Sermon or Lesson:  Pursue Wisdom - Part 10:  Steps To Pursue, Acquire, And Implement Spiritual Wisdom  (NIV based)

INTRODUCTION:  In this document are practical 'steps to pursue, acquire, and implement spiritual wisdom' in the life of true believers.  These steps are recommended, and they have been prayerfully and logically ascertained and generated, in consideration especially of the contents of the previous documents in this series.  All of these steps are important.  [Note:  It might be helpful to print out and distribute paper copies of this document to the audience persons perhaps at the end of this study meeting, so that they can take this document home, study it, and implement each step at their own pace.]
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[Lesson Question:  Analyze, discuss, and describe practical steps that should be taken to pursue, acquire, and implement spiritual wisdom in one's life.]

SECTION POINT:  By God's design, spiritual wisdom needs to be pursued by true believers.

STEP 1:  Commit yourself that henceforth you are pursuing spiritual wisdom.
- - In prayer before God, acknowledge that you do indeed hear "wisdom calling out" to you, so now you are distinctly responding to that call.  (vv.1,4 in Proverbs 8:1-6) 
- - Truthfully declare to God that you are willing to do whatever is necessary in order to acquire and live by spiritual wisdom in your life.

STEP 2:  Develop and firmly establish the mindset that you are now deliberately and actively pursuing spiritual wisdom. 
- - In Proverbs 4:7 and 18:15, we true believers are exhorted and instructed to "get wisdom", along with "get understanding", and "seek out knowledge".
- - These exhortations to take action in no way state nor imply that we should merely sit around and wait for spiritual wisdom to subliminally float into our head, our mind. 
- - Therefore, it is necessary to commit yourself to making and then maintaining the high priority of pursuing, acquiring, and implementing spiritual wisdom in your life.
- - Understand, acknowledge, and accept that the possession and usage of spiritual wisdom will definitely affect and change your life in positive ways, but that those changes may be somewhat costly to you in some manner.
- - Accept and permanently implant in your mind the reality from Scriptures that some of the benefits and blessings from spiritual wisdom come soon, and some are delayed to come in the distant future.

STEP 3:  Start and then continue working on correcting and cleaning up aspects in your life that you already know are foolish, or contrary to spiritual wisdom, or contrary to God's will.
- - The correcting and cleaning out of foolishness logically should include scrutinizing: aspects of your thought-life; aspects of how you mentally process things; aspects of your beliefs, opinions, and perspective; aspects of your spiritual life; aspects of your speaking; aspects of your conduct and habits; and areas of your indulgence, self-indulgence, and self-gratification.
- - Remember that spiritual wisdom 'walks along and stays on the path of righteousness'.  (Proverbs 8:20, described in the 'Part 5' document of this 'Purse Wisdom' series)
- - So obviously, all aspects and areas of sinfulness should be cleaned out and gotten rid of, including that which is hindering to or counterproductive to spiritual wisdom and its accompanying spiritual knowledge and spiritual understanding.  (Hebrew 12:1)

STEP 4:  Daily ask God to lead you into and give you more spiritual wisdom.
- - James 1:5. "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 
 6.  But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 
 7.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 
 8.  he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does."

STEP 5:  Be teachable and trainable, readily identifying, accepting, and integrating into your life the spiritual wisdom that you encounter in the Scriptures.
- - Be an avid student of the Scriptures, the Word of God, remembering that this is where spiritual wisdom is plentifully located.
- - As you are studying the Scriptures, likewise seek and acquire spiritual knowledge and spiritual understanding, remembering that they accompany and mutually work together with spiritual wisdom.
- - Whenever you encounter spiritual 'wisdom', 'knowledge', or 'understanding' in verses, pause upon, study, meditate on, and absorb the imperatives, exhortations, directives, concepts, meanings, and dynamics in each of those verses.
- - Perhaps a good way to start your studying of the Scriptures is to slowly and carefully review the verses used in each of the documents in this 'Pursue Wisdom' series, and put into effect in your life each of the aspects of those verses that pertain to living by spiritual wisdom.

STEP 6:  Think ahead, into the future, and then plan for and be prepared for what probably is coming in the future.
- - Wisdom compels contemplation about the future, to identify and anticipate what probably is coming, which develops foresight, planning, and adequate preparation in advance, as feasible.  (e.g. Matthew 7:24-25)
- - Foolishness proceeds into the future in obliviousness, or underestimates the potential for harm, or procrastinates and waits until the last minute, which may prove to be too late to avoid or mitigate what is impending.  (e.g. vv.7:26-27)
- - This thinking ahead, into the future, should be applied not only to preclude or minimize what is harmful, but should also be applied for what is good, to nurture or maximize good outcome.

STEP 7:  Take practical steps to use spiritual wisdom appropriately and effectively.
- - In order to naturally and consistently utilize spiritual wisdom in situations that are unpleasant, or difficult, or perplexing, or troublesome, it would be good and necessary to utilize a self-discipline wise approach of actions to deal with difficult situations.
- - A good initial response to difficult situations is to pause or stop (if possible), and consider whether you have encountered or heard about this situation or a similar situation in the past, from which you can draw from experience or previously-acquired knowledge and understanding.
- - If you do have some past familiarity with the current similar type of difficult situation, then of course you will want to take some time to make a proper analysis and correlation to the past similar situation.
- - Next, you should consult knowledge and principles from the Scriptures that would apply to you in the current difficult situation.
- - In the midst of consulting the Scriptures, take some time to calm yourself down and pray about the current difficult situation, for God's assistance and wisdom for you to proceed in a manner that pleases Him.
- - Generate, consider, and evaluate all the feasible options, which should include asking your spouse and perhaps a spiritually-mature true believer friend about any God-approved options that he/she can think of.
- - Sometimes merely talking to someone about it can help you see the situation from a different or adjusted perspective, which may help you find a new option that you had not thought of yet.
- - Upon compiling but before implementing a course of action to take to address the current difficult situation, run a final test of your planned course of action to verify that your analysis and solution are correct and approved, according to God.
- - As you are implementing your God-approved course of action, be flexible to modify your course of action to accommodate unexpected or changed conditions, but nevertheless you should still maintain the wise high priority of your conduct and course of action being God-approved.
- - And throughout this process of formulating and implementing a wise course of action, keep in mind that usually God requires His true believers to pay a price in order to implement the solution in a manner that He approves of - in other words, to endure unjust suffering, like Jesus did on the cross for the benefit of undeserving other people.  (1 Peter 2:18-25)
- - Utilizing this approach to resolving difficult situations in a spiritually-wise manner requires the self-discipline to train yourself to always and naturally respond with this approach of determining and drawing on spiritual wisdom from God.
- - As is evident from the study of wisdom in this 'Pursue Wisdom' series, responding in a natural humanistic manner takes you down the path of the fool, for examples "giving full vent to his anger", "blurting out folly", 'trusting in what essentially is his own foolishness', and etcetera.  (Proverbs 29:11; 12:23; 28:26)

STEP 8:  Become active in doing ministry work.
- - In John 15:8, Jesus is quoted as saying, ""This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.""
- - Thereby from this verse, serving God or doing ministry work is a wise course of action, which pleases God and contributes to the growth of His Kingdom and the spiritual growth of other true believers.
- - Serving God also creates conditions in which other spiritual gifts that you have can be brought out and work in conjunction with the spiritual wisdom that you are acquiring.
- - Furthermore, doing ministry work is a good way to gain even more spiritual wisdom, by means of the various experiences that you are exposed to within your doing of ministry work.
- - Therefore, the wise response to these realities about doing ministry work is to find and reliably provide assistance in a specific ministry that is actively teaching the Word of God in some manner, while you observe, experience, and learn how to do ministry properly and effectively.
- - In order to do ministry work very well or with excellence, we true believers need to be fully-empowered by God.
- - Therefore, the wise response to this reality is to study about how to achieve that full-empowering by God.  [Note:  That information can be found in the 'Elder Training Series - Session 10' document on the 'Home Page - Ministry' of this web-site www.BelieverAssist.com .]
- - Upon maintaining being fully-empowered by God, study about spiritual gifts so that you are aware of how God has gifted you and how He wants to empower the gifting that He has given you.  [Note: See 'Elder Training Series - Sessions 11-16' for details.]
- - Then, find ways to try out doing different kinds of work in different ministries until you find a kind of ministry work that God may be gifting you to do.
- - When you determine and decide on a particular ministry work within which your ministry functioning is producing excellent results in a God-approved manner, then focus on and develop your doing of that ministry work, regarding it as being one of the ministry works He has gifted you to do.
- - Note that there may be points in time in your life in which you feel compelled to switch to doing a different kind of ministry work.
- - Of course, inquire and utilize much prayer, spiritual wisdom, and guidance from God when you are contemplating that kind of switch.
- - And remember that the declaration in John 15:8 is "that you bear much fruit", which implies that you should be doing ministry work of some kind or other during the remainder of your life, as you are able.

STEP 9:  Continue pursuing spiritual wisdom, knowledge, and understanding for the remainder of your life.
- - The more spiritual wisdom that we acquire and use, the better our life will be.
- - We can and do make stupid and foolish choices even in our old age.
- - So, it would be wise to intentionally pursue and utilize spiritual wisdom, knowledge, and understanding throughout the remainder of our life here on the earth.
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BIG IDEA:  In order to speed up and maximize the benefits of spiritual wisdom to come upon our life, true believers need to exert effort to acquire and take steps to use spiritual wisdom.

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OVERVIEW AND APPLICATION:
- - Well, now the point of decision has arrived - what to do about spiritual wisdom.
- - In this 'Pursue Wisdom Series', you have heard basic information from the Scriptures about spiritual wisdom.
- - You have been presented with sufficient knowledge about spiritual wisdom.
- - You have been exposed to some of the benefits and blessings that relate to using spiritual wisdom.
- - You have been exhorted directly from God to get and stay on the path of spiritual wisdom.
- - And you have been given practical steps about how to effectively pursue, acquire, and implement spiritual wisdom.
- - Being adequately informed, now the choice awaits you - what to do about spiritual wisdom.
- - ?Commit yourself to taking specific steps of action in order to pursue, acquire, and implement spiritual wisdom in your life?  Or, not?

- - For those of you who are not a true believer, you are still back at the beginning - still separated from God, and still being captive to and fully immersed in what God regards and judges as foolishness. 
- - You may adamantly disagree with God's assessment of your current condition and state, but God is all-powerful and ultimately upholds complete justice (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7).  Thereby on Judgment Day, He will force upon you that verdict to then be modified to eternal separation from God and corresponding eternal horrific punishment consequences for your sins - if you die without having correctly placed your faith in Christ Jesus to pay the penalty for your sins on the cross, and that He rose from the dead on the third day.  (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4; see John 3:16, Romans 3:23)
- - So now the point of decision has arrived for you - what to do about your state of foolishly heading towards eternal separation from God.
- - ?Wisely place your faith in Christ Jesus to rescue and redeem you from the eternal separation and punishment that you deserve for your sins?  ?Or, not place your faith in Christ Jesus, and foolishly wait to see if anything happens to you after you die in this life?
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Works Cited:
Bible. “The Holy Bible: New International Version.” The Bible Library CD-ROM. Oklahoma City, OK: Ellis Enterprises, 1988.
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Copyrights:
Scriptures taken from Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®
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