by Andy Stanley
Wise people know when they don’t know. The fool is the person who convinces himself that he knows more than he really knows and doesn’t need to ask anybody anything. At the end of the day, the wise man breathes a sigh of relief; the fool, a sigh of regret.
Bottom line; when we resist presenting our options to the wise people around us for fear of hearing what we don’t want to hear, we are fools. When we insist on ignoring the warning signs and pressing on anyway, we are fools. And in the end, we pay. Fools always pay.
SOS
God knows there will be times when you lack wisdom, times when you’ll ask our question and come up short.
If you are in the midst of an emotionally challenging situation and circumstances require you to make a decision, go for help. Don’t trust your judgment alone. Just as there are times when physical pain makes us incapable of caring for ourselves, so emotional pain can drive us to the place where we need assistance.
If you are being called upon to make a decision that is out of your league in terms of experience or education, get some help. Don’t pretend. Don’t fake it. Asking for help is not a reflection of your lack of wisdom. Asking for input is evidence of wisdom. When our question doesn’t yield the clarity you need, ask somebody you trust, “In light of my past experience, current circumstances, and future hopes and dreams, what do you believe is the wise thing for me to do?”
After all, wise people know when they don’t know and aren’t afraid to go to those who do.
In light of your past experience, current circumstances, and future hopes and dreams, what is the wise thing for you to do? What do the wise people around you consider the wisest course of action for you to take? These are two extraordinarily powerful questions that you should bring to bear on every area of your life. Acting on the answers to these questions will set you up to live a life with few regrets.
But therein lies the problem: You have to act. You have to follow through. For your heavenly Father to leverage our question in your life, you have to act on what you discover. In these final pages, I want to help position you for follow-through.
The Gallery
Many years ago, toward the end of a long day alone with the kids, Sandra marched everybody to the basement and announced that they were to spend the afternoon painting. She covered a big table with butcher paper, pulled out three small canvases, laid out assorted paints and brushes, and told them that she would let them know when they were finished!
“Paint what?” asked Andrew, who was nine at the time.
“Anything you please.”
“I don’t know what to paint,” said Allie, who was seven.
“I don’t even know how to paint,” complained Garrett, who was eight.
Without giving further instructions, Sandra headed back upstairs for a well-deserved nap. Thirty minutes later she was awakened by a sound that she rarely heard: silence. No voices. No make-believe explosions. No crying. Nothing. The house was quiet.
Concerned, she headed down the hall to the basement door. No sooner had she opened the door when she heard, “Don’t come down yet. We aren’t finished.” In mama-speak that meant, “Go have a few moments for yourself,” an offer Sandra gladly accepted. Twenty short minutes later, she heard the pitter-patter of six precious feet scrambling up the basement stairs. “We’re ready! We’re ready! Come see our artwork!”
What kind of paintings do you suppose were waiting for Sandra at the bottom of the stairs? What kind of art would you expect from three untrained, unattended young children? Three masterpieces? Three introspective self-portraits worthy of hanging in a local gallery?
Why not?
Why is it you imagine unintelligible strokes of paint splattered all over the canvases, the table, and the basement floor? Why are your expectations so low when it comes to my children’s artwork?
There’s a whole list of reasons. What it all boils down to, however, is that untrained artists won’t make the right decisions. Untrained artists don’t know the principles and guidelines of painting. They don’t know proper technique. Their motives may be pure and their intent noble, but if they don’t know how to paint—well, you get the picture.
Playing by the Rules
There are rules and principles that govern every discipline. Music, architecture, law, education, medicine, athletics, economics, communication, construction, art, finances, accounting—in order to make wise decisions in any of these arenas, you need an understanding of the principles and laws that govern them.
Your accountant cannot give you wise counsel unless he or she knows the principles of accounting along with the tax codes established by the federal government. When you choose a doctor, you assume that person is an expert in his or her field of medicine—you assume this professional knows how the human body works and how to fix it when it quits working. If you hire a builder to build your home, you expect him to understand the applicable government codes and standards as well as the principles of construction.
For a number of years, I served as a coach or an assistant coach for my sons’ baseball teams. I learned very quickly that knowing the rules and understanding the nuances of Little League baseball make all the difference in a coach’s decision-making ability.
For example, in our league there was a five-run limit rule. That is, once a team scores five runs in an inning, their turn at bat is over and the other team automatically comes up to bat. In the sixth and final inning, there are no run limits; however, because of a time limit imposed on Little League games, very few of our games ever make it to the sixth inning.
In spite of the run-limit rule, the coaches in our league would typically arrange their batting orders the traditional way—all their best hitters batted first, and the worst hitters batted at the end of the lineup. But one day it occurred to me that under the circumstances they had it all wrong. If there is a five-run limit each inning, that changes the goal of the game. The goal should be to score five runs every inning. So I started arranging our batting order accordingly. Instead of putting our worst batters at the bottom of the order, I sprinkled them throughout the lineup.
Suddenly, we started scoring consistently every inning. And as a result of moving the weaker batters up in the order, something else happened in our favor: the weaker batters started hitting. Moving them up in the order did something for their confidence. We won more games that season than any team in the league.
You see, knowing the way things work makes you a better decision maker. Every decision may not be obvious, but knowing the rules and principles narrows our options and increases our chances of success. If you have ever worked with a professional decorator, you have seen this dynamic at work. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of ways to beautifully decorate a room. But there are some combinations of fabric and furniture that just won’t work, and a good decorator knows which combinations to avoid.
Years ago Sandra and I had a room in our house that we just could never make look right. One night when my mom was over, we brought her into our dysfunctional room and said, “Help! What do we need to do?” She moved two pieces of furniture, and it made all the difference in the world. Sandra and I stood there in amazement. We wondered why we hadn’t thought of that.
Simple. My mom is a decorator. She knows the rules. She took one look at our room and diagnosed the problem. And that brings us to the flip side of this principle.
It Cuts Both Ways
Generally speaking, when we ignore the rules or principles in any particular field, we pay a price. All the day traders who were active during this or that economic bubble over the past decade will know what I’m talking about. No matter how many times we—um, I mean, they—were warned to take a long-term approach to securities investing, they just kept on churning their money for short-term gains. And when the bubble burst, a lot of people lost a lot of money. When you ignore the rules, you pay.
This is why people who represent themselves in court usually don’t fare very well. They don’t know the law. T
hey don’t understand courtroom etiquette. They have no experience picking or reading a jury. They don’t know the first thing about cross-examining a witness.
I have a friend who decided to improve a piece of land by clearing some trees. He’s not a developer. He’s not a contractor. (But he has a great personality.) And consequently, he didn’t know the proper procedure for improving property inside the city limits. He didn’t know you had to have a land disturbance permit. He didn’t know that he had specimen trees on his land. He didn’t know he was supposed to ask the city arborists to come out and tag trees. He didn’t even know there were such things as city arborists. But he does now.
He assumed he could do whatever he wanted to do on his own land. But he was wrong. He didn’t know the rules. And after a dozen meetings with the city arborists and a couple of city council members, my friend ended up spending $40,000 to plant trees all over the city as a fine for violating several city ordinances. Next time he will know better. But that was an expensive lesson.
I bet you have a story or two yourself. I bet you wish I would get to my point. Hold on, we are almost there.
Hands On
Knowing the rules and principles of a particular discipline is not enough. To harness their power, you must submit to or apply them. When a surgeon performs an operation, he is submitting to the rules and applying the procedures of his particular specialty. No matter how skilled his hands, if he were to ignore proper surgical procedures, the results could be devastating.
Wide receivers can’t cut out around the cheerleaders, come back onto the field, and catch a pass without being penalized. The best tennis pro can’t serve the ball into the stands and expect to win. The Atlanta Braves can’t put ten players on the field at a time. Professional athletes must submit to the rules in order to win.
In every field it is both the knowing and the doing that make for success. You must first know how things work and then submit yourself to those principles, laws, and techniques. It is what you know and what you do with what you know that make the difference.
So …
What’s true in the realms of medicine, construction, accounting, and sports is true in the core dimensions of your life as well. There are laws and principles that must be adhered to if you are to succeed in the arenas of marriage, parenting, personal finances, friendship, work, and time management. Some of these principles are intuitive; others are not. But knowing and submitting to these principles make all the difference in the world. For it is within the context of these life rules that wisdom is found. They inform the decision-making process.
Every time you give someone advice, you are drawing upon your insight about how some aspect of the world works. Through the years you have stumbled onto some of these laws and principles. Some you have learned the hard way. You may have been exposed to others through the wisdom of your parents and teachers. But you know a thing or two about how life works. There are certain bad decisions you can spot a mile away. You can see trouble coming. At times you have tried to warn some unsuspecting soul to get out of the way—just like somebody warned you in a previous chapter of your life.
With all of this experience as a backdrop, let me ask you a couple of questions. If I can’t expect my children to create masterpieces on canvas when they do not know and submit to the rules and principles of oil painting, how can we expect to make masterpieces of our lives without knowing and submitting to the laws and principles of life? If I can’t expect my mechanic to make wise decisions about the maintenance of my car without first knowing how the car works, how can I expect to make wise decisions about my family and finances without first knowing the laws and principles that govern these important arenas of life?
Let me take it one excruciating step further. How do you expect to make a masterpiece of your life if you are unwilling to surrender to the Author of life—the One who knows which textures and colors are best blended for the outcome you desire? How do you expect to make wise decisions regarding your family, marriage/love life, and career if you are not willing to submit to the promptings of the One who knows more about those things than you or I ever will?
In the Beginning
Perhaps it was this line of reasoning that led the wisest man in the world to pen these words: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Wisdom begins with a proper understanding of who God is and who we are not.
Don’t rush past this too quickly. Throughout this book, I have challenged you to ask yourself, “What is the wise thing for me to do?” In the previous section, I encouraged you to broaden your audience to a few choice and respected friends. But to fully leverage our question, you need to address it to your heavenly Father. For he is the source of all wisdom, and wisdom begins by properly aligning ourselves with who God is.
Solomon used the phrase “the fear of the LORD.” In this context, “fear” refers to recognition and reverence that lead to submission. You may want to write that down somewhere. Wisdom begins with the recognition of who God is. This does not mean simply recognizing his power and knowledge. This is recognizing that you are dealing with the one and only Creator of all things. God with a capital G. Wisdom begins when we rightly recognize God’s position as God!
Proper recognition results in reverence. Reverence is the appropriate response to the One who created and controls all things. The practical side of reverence is submission. Those who recognize and revere the Father have little choice but to embrace his right to rule all that he has created. That moment of recognition and surrender is the beginning of true wisdom.
The Aha! Factor
Lest we lose sight of the highly relational side of our heavenly Father, Solomon restated his point in different terms. Here’s how the entire verse reads:
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
(Proverbs 9:10)
Allow me to paraphrase this amazing verse for you this way:
Wisdom begins when we recognize that God is God and then we respond accordingly. The proper response, of course, is surrender. Once we have surrendered, God is more than happy to reveal more and more of himself. And as we discover more and more of the character and nature of the Father, we gain greater understanding of the world he has created. Our expanded understanding results in an improved ability to choose wisely. Thus, true wisdom begins with a proper recognition of who God is coupled with a proper response—surrender.
If the idea of surrendering to your heavenly Father scares you, consider this: you unknowingly surrender to his principles and laws every day. Every time you make a wise parenting decision, you are applying or surrendering to one of God’s principles. Every time you make a wise financial decision, the same thing is true. Every time you submit your body to the knife of a competent surgeon, you surrender yourself to the laws of God. The surgeon is simply making decisions based upon his understanding of the way God created the human body. Every time you submit to a human authority, you are applying one of God’s principles.
“But that’s different,” you argue. “I’m just using good judgment.” That may be the way you see it. But if you are simply applying principles that existed before you chose to apply them, you are borrowing from—and recognizing the wisdom of—the Father. Think about it. We have discovered and leveraged principles of physics; we have explored and manipulated the genetic code; we have pinpointed and eradicated many diseases. Our forefathers harnessed high- and low-pressure systems and used them to travel across the seas.
Every single day we benefit from the way God designed things to work. Everything we claim to have created in our human endeavors finds its ultimate source in something God created that we simply discovered and manipulated. Every time we take a breath, we declare our dependency upon and submission to the Father physically. Why then would we hesitate to submit our wills? Why are we so afraid to surrender to him our relationships, our finances, and our careers?
A wise physician does not
ignore the way God created the body. A wise accountant does not ignore the principles of mathematics. The beginning of wisdom is recognition of and submission to the One who designed things to work the way things work.
It’s Mutual
One more thought on surrender: it is mutual. Mutual surrender, or submission if you prefer, is one of the most powerful relational dynamics. When two people pledge to put the other first, that is relationship at its best. This is true whether we’re talking about a husband and wife, employee and employer, or parent and child. In a relationship of mutual submission, rank and birth order are irrelevant. The point is that each has pledged all that he or she is for the benefit of the other. In a relationship of mutual submission, there is nothing to fear—it is a relationship of trust.
Here’s a bit of truth that ought to erase all your misgivings about surrendering to the Father: Before you were born, he submitted himself to you. On a wooden cross, God sacrificed his best on your behalf. He put you ahead of himself. Read these words with that thought in mind:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)
While you had nothing to offer, Christ died for you. He put your sin ahead of his own glory. In this way, he submitted to you. He met your greatest need at great personal expense. To do so, did he demonstrate his authority? No. His right to rule? Nope. Instead, he drew from his vast resources to demonstrate the only thing that would give us the courage to submit fearlessly, courageously: he demonstrated his love. And that demonstration stands as an open invitation for us to respond in kind. And so we are called into a relationship of mutual submission, knowing all the while that our Father took the risk and went first.