← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
Don't Trust People Who Tout Their Own Wisdom
00:21:34
Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking less about oneself.
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John David Walt
Foreign.
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Sam
Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey. It is Monday, January 26th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt, and this is your wake up call. And you're looking at me if you're watching on YouTube and you're like, does that guy ever hair? I'm like, oh, my gosh, what is going on with my hair? So that's why I wear hats sometimes. A lot of times. So we'll put my hat on today. All right. It's the last week of the fourth month of the first year. Sorry, the 26th year of the fourth millennium. Third. Third millennium. You ever feel like you just get confused about when it is? And. And I do. And that's why I do this every day. I just want to locate us. I just want to get the sort of you are here out on the map and say, here's where we are. Here's what we're doing. Here's. Here's the, the plan. And the plan is to win the day. And we do it by winning the morning. And we win the morning by meeting with Jesus. And he's here. He's waiting on us. He's like, are they going to open up the store today? I'm sitting out here waiting on them. So, consecration. Open the store, turn on the lights, put out the welcome sign. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. A few more chapters of Proverbs left. I mean, it reminds me to encourage you, we're going to end Proverbs. We're going to have a little window of time up until about the 17th of February, and then on the 18th, that's Ash Wednesday. We're launching into our journey to the cross together. We still got some ways to climb up to the Transfiguration mountain, but I'll be leading us through Lent. And it's. You see at the top of the email every day and a little banner that says grab the. The travel. The travel log, the. The book Jesus Asking the three Transformational Questions of Lent. We've already made the book and I'd love for you to get a copy. It'll. It'll commemorate the journey. You can write in the book, underline, highlight, make notes, just you know in the in the way of the of the Christian life. The map is made as you walk the journey and these books can be turned into journal like artifacts that become invaluable to us looking back to see where we've been. That's how you make the map as you go. So you can see the link in the PS you can always see the link in the email at the top. Just grab grab a copy and I'd love for you to get one and and share it with somebody else. Invite somebody else this lent to go it with you. Well, today's entry don't trust people who tout their own wisdom. Our text today we're reading Proverbs, chapter 26. Our verse of focus is verse 12. Hear now the Word of the Lord. Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them. The Word of the Lord. Now consider this. One of the hallmarks of wisdom is the way its possession is hidden from its bearer. Said another way, you don't know it when you have it. Wisdom. If you think you're a wise person, the chances are you aren't. It takes us back to one of our earlier core convictions about humility being the beginning of wisdom and pride being its antithesis. So does this mean that one of the marks of a wise person is they think they aren't wise? No. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking less about oneself. A person is a person convinced of their own wisdom is not only not wise, but worse off than a fool, according to Scripture. So on the one hand, we are exhorted to seek after wisdom with all we've got. Yet on the other, we are never to consider that we have attained it. That's an interesting way to live. One of the properties of true wisdom is it is not conscious of itself. It makes sense then that the one who possesses it is not conscious of possessing it. What if in fact we don't possess wisdom? What if wisdom possesses us? Maybe that's the big deception that wishes we can somehow possess wisdom. All of this would seem to suggest the quest is not to be a wise person, but to belong to the person of wisdom, Jesus. Jesus is the wisdom of God. To the extent that I belong to Jesus, I am possessed by wisdom. Let's pray. Abba. Father, thank you for sending and showing us wisdom in the face of a person. Your son, Jesus Christ, teach us to seek wisdom not that we may possess it, but that we might be possessed by the person of your Holy Spirit. Shape our minds by the mind of Christ. It is in Jesus Christ's name we pray. Amen. The journal prompts, do you know people who are wise in their own eyes? What characterizes them? Why would there be more hope for a fool than them? And how might I avoid becoming wise in my own eyes? How can you seek after wisdom without becoming conscious of receiving it? What gives? This is challenging. You know, in James, he teaches us, he says, do any of you lack wisdom? I'm like, yes, right? So the people, first off, who, who don't raise their hand, that's your first indicator. They think they're, they have wisdom. But then he says something interesting. If any of you lacks wisdom, he says, I'm turning to get this text right. Hebrew, James, chapter one. 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. But here's the tricky part. 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. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double minded man, unstable in all that he does. So you're not to be wise in your own eyes, okay? You're to be humble in the sight of the Lord. And part of being humble in the sight of the Lord is actually saying, you know what? I don't have wisdom, so I'm going to ask God for it and then I'm going to believe that he's going to give it to me, which is to say, I'm going to be led by God. That doesn't all of a sudden make you wise in your own eyes. Does. Makes you full of faith. You start with humility and then you move toward faith, which is to trust. Trust and obey, right? For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus. That's the hymn. But this is a, this is a way of being of living, of like, first off, humble, I lack wisdom. I'm going to ask God for wisdom in this situation, in that situation. I don't want to say too much about this, but this is what concerns me about AI friends. AI Artificial intelligence. Now that's the first tell. What does artificial mean? It means fake. It's fake intelligence, right? AI is not intelligence, it's information. And it's information that oftentimes is Prof. Remarkably organized and seemingly like smart. But it's not really smart. It's fake intelligence, artificial intelligence. And I'm not saying don't use AI I mean, AI's got amazing applications. I'm saying be wise, right? Be wise. I've been teaching the kids in my church, my middle school and high school students, and I say, guys, I mean, they're really in the throes of this. We don't need AI, we need ji. Jesus intelligence. That's what wisdom is, is Jesus intelligence. And God wants to give it to us. That's why he says, if any of you lacks wisdom, ask God and believe and it will flow. You will begin to move in the mind of God. That's the intelligence of Jesus. The mind of. But don't doubt, just go with the flow, okay? That's what he's saying. He'll bring the flow of heaven, the wisdom that comes from heaven, right? First of all, pure, then peace, loving, then considerate, full of mercy, all that, right? It's flow. This is a. This is a way of life, a way of living. This is the presence of Jesus in us. And AI, artificial intelligence. It's going to be what it's going to be. It's here to stay. It's going to be helpful. It's doing good things. I'm not saying it's evil or wicked or demonic. I mean, at least until it is. I don't know. I'm just saying be wise. The greatest concern I have about AI is it just gives you the answers, okay? And what that does is it. It avoids you doing the work. And when you don't do the work, when you just get the answers, when you just get the art generated or the. The answers handed to you, spoon fed to you, the report done for you, You, me, we'll be the losers in that. Because we will not have walked the way. We will not have done the work. And the wisdom comes in walking and working. That's where it comes from. Friends, we know this, but we're stepping into a place where I fear we're going to make a lot of unwise decisions to just let the machine do it for us. That's the concern. It's not that the answer won't be helpful, maybe even good. It's that we will become anemically bereft in our own character, in our own development, in our own sense of personhood and humanity. That's it. I'm gonna stop now. We're gonna sing today to the Lord. Are you ready? It's just Monday. It's gonna be a good week. Here we go. All right. We got a solo today, and I'm thinking, let's just sing a Few choruses. Okay, I'm just gonna flow. I'm just gonna flow. You flow with me. I'll try to write the words in the email once I'm done. You know, when I go preach at a place, people, they'll. They'll say, jd, send us your slides of what you're gonna be preaching on. I'm like, well, we'll have to make those after the sermon. We don't. We don't know what it's going to be till it happens. Don't you love that? It's kind of like asking somebody to score to a football game before it starts. No. No, sir. That's how I roll. Here we go. This thing.
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John David Walt
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh.
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Sam
On me Just open your hands and.
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John David Walt
Your heart Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me Melt, melt me, mold me, fill me, use me Spirit of the living God fall afresh on.
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Sam
Me.
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John David Walt
And let's sing Praise the name of Jesus Praise the name of Jesus he's my rock, he's my fortress he's my deliverer in him will I trust Praise the name of Jesus he is Lord he is Lord he is risen from the dead and he is Lord Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and we exalt you we exalt you. We exalt you, O Lord we exalt.
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Sam
You.
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John David Walt
And we exalt you we exalt you, O Lord.
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Sam
I could hear you harmonizing with me on that last bit. Yeah. Well, we've won the day. Okay. Not sure what the weather's like where you are, but we won. And so now let's go out and walk out that victory. Let's go out and move today in J I Jesus. Intelligence, the wisdom of God. And for The Awakening, I'm J.D. walt, and I'll see you. Hey, but one more little bit. I just remembered. I'm putting a PS in today's email, and I just. I'm wanting to know who's interested in learning about what's coming up. You know, we're talking a lot about Jesus asking our Lent study. I hope you're ordering that book. You're going to want to have one, but we're working on the next thing. I mean, I'm always in today, of course, but I got to think ahead for you guys. We're looking at what's going to happen at Easter. We're going to study starting the Monday after Easter, the book of the Letter to the Ephesians. I've got a series I've written it. I call it Unpuzzled, and you're going to love it. We're going to walk verse by verse through the six chapters of Paul's famous celebrated letter to the church in Ephesus. It's perfect for after Easter. It'll take us right up to the day of Pentecost, in fact. So if you want to know more about it, if you want to know about it for yourself, for your church, maybe some of you might want to pull some people together in your neighborhood. We'll have a lot of resources with it to help. But look at the link in the in the PS Today. It's just a little two question survey. It'll put you on a list, and we'll be in touch with you about it. That's what I wanted to say. All right. I'll see you on the field today.
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John David Walt
Sam.