5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.
8 It will be health to your flesh, And strength to your bones.
— Proverbs 3:5-8 (KJV)
You know, the first part of that verse, “lean not unto thine own understanding”, was told to me many times as a teen and young adult, but I never quite got it; I had to learn the hard way. The key to “getting it”, what’s being said here, is in the other parts of the passage. It is not enough to have knowledge, you must also have understanding and then wisdom. However, there is understanding and wisdom from God’s point of view, and then there is understanding and wisdom from man’s point of view. Proverbs 14 tells us what happens when you use man’s POV.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. — Proverbs 14:12 (KJV)
In Proverbs 3, verse 5 is the knowledge here. Verses 6 and 7 teaches us, this is what needs to be done or understood from that knowledge; the key to unlocking what you just found out. Wisdom is knowing how and when to use knowledge, and the most effective wisdom is when it comes from God; verse 6 notes this: “and he shall direct thy paths.”
And here we are, at the title of the post…
So, let’s go back to the Tower of Babel, as it’s a very intriguing story. The breaking up of people at the Tower of Babel wasn’t because people were doing something evil or sinful. The tower (ziggurat, a religious structure) that was being build was not an act of pride, in fact it was an attempt to connect to/find God. However, as man makes and continues to make great achievements, “trying to find or be God”, and doesn’t acquire/credit knowledge through The Spirit of God, he starts to become independently intellectual. He no longer feels the need to acknowledge God. He embraces intellectualism over God and starts to question, even criticize God. He uses self-reasoning, analytics, philosophies, etc., and the result of those is Proverbs 14. So, God scattered people as a preventative or cool-it-down measure. More specifically, it was to make it harder for the devil to use herd mentality in order to accelerate the decoupling of man from God via independent intellectualism; the Tower of Babel was more about stopping the devil than it was about stopping man.
The devil loves and lives in intellectualism and it’s something that is extremely prevalent today. It is far more effective and destructive for him to make you question God’s ways or even better make you believe that neither (God nor the devil) are even real, via your own understanding and conclusion than any other method.
Now, as I use the word intellectualism, I want to make it very clear that there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting knowledge and understanding! In fact, the bible encourages us to do so, but how we get it, and what we use it for must be through The Spirit of God. If we allow His Spirit to give us His understanding, by acknowledging him, he will guide us back to one accord, and we can advance properly. Therefore, our prayers should be “please give me knowledge, understanding, and wisdom through Your Spirit and not through the ideologies and intellectualism of man”.
5 Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth.
6 Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee.
7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
— Proverbs 4:5-7 (KJV)
If you are not saved/redeemed please do so today.
Come to God open, empty and without statements.
Ask him to be real to you and believe in Him.
Humble yourself before Him, confess who you are, and your sins.
Ask Him to forgive you and to come into your life and start a personal relationship.
Believe this and be born again!
May God bless and keep all who read this.
May God bless and keep all brothers and sisters, new and old, in the faith in his name.
With his love and mine,
Chrom