A man started talking to me via our website chat function. He needed to talk to someone. He said he needed to put the challenges that he and his wife were facing out there. He needed to talk to someone, because he didn’t know what to do. The issue was taking over his life.

It concerned his wife’s work. Well, actually it was more about her employer. For the past years they’ve overloaded her with work. She started working early in the morning, and weekends too. Her work took over all her spare time.

Eventually, she was doing the work of three people. She was promoted, but her salary stayed the same. And now her employer wanted to retrench her. But they needed her work to survive.

We pulled it apart. I gave advice and said that they should be getting assistance from a labour law professional. They’ve already done that, he said. Later on, I realised that the impact on their finances was increasing their fear, preventing them from taking a well thought out, balanced decision. Which is only human.

And then it hit me. They needed wisdom. Wisdom available from one place only and that is from God. We all experience situations where we calculate everything from all sides, but simply cannot find a solution. Often, it’s the impact of our decision that prevents us from making a decision.

When we’ve been painted into a corner like this, there is only one place where we can go and that is to God. Go and ask God – and this is the promise: ⁵You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it.

We must strive for this promise. This is a promise we can pack in our bag to use later, when you get to a stop sign and don’t know which way to go. We can ask God for wisdom and then we can wait calmly, because He will come and explain His wisdom to us.

The problem is that we don’t always have time and God’s timing is different from ours. We are trapped in human needs and we don’t know how we will be able to address them in human ways.

This is where our faith hits the tar together with all the challenges and we must surrender everything to God. I don’t mean stop trying and stop making plans.

We should actually keep trying harder to make plans, because somewhere in this process God will show us His wisdom. And we must keep believing, because it is faith in God that brings us to His wisdom for the challenges we are facing.

God will do this in abundance and He will not hold back. There are no conditions we have to meet first. Let’s do it like this. Let’s believe and ask for wisdom and then go and live as if the solution will come to us at any time.

Scripture
James 1:1-8

Reflection
Do you need wisdom?
Do you believe that God will give it to you?
Do you live that way?

Prayer
Father, sometimes my faith is simply too small. Sometimes I don’t trust what is happening. Sometimes I doubt whether You will really give wisdom. Now I live differently and know that Your wisdom will come through sometime. Amen.