“Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him.” – James 1:5

What do you usually pray for? If you were to go back through the last several weeks and make a list of your prayer requests, what would that list consist of? I have sat in a lot of small groups and made a lot of prayer request lists over the years. So, I think I could take a pretty good guess. The number one thing we pray for is healing. There is something about health problems that make us turn to God more than anything else. Second is probably provision. We come to God when we have reached the end of our financial ability to care for ourselves and our family. Next to that is usually safety. We want God to watch over us so that we do not have to experience the first two things on the list. Somewhere at the top of that list is also forgiveness and freedom from temptation. Usually, somewhere further down the list, we finally get to asking for wisdom. But even then, we most likely use the word “guidance” instead of “wisdom.”

Why don’t we pray for wisdom more often? If we think about it logically, wisdom should probably be one of the first things on the list. I think one of the reasons we often neglect the prayer for wisdom is that we have to start where James 1:5 starts: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God.” To pray for wisdom, we must first acknowledge our ignorance. We must recognize that one of our main issues in life is that we lack the wisdom needed to live in a godly manner. Praying for wisdom starts with humility. But when we finally let our pride fall down and come to God for wisdom, we have this incredible promise that he will give it generously. We have the promise that God will always answer the prayer for wisdom. And once we learn to pray this prayer every day, we might just find ourselves needing to pray for forgiveness, safety provision, and healing much less.

Almighty God and giver of every good gift, today we come to You asking for wisdom. We recognize our ignorance, and we confess our continued pursuit of foolish things. Fill our minds with true wisdom that only comes from You and teach us to live out that wisdom in every area of our lives.

In Christ’s Service,

Pastor Shane Cannon