A Word for Women: Karen Pulley
Growing in Wisdom: Becoming the Women God’s Has Called Us to Be
Devotional by Karen Pulley. All Scriptures are from the NKJV unless otherwise indicated.
Karen Pulley is the wife of Lloyd Pulley, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Old Bridge, NJ. Karen is a favorite speaker at many of the Calvary Chapel women's events. For more wisdom for women, visit her YouTube channel Looking to Jesus with Karen Pulley.
Psalm 136:5 tells us that it is by wisdom that God made the heavens. Have you ever been in awe of the creativity, the power, the wisdom of God as put on display through nature? Studying nature and beholding everything from the intricacies of a flower to the vastness of the heavens surely causes us to marvel at His wisdom: He made it all!
Just as He made the heavens by wisdom, we need, as women of God, His wisdom to build our homes and to serve as the foundation of our lives. Proverbs 9:1a states, Wisdom has built her house. How do we attain this wisdom—God’s wisdom? In humility and reverence, we simply ask for it. It is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:7b). If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him (James 1:5, ESV).
We can be very smart yet at the same time lack wisdom. Someone once said, “Knowledge is knowing that you are out of gas and wisdom is going to the gas station.” How we need to ask for wisdom, as Solomon did when the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” (1 Kings 3, NIV)! He did not ask for money, fame, or stuff. He asked for wisdom in order to govern God’s people well.
We may not be called to govern a nation, as Solomon was, but we certainly are called to be women of influence. How we, too, are in desperate need of His wisdom in order to be the wise and influential women He has called us to be! The model woman in Proverbs 31 is described as: She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness (Proverbs 31:26). Oftentimes, wisdom is displayed (or not displayed!) by what comes out of our mouths! Just as Solomon had humbly prayed for wisdom, the wisdom he received from the Lord was displayed through the words he spoke—for example, the way in which he answered the two women who claimed to be the mother of the same child, as we see in 1 Kings 3. The same is true for us.
We must first, in an attitude of reverence and humility, pray for the “wisdom from above” (see James 3:17) and then walk in obedience to His Word through the power of the Holy Spirit to display the wisdom He has given. The Proverbs 31 woman spoke with wisdom. Oh, how we need to keep our mouths shut until we have something wise and profitable to say! James 3:17 tells us, But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.
If we are truly wise, we will be humble; we will not have an attitude that says, “I’m right, and you need to listen to me!” God’s wisdom is pure, gentle, and loving. It has the nature of Christ. Proverbs 8:11 states, For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her. One way to read Proverbs 8 is to put the word “Jesus” in the place of “wisdom”: Jesus is better than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with Him. Oh, how I love that!
In closing, let’s make Psalm 90:12 (KJV) our prayer: So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Let’s be women who, in humility, pray for wisdom and then by His grace, display His wisdom, through what we do as well as through what we say.
All verses above are quoted from the New King James Version.
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