Wisdom 2.0

I went to a wedding this past weekend.  It was beautiful, tons of fun, and remarkably stress-free.  I loved catching up with my dear friend, the bride, and making plenty of new ones, to boot.  But there was something swimming around in my head the entire weekend.  I kept asking myself....how do you hear from God clearly enough to be willing to commit your entire life to one person?  How did this godly couple - and thousands of others just like them - become confident enough that they were following the Lord's will to say "I do"?  A marriage isn't like moving to another city for a new job, where you can always move back if you realized that you had not actually heard the Lord's voice.  A marriage is forever.

Perhaps I don't understand because I'm single.  I suppose that's a logical explanation.  But I think there's a better one.  As I was thinking and praying about this puzzle, I got an image of a piece of an outdated piece of computer software (leave it to the nerdy girl to make a spiritual analogy with computers :] ).  Our earthly knowledge and wisdom is like version 1.0 - full of bugs, glitches, and fallacies.  If we made our life choices based on wisdom 1.0, we would always be making the wrong choice.  But God has given us version 2.0 - the complete, whole, and perfect version of His godly wisdom.  He can, if we ask Him, give us an understanding of the world that we can have confidence is right, because it comes from Him.

So wisdom, true wisdom, simply comes down to having the proper source of wisdom.  If you rely on your own experiences, logic, reason, and understanding, you're bound to make enormous errors.  But if you upgrade your system, if you put away your own knowledge and rely on His, then you will have a wisdom that cannot be wrong.  Then you will have a wisdom that is "pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere."  Then you will have a wisdom that gives you the confidence to move to another country, start a new job, or even commit the rest of your life to 1 person - all because you know that the Lord said that it was good, and you know that you can trust His wisdom.

James 3:13-17

13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. 14 But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. 15 Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.