Published almost twenty years ago, “Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To” by Anthony DeStefano changed how I pray and how I experience God’s answers to my prayer. I’ll be spending the next few weeks talking about what I got from his book, and how applying the principles in this book to my own life changed me.
The “Easy” Button
Remember that commercial years ago when people would push down on a large yellow button with the word “Easy” on it? And whatever difficult project they were struggling with would simply right itself in an instant? Would it not be great if we really could have an Easy Button? We could keep it in our pockets and whenever there was a crisis, or a puzzling situation, or we needed an answer about something, we could just take it out and push.
Life is complicated. We try to get a handle on life by reading books about it, and consulting experts. You and I can work our way through a problem, figure out solutions, make decisions based on the facts as we know them … but coming up with the smart answer is not a guarantee for finding out the right answer. Being smart is not enough.
What you and I really need is wisdom
The Nature of Wisdom
Wisdom is more than the ability to make sensible decisions. It involves the ability to discern the truth in a situation, the ability to understand what may lie ahead and the willingness to do the right thing.
And that right there, that is the rub. Often you and I do not have a good idea of what the future holds, and it can be very hard, from our limited vantage, to know what the right thing is to do.
But God is not limited.
God is all-knowing, all-seeing, there is nothing outside the scope of what God is aware of or has sovereignty over. The Lord always knows the future and the Lord sees the truth in our situations. God sees details that even you and I may be missing, even with all our concentration riveted on what we need to make a decision about, or move forward on. God sees all the ramifications, and God knows the right thing to do.
God will always answer a prayer for wisdom with generosity, giving you and me the ability to understand things from God’s perspective and to desire what God desires.
Omniscient
God sees everything that is happening to us right now. in fact, it is no accident that I sat down to write this post, remembering all the good truths I learned from Anthony DeStefano, and no accident that you are reading this post. The Lord is an active part of our circumstances. God is intensely interested in what is going on because God loves you and me and has our best interests at heart.
When we ask God for wisdom, we are essentially asking God for the gift of God’s own self, because God is wisdom. When you and I are in union with God, we have direct access to everything God has made available to us in God’s own self: peace, courage, love, truth and wisdom. God wants us to have these things, and God wants us to glorify God by sharing these gifts with the other people in our lives.
Look at what Paul discovered in thinking about this very thing:
A Mystery Revealed
“Among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed. But we speak God’s wisdom, a hidden mystery, which God decreed before the ages for our glory and which none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“’What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—“God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
“For what human knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
“And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
“Those who are unspiritual[d] do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
“’For who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?’“But we have the mind of Christ.“
1 Corinthians 2:6–16 NRSVUE (modifications added)
The Goal of Wisdom
Will God give you a direct answer to a direct question? Like, “Please, God, give me wisdom in juggling my career and raising my children?” or “Please show me how to get out of debt?” I think we can safely say God will lead us to the best answer possible so long as our ultimate purpose is to become increasingly surrendered to the Lord.
As DeStefano emphasizes, the focus of God’s wisdom is not to be on ourselves, but to be on God. God’s purpose is always going to be to draw us into a closer union with God’s own self, which will also always be in our best interests. The Lord’s solutions may not be what you or I were interested in hearing. But they will always be the wise answers.
The more you and I ask for wisdom, which is really asking for God’s perspective, the more we will notice a change in what we will see in any given situation. We will begin to see possibilities and solutions we had never thought of before. We will find ourselves willing to consider decisions we had been closed to before. Because now, we will have drawn closer to God, willing to open our hearts and minds to heavenly wisdom, to be changed by God’s presence and work within us.
The last thing about wisdom is this:
The Aim of Wisdom
James, the brother of Jesus, wrote
“If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.”
James 1:5–8 NRSVUE (modifications added)
Wisdom is not just knowing the right thing to do, it is doing the right thing. In order to receive God’s wisdom you and I must already be prepared to follow through with what God shows us. If you or I feel we have been earnestly asking God for God’s wisdom and we feel like the Lord has shown us nothing, then maybe this is the roadblock: we are not ready, yet, to put God’s words into action.
[Cover Image: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash]
Thanks for bringing out this understanding of God’s shared wisdom by Christ’s Spirit. It comes in timely today, as it did when you wrote it and when Paul and James wrote it years ago. Edifying!
Thanks, Vicki, it was good for me to write and think about, too. It was timely for me.