Many people pray everyday that the Lord will grant them wisdom or discernement. My brother, my sister, man can only give what he has, but God is the creator of everything, so He can give us everything we want, abundantly.True enough that the Bible tells us to pray to ask the Lord for what we want, for example wisdom, and it will be given to us (James 1:5). Now, because we like shortcuts, we also tend to forget that God does not give just to give. He gives us for us to fulfil a purpose that He designed before we came into this world. And that purpose is to fit in His plan, not in plans of the world. In other words, many people who ask God for wisdom and discernment with wrong motives will not receive it while they are not following God’s principle. My friend, don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about the common wisdom God distributes to all of us, which for example enables a mother to know she needs to feed her child. I am talking about the wisdom and discernment that lead us to become righteous before God, because what we do and say is good and right before His sight.
Having said this, we need to keep in mind that the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the “wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Therefore, wisdom, or spiritual discernment, is something that comes from knowing Jesus Christ. The world’s way of getting wisdom is different from God’s way. The learned of the world gain knowledge and apply reason to knowledge to solve problems, construct buildings and create philosophies. But God does not make the knowledge of Himself available by those means. In today’s passage, the Bible says the “wisdom of the wise” is frustrated by God who delivers wisdom to the “foolish” and the “weak” by way of a relationship with Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:18-31). That way, “no human being can boast in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:29). We learn to be spiritually discerning by knowing the Lord.
In short, it is not wrong to possess knowledge or to have an education, and it is not wrong to use reason and logic to solve problems. However, spiritual discernment cannot be attained that way. To the believer, it must be given by the revelation of Jesus Christ, and then developed by way of training in righteousness (Hebrews 5:14) and prayer (Philippians 1:9). Yes, as much as we need to walk towards becoming a bit more like Christ every day, spiritual discernment needs to be developed through our knowledge of Christ (Hebrews 5:11-14). Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.