Rooted · Week 3 · Monday

Ask for Wisdom

He had a real decision to make, and he was quietly trying to think his way to the answer all by himself.

It was a big one. The kind with no obviously right answer, genuine cost either way, and people counting on him to choose well. So he did what capable, responsible people do. He made the lists. He ran the scenarios at midnight. He asked everyone he trusted for their read on it. And the strange thing was, the more he analyzed, the more tangled and anxious the whole thing got, because he was leaning with all his weight on the one resource absolutely guaranteed to run out. His own understanding.

He’d strategized for weeks and never once asked.

The Verse He Skipped

Somewhere in the middle of the exhaustion, he remembered a verse that is almost embarrassing in how simple it is.

Ask God. He had strategized for weeks and never once stopped to do the one thing the verse actually says to do. And look closely at the promise attached to it, because it dismantles the very reason most of us do not ask. God gives generously, and he gives without reproach. He does not sigh at you for not having it figured out. He does not make you feel small or foolish for coming to him confused. He just gives.

Not the Whole Map

So he finally stopped white-knuckling the decision and asked. Not for the entire map of his life to be handed over at once, just for the wisdom to take the next right step in front of him. And here is the honest part. The answer did not drop out of the sky in a flash of light. But a settledness came first, and then, slowly, some clarity, and along with it a realization that stung a little. He had been trying to be his own god of this decision the whole time. Self-reliance had simply been dressed up as responsibility.

That is where doing the word actually begins, and it is more humbling than we expect. It starts with admitting out loud that we do not have the wisdom on our own, and then asking the One who has an endless supply of it and gives it away for free. We cannot live out a single conviction this week without it. Don’t just hear it. Live it.

Tomorrow · Integrity