PDF Manuscript: Proverbs - Everyday Wisdom - Fatherly Advice
It’s the everyday choices that matter. The amount of wisdom you have, or lack thereof, is shaped by your everyday choices.
Frank Abagnale was one of the most notorious con artists. If you’ve ever read the book or watched the movie Catch Me If You Can, you know that Abagnale convincingly impersonated an airline pilot, a physician, and a lawyer—even passing the bar exam despite never attending college. But he didn’t start out that way. When he was 15 years old, he swindled his dad out of $3,400. When he ran away from home at age 16, he lied about his age and altered the dates on his driver’s license so he could get better employment. From there, he began to write personal checks on his own overdrawn account. Next, he began to create new identities in order to defraud banks. Then, he began printing his own checks. With each step, his scams became more elaborate, more bold, and more criminal. It all started with an everyday choice.
You see, no one wakes up one morning and thinks, “I’m going to set out on a path of self-destruction.” Rather, it’s marked by the incremental, careless, foolish, self-focused decisions that we make day in and day out. One incremental move to the right and we become accustomed to it. We make another move to the right, and eventually end up much farther than we ever intended. What starts out as a little white lie now and then turns into a constant habit of lying about everything and becoming a person no one trusts. It’s the everyday choices that matter. It’s the everyday choices that determine who we become.
Likewise, the author of Proverbs describes our character as being determined by the sum total of our daily choices. The seemingly little choices place us on either the path of wisdom or the path of foolishness. The path of uprightness or the path of wickedness. The path of life or the path of death. It all begins with a choice. Regarding wisdom, Derek Kidner says, “What it takes is not brains or opportunity, but a decision. Do you want it? Come and get it.”
I want to invite you to turn to Proverbs chapter 4 as we continue our study in everyday wisdom. We’ve defined wisdom as the ability to live skillfully from God’s point of view. Wisdom allows us to navigate the realities and complexities of life. But wisdom is more than just having high morals. It’s also knowing the right thing to do in the many life situations that are not specifically dealt with in the Bible. It’s about developing the character of both mind and heart that changes the course of your life forever. So, how do we get there?