blow it away and the heavier grains would fall to the ground. But Gideon was so afraid of the Midianites that he was doing an “outside activity” while hiding in a sheltered vat that was used for pressing grapes. Mighty warrior indeed.

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help (Judges 6:1-6).
I’ve never known what it was like to live in fear. Not really.
I’m not familiar with the feeling of waking up on a daily basis and immediately looking over my shoulder or wondering what violence I’d have to run from. I’ve not experienced the anxiety that comes with raising children in a truly dangerous environment and worrying whether or not they will be safe playing outside. But those were the times for the children of Israel in Judges 6.
And what a terrible time it must have been. The Midianites were actually distant relatives of the Jews; they were the descendants of Abraham and his second wife. They had grown into a semi-nomadic people in western Arabia and became part of a confederation of desert peoples who periodically would cross over the Jordan to pillage and wreak havoc on the Israelites. Just when the freshly seeded crops were sprouting, they would invade and destroy. They were so fierce that the Israelites lived looking over their shoulders, knowing that they might look across the river and see the Midianites coming. They were so afraid that they actually hollowed out caves in the mountainside to hide in.
This was life for Israel for seven years. For seven years their crops and animals were destroyed. For seven years invading peoples oppressed them and caused them to run. And you can imagine the effect both economically and psychologically.
Verse 6 expresses it best because the word there for “impoverished” is literally translated “made small.”
The Midianites made the Israelites small in emotion, courage and prosperity, so much so that they finally cried out to the Lord for help.
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When we say, “I’ll pray for you,” it can often also become a way of exiting the conversation. When someone is sharing details that are too intimate or too uncomfortable or too painful, we can extricate ourselves pretty neatly with a statement like that. But in asking, “How would you like me to pray?” we are actually pressing in. We are inviting more disclosure. More knowledge. More intimacy. We are choosing to step closer rather than step away, and this is what a true friend does. A true friend presses in.

Friendship Is Work
The older I get, the more convinced I become that it’s true. That’s because when you’re younger, you have natural and regular points of personal connection with the same group of people. You see them every day at school, you play beside them on the court or field, you sit next to them at lunch. These are friends, sure, but they are friends by association. Or, if you’re a little more cynical, they are friends of convenience.
But as you get older, you become more established. You acquire more and more responsibilities. The schedule gets busier. And as a result, friendships are affected. You no longer have as many of these natural and regular connections, and as a result, you have to work at friendships. Every relationship has a cost, and you have to subconsciously weigh the value of that relationship against the cost in time, resources, and energy it will take to maintain and grow it.
I suppose, then, it’s a bit natural that real friendships get smaller in number the older you get. Natural, but still a bit sad. Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons why moving into the empty nest phase of life is so difficult – it’s because parents center their lives around their children, and with the children moving out and moving on, they find a lack of shared interests and a lack of other relationships.
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There are many adjectives that you could rightly use to describe the Christian life. Joyful, satisfying, hopeful are a few of them. Then there are those that are equally true, and yet a little more difficult to accept. Words like arduous, disciplined, and troubled fit here. And in that long list of adjectives sits one more that perhaps you haven’t considered recently:
Ironic.
When a situation is ironic, it means that what it appears to be on the surface is actually far different – and maybe even the opposite – deep down. Irony is a kind of contradiction of what is visible and what is real. While that description doesn’t really fit around things like “rain on your wedding day” or “a free ride when you’ve already paid,” it does fit alongside the Christian experience. Because for the Christian…
The mourners are comforted.
The empty are filled.
The least are the greatest.
These things are all true about the kingdom of God for that kingdom is, in many ways, an upside down kind of kingdom because what is actually true is not what appears to be true. There is one particular irony of the Christian life that we would do well to remember today, though, and that is the fact that for the Christian, weakness is actually strength. JI Packer, in his classic work Knowing God, describes that dynamic like this:
“God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly—”
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Several years ago, I was invited to a church to help lead their annual leader training. At this annual meeting, they eat dinner together, talk about their overall ministry philosophy and goals, and then break out into age segments for more directed and specific training. During the dinner, I happened to be seated close to a group of older ladies who chatted happily and enjoyed their chicken casserole as much as I did. But then came the time for a special presentation.
One of the casserole-enjoying ladies was, evidently, named Ms. Peggy, and she was to be honored that night. She was retiring from teaching one of the children’s Sunday school classes because she was moving to an assisted living home. But here’s the kicker – she was retiring after having taught that Sunday school class for 70 straight years.
70.
Think about that. That means she taught children who, only a couple of years earlier, had lost their fathers during World War II. It means she shepherded children through things like the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. It means that her Sunday school class excitedly talked about the Apollo Moon landing one Sunday. It means she was teaching the Bible during the tumultuous years of Vietnam. And on 9/11, she was still there. Sunday after Sunday. Week after week. Year after year. It’s remarkable.
And while it’s easy to think such a thing remarkable after 70 years, I wonder if 65 years ago we would have the same reaction to Ms. Peggy. Probably not.

Even though we might be considered strange now, and even judged because we think and act differently, the world is not the final judge. There is another judgment coming. And that judgment, in a sense, is going to bring about what is real normalcy. Because the way we think? The way we act? These are strange things now, but they won’t be strange then. 

Madeline L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time among other things, once said this about her faith: “We try to be too reasonable about what we believe. What I believe is not reasonable at all. It’s hilariously impossible.” And she’s right.
Of course, there are reasonable parts of Christianity – it is reasonable, for example, when you look at the complexity of the world around us to conclude that we do not exist by chance but by intelligent design. That’s a reasonable conclusion. But in other ways, the whole Christian faith and the Christian life that results from it is entirely unreasonable. We believe that there was a man born of a virgin who never sinned. And this man was not only a man, but is also God in the flesh. And we believe that this man died on the cross in our place and then was raised from the dead. We believe in an afterlife despite there not being any way to go there or examine it. This is what faith is, and in that way, it is unreasonable. That’s why it is a matter of faith.
Further, the lives we lead as Christians are strange. Very strange, when you compare them to the normal way of operating in the world. We are a strange people, and Peter knew it. He said as much in 1 Peter 2:11.
He called us strangers. Exiles. Aliens. People not of this world.
Then later, in chapter 4, he recognized that strangeness again.
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I haven’t always been a family devotion guy. It’s not because I didn’t want or aspire to be; I did. But we went a long time as a family before pulling the trigger and trying to integrate this practice into the regular rhythm of our family life.
We’ve been doing morning devotions together for over 15 years now – long enough that our kids expect that we will. It’s a long road, as are most things with young children I’m finding out. Though revival doesn’t break out every morning over eggs and toast, our continued hope and prayer is that times like these builds into the love and discipline our children will have in the future when it comes to God’s Word.
And through those 15 years, we’ve tried different things, failed at a bunch, and maybe learned some things about starting and continuing in this pattern. I hope some of these things will be encouraging to you to kick this off, or affirming to you if you’ve found yourself in the middle of it.
In my opinion, then, here are 6 things you must have to start a family devotion:
1. Consistency.
There’s a pattern to everything, a routine for most every part of life. And any time you disrupt that routine, even for the noblest of reasons, there is going to be backlash. So before you get started, you’ve got to commit to consistency. Decide on the time of day. And keep it at that time.
For us, it’s 6:45 am at breakfast. That still might change in the coming years, but if you don’t pick a consistent time then it’s doubly difficult to keep the practice going.
What’s more, in our experience, the days that feel like discipline to do this far outweigh the days where you feel like the kids are actually engaged and learning something. But then again, isn’t that often the case in our own lives with our own spiritual growth and development? And yet we keep going because we believe in the power of God and the power of His Word.
2. Variety.
For us, we try to change things up once a week. Monday through Thursday, we do a Bible study and prayer (probably around 15 minutes), but Friday is different.
On Friday, everyone shares one specific thing they are thankful for that week, and one prayer request.
For a while, those prayer requests were pretty predictable – that I would have a good day, that I would do well on a test, that I would be kind to friends… that kind of thing. In recent days, we’re tried to bring more variety into those prayer requests as well, asking the kids to share a prayer not for themselves but for someone else, or to share something they’re thankful for that’s not about an activity they get to do that weekend.

There is still within all of us the deep desire to prove ourselves. To justify ourselves by our actions. To make a go at righteousness on our own without submitting to the design for true righteousness.

I didn’t used to read the instructions.
I would get a piece of furniture, or some kind of electronic equipment, or decide to take on some kind of home repair, and just start in on it. In my younger days, I didn’t have the time for the whole “measure twice, cut once” principle; it was more of a “just get started and figure it out along the way” kind of vibe.
Now I recognize that for some people, that kind of methodology works; these are the people who have some natural proclivity towards being handy. But I’ve lived long enough to know that’s not true of me. Even when I have been able to muddle my way to some semblance of the end result I was looking for, it wasn’t done in the right way. Consequently, my past is littered with furniture that wobbles, retaining walls that don’t really retain, and dry wall repairs hidden by pictures on the wall.
So why did it take me so long to start reading the directions? Lots of reasons probably – impatience, the need for activity, the desire for something tangible to show my work – these are some of them. But perhaps in some way, if you look deeper, there was also pride lurking there. Pride that said I could figure it out. Pride that thought more of my own intelligence and ingenuity. Pride that my way was going to be just fine if I got close to the end result.
I was thinking about these projects when I read these words from Paul about his countrymen, the Israelites, recorded for us in Romans 10:
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To start asking the “what” questions too early can do more harm than good, as if we are denying that what’s happening to us is real and that we are terribly sad because of it. But at some point, by God’s grace, shifting that one word can make a world of difference. It can move us into a posture of humility, accepting that God can take what is terrible and use it for good.

“Why?”
It’s a question every parent is familiar with. And, at least in my experience, it’s both beautiful and annoying at the same time. It’s beautiful in the sense that it exposes the natural curiosity and wonder of our children. It shows us their seemingly insatiable desire to discover and know. It propels them into greater and greater learning as they encounter more and more of the world around them. But it’s also annoying.
It’s annoying because most of the time, there is no end to it. Your kids ask you “why” something is, and the majority of the time, that only leads to another “why” question. You can explain and explain and explain and yet there is still more to explain, until at some point, most every parent answers the “why” question like this:
“Just because.”
Kids grow, and as they do, they also tend to ask “why” less and less. It doesn’t disappear entirely, but it’s like that natural sense of wonder gets beaten out of them. Their creative curiosity starts to ebb, and it’s as if they care less and less about the reasons behind certain things. They begin to accept that things are the way they are and they no longer need an explanation for it. And then they become adults. They become us. And we don’t ask the “why” question a whole lot. But when we do, we usually do it out of a posture of pain.
We are hurting because of disease, death, destruction or else the general chaos we see in the world around us. We can accept a lot, but every once in a while that chaos becomes too personal and too overwhelming for us to accept much more. And so, like children, we once again cry out, “Why?”

Why is my wife sick?
Why can’t I find a job?
Why is there so much anger in the world?
Why is God allowing this to happen?

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I am recognizing the continual presence of the ever-elusive “else” inside myself. Maybe it’s there for you, too. You might call it “more” or “other”, but it’s the same thing. The elusive “else” is that “thing” that’s out there, somewhere in the distance, that we can never quite get to:

It’s another opportunity.

It’s another relationship.

It’s more money.

It’s increased exposure.

It’s more “likes.”

It’s greater fame.

It’s something else than what we’ve been given in life. If I’m honest, I think I spend a great deal of time either chasing after or fantasizing about that ever elusive else. And most of the time, I simply try to beat down that desire. I feed myself verses about contentment and satisfaction. I chide myself for my lack of satisfaction. I try to force myself to live in the present and be happy in the moment with what I’ve been given. All those disciplinary actions are appropriate, I guess, but I’m beginning to think that maybe the Lord has “something else” in store for my elusive “else”:
Redemption
That’s the pattern we see in the life of Paul, specifically, right here:
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  (Phil. 3:12-14).