We're in a series called Better. We started this series just a few weeks ago, and it's called Better for a very simple reason. We want to have better lives. By the way, I do hope that you want to have a better life. Like if I went to you and said, hey, do you want a better life? And you're like, nah, that would be odd. Right? Like all of us, all of us have at least one area of life that we recognize could be better. Every single one of us has some aspect of life that we know maybe should be better. We should desire a better life, but we have to recognize the fact that God desires better for us. Took me a long time to realize this, that God's dreams for my life are bigger than my own. That God's desires for my life are better than my own. I remember what it used to feel like being nervous, worried that God's plan for my life would not satisfy me. I remember sitting in church as a teenager and almost pleading with God because I had this aspect of God that this idea of God rather that if I did what he wanted me to do, if I surrendered my life to him fully, he'd probably make me do something I hated. You know? But God desires better for us than we desire for ourselves. Took me a long time to realize that, but I'm okay fully surrendering to God and trusting him because I know that his plans are better than my plans. God desires better. Not only does God desire better, though, he knows better. Like he knows better. God knows everything. God knows you better than you know yourself. I mean, how many of us do things, even as adults, even as people who have been living with ourselves for a long time, how many of us do things that we're like, I don't know why I do that? Have you ever had the situation where someone points something out to you about yourself that you've never realized before? But once they point it out, you're like, oh my gosh, I do that. Why do I do that? There's so many things about you, someone just went, never liar. Uh there's so many things about you that you don't even understand, that you don't even know, but God knows it all. God knows everything, He knows better. So here's the here's where it gets so cool. God desires better for your life, and He knows better. He knows what better actually looks like, and so if we make it our life's mission to discover and to discern what God's better for us is, we will have better lives. It's that simple. That's what we're trying to discover in this series. And so we're looking at a variety of scriptures that talk about what better looks like from God's perspective. We started a few weeks ago with Acts chapter 20, verse 35, which says, you should remember the words of the Lord Jesus. It is better to give than to receive. Proverbs 17, 1. We're gonna get to this. Uh oh no, we did this the second week, actually. Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting and conflict. Next week we're gonna look at wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. After that, we'll look at 1 Samuel 15, 22. Obedience is better than sacrifice. But today we're gonna look at Proverbs 16, 16. How much better to get wisdom than gold and good judgment than silver. How much better to get wisdom than gold and good judgment than silver. Wisdom is better than anything. It's more valuable than anything because by nature, something that is rare tends to be valuable. And there's nothing more rare than real wisdom. Our culture, our world right now, is suffering from an incredible deficit of wisdom. That's why there's so much chaos. That's why there's so much uncertainty, there's so much fear, there's so much anger and frustration. It's because our world is suffering from a lack of wisdom. We don't suffer from a lack of resources. We have more resources at our disposal today than practically any group of people have ever had in the history of the world. We don't suffer for a lack of resources. We don't suffer for a lack of knowledge. We have more information at our fingertips than people have ever had before. You don't even have to work hard to learn something. That's how it used to be. Like if you wanted to learn something, you had to work hard. Now we just type something in and we're like, cool, I know something I didn't know five seconds ago. We know more, but we understand less. Because knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. This is true on a societal level, and I could obviously pick a bunch of very hot button topics to talk about, but I could also point to something that all of us should just be able to go, yeah, I completely agree. Look at something like our national deficit as a country. We owe $26 trillion as a country, right? And this is what's what's really interesting. If you know numbers, uh you know that trillion's a big one. Like how many of us are aware of that? Just raise your hand, trillion's a big number, right? But it's funny because our minds tend to think that a million is a lot, and a billion's like a little bit more than a million, and then a trillion would be a little bit more than a billion, but it's it's not how it is at all. Like it's exponential. So, for example, um, a million seconds ago would be 11 days ago. Right? And uh I believe this is true, a billion seconds ago would be like 30 something years ago. Okay, so a billion's a lot more than a million, but a trillion seconds ago, 31,000 years ago. That's how much a trillion is, and our nation owes 26 trillion dollars to someone, I don't know who. But we owe that much money, and and and that's so much money that that if you do the calculations, if we paid off one dollar of our national debt every second, assuming that we didn't acquire any more, we just pay off one dollar of debt every second, it would only take us about 800,000 years to pay it all off. Now here's what's crazy: we are the wealthiest nation that has ever existed in the history of the world, and yet we have acquired the largest debt that has ever existed in the history of the world. Shouldn't it be that the wealthiest nation in the history of the world would have the largest surplus in the history of the world? Not the largest deficit? It should. If there was wisdom. But we suffer from a lack of wisdom. It's true on a societal level, but it's true on a personal level as well. Wisdom is rare. It's not hard to get bad advice. It's everywhere. We've all received it, and let's be honest, we've all given it. Wisdom, it's rare, it's valuable, but if we want it, we can have it. Wisdom offers us so much. Proverbs chapter 3, verse 13 through 18 says, Joyful is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding, for wisdom is more profitable than silver, her wages are better than gold. Wisdom is more precious than rubies. Nothing you can desire can compare with her. She offers you long life in her right hand and riches and honor in her left. She will guide you down delightful paths, all her ways are satisfying. Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her. Happy are those who hold her tightly. That's what wisdom offers you. Wisdom does not disappoint. Wisdom is better than anything. It's better than anything. That's why Proverbs chapter 4, verse 7 says, getting wisdom is the wisest thing you can do. And whatever else you do, develop good judgment. That's like saying, hey, the wisest thing you can do is to get wisdom, and after you get wisdom, you know what you should do? You should get some more wisdom. Wisdom is that valuable. So how do we get it? That's the question I want us to look at today. How do we get wisdom? Because if it's that important to get it, if it's the most valuable thing in the world, if if it never lets you down, if it's better than anything, then the question we should be asking is, okay, well, well, how do I get it? How do I get that that kind of wisdom in my life? And it's funny, as I was praying and just preparing this week, I had this mental picture develop in my mind. It was a memory that I forgot that I had. You ever forget a memory? Like something pops in your head from when you were a kid, maybe, and you're like, how did I of all the things that I could remember from my childhood, how is that locked in there somewhere? I had this memory of shopping with my mom for toys for my little brother. My mom is a gift giver. My mom loves to give gifts. I don't know if any of you have family members who are gift givers. Like we probably all have family members who are terrible gift givers, and you know that during the holidays when you open the gift, and you're like, oh, you didn't think about this at all. Like you didn't put some of us are married to those people. That's frustrating, right? Like, other people though, gift giving for you, if you're one of these people, like you are, you know what you're gonna get people. You're planning it, you're thinking about it, you're you're way ahead of things, like it's personal for you, it's like a mission for you, it gives you purpose in life. My mom's like that. She's a gift giver. Now, being a gift giver today is, let's be honest, pretty easy. Because we have we have Amazon Prime, we have online shopping. So we just type something in, we click a button, and it's there two days later. But like when I was a kid, that wasn't the way it is. This is cool for me because I'm now old enough that I can share like when I was a kid's stories. And it's really frustrating though on some levels because when I was a kid, my mom and dad would tell me their when I was a kid stories, and it would always be frustrating because like my parents grew up in rural Missouri on a farm, and so when I was a kid playing video games, my mom would always go, you know, when I was a kid, we didn't have video games, we had to get up and milk cows. And I would be like, mom, we don't have any cows, we don't have any, we have no livestock, we live in a normal neighborhood. What am I supposed to do at 5 a.m.? If I got up at 5 a.m., what would I do? And so now I'm finally old enough to look at my kids and say, like, when I was a kid stuff, but it's super lame because all my stuff is like, when I was a kid, we had the internet, but it was slower. And it just doesn't have the same kind of impact, you know? When I was a kid, we we had to watch TV, but like we had to wait for our show to come on, and we couldn't skip the commercials. And our kids are like, whoa, crazy, it just doesn't, it doesn't compute. So when I was a kid, we didn't have we didn't have online shopping. If you wanted to get a gift for someone, if you wanted to get some someone something special, especially something rare, you had to you had to search for it. And every year my my brother and I, we would have something we would want for for a birthday or a holiday, and my mom would know what it was. We'd seen it on a commercial, you know, before you could skip those. And uh, and she would begin to search. And I remember being with her as she was searching for gifts for my little brother. My little brother, he had a tendency to want really hard-to-find stuff. And my mom being a gift giver, someone who gets joy from giving those gifts, she would she would be like on a hunt. And so very often I would be in the car with her, and she would have this whole like route that she would go. I remember it. We would go to Walmart, we would go to Kmart, we'd hit all the Marts, we'd start there. And and then we we would go to uh this store that I don't even think they've ever been in Georgia, but I'm from the Midwest, and we had these stores called Venture, and they're all out of business now. They were bought by Kmart, and you know what happened to Kmart became a church, and so like that's us. And so, you know, yeah, yay for Kmart. Let's go. Probably shouldn't have bought Venture, that's probably what did them in. But like, we would go to that store, and she had this whole route that she would go, and she wasn't shopping for other things, and then just by happenstance, would look for for the toy that my brother wanted. She was there for that purpose. She would have this route. And not only did she have this route, this is gonna get a little crazy. I actually text my mom yesterday and found out information I didn't know before. Um, I remember being with her, and she knew all the department heads of the toy departments by name. Like I started thinking about this. Again, these are memories. I'm like, where are these tucked away in my brain? And I remember my mom getting a phone call from Becky, who was the person in charge of the toy department at Venture, which was one of our retail stores that we would go to. And Becky told my mom, we got one. And my mom goes to the store, and Becky's got a toy set aside for my mom. And as I tell you this, I realize it sounds very shady, like a like a criminal enterprise, you know. My mom's got all these department heads of toy stores on the take. And uh, and I'm literally, I was like writing a message, and I was I made that joke, and I was like, ah, but I think my mom was just really nice to him and knew him by name. And so I text my mom and I said, Hey, do you remember this? And she was like, Oh yeah, I paid Becky $20 every time she set something aside. You know? I was like, oh. And here's the deal I don't know if that's a crime. It might be, but if you're an officer, she never crossed state lines, so it's maj it's Missouri's jurisdiction. Venture closed, got bought by Kmart. They don't even really exist anymore. And I'm pretty sure the Statute of Limitations has passed, so just drop it, okay? My mom, don't arrest my mom. Uh it's funny because I remember my little brother opening, I remember him opening gifts that I I knew how my mom had gotten them. I knew how long she had looked, because I was with her on those trips. She did it all the time. And in his mind, he's like, sweet, thanks. But he had no idea what it took for her to get that. Like she had to bribe people to get that. And it took me years to connect the dots to realize, oh, that happened for me too. That all those times that I opened that gift and it was that one thing that I wanted that was really hard to find, that every time I went to the toy store and couldn't find it, it's because my mom was searching and she found that for me. I know this sounds random, and like I got admittedly, I said it's kind of a random memory, but as I thought about wisdom and how to get wisdom this week, that that picture of how my mom used to do that, it came to my mind because I realized that there's there's three things you've got to do to get wisdom. It's the same three things that my mom did with with getting toys for us as kids. Number one, you have to recognize the value, you have to value it, you have to care about it. My mom got a lot of value out of giving us gifts. She took joy in that. You have to recognize the value. Number two, you have to search for it continually. Not just here and there, continually. I mean, we don't we went on those trips all the time to the point where I was like, why? I knew which I knew which story we were going to next. It happens so often. You have to recognize the value, you have to search continually. And number three, you have to go to the source. You gotta go to Becky at the toy department, right? If you want wisdom, if you really want wisdom in your life, you have to value it, you have to seek it, and you have to go to the source. So let's let's talk about this for a second. You have to you have to value wisdom. There's a great proverb, Proverbs 4, 8, that says, if you prize wisdom, she will make you great. Embrace her and she will honor you. You have to prize wisdom. Think about the things in life that you prize. If you prize something, it means you prioritize it. If you prize something, it means that you recognize that it has extreme value and you make it a priority in your life. There's a lot of things in life that we prioritize, that we prize. We may not use that language, but it's clear by our behavior, by the way we go about life, you probably have relationships that you prize. You spend a lot of time with those people, you care about them, you're invested in that relationship. And they know that, they feel that. There's a lot of things that aren't really that important that we prize, like entertainment. And I'm talking to those of us that have Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon. We have like all the streaming services because we just want to make sure that if there's a good show, we never miss it. If that's true, I'm not gonna ask you to raise your hands. Alright, I'm one of those people. Um, I have kids and they just I need them to watch something. Just go watch the show. Like, if you prioritize that, it means you prize it. You care about it. We have to ask ourselves the question, and this is only a question that you can answer. This is between you and God. Do I prize wisdom? Do I prize it? Do I prioritize it? Do I value it that much? You have to ask that question. That's something that you've got to search your heart and discover. Now, some things that'll help you realize if this is true or not. If you prize wisdom, it should mean that you surround yourself with wise people. Because if you truly prize and prioritize wisdom, you're gonna find people that are wise to speak into your life. If you prize wisdom, if you make it a priority, it should mean that you don't get frustrated when someone corrects you. Maybe a little frustrated, but you don't resent someone who corrects you, who gives you a different perspective that challenges you because you value wisdom. You prioritize it, you prize it, you're grateful for it, even if it hurts a little bit. But that's a question that you've got to ask yourself. I can't answer that question for you. This is between you and God. Do I value wisdom? Do I prioritize it? Do I prize it? Am I willing to pay for it? Because let's be honest, education always costs something. You either pay money for it or you pay for it in the school of hard knocks kind of way. You know what I mean? But hey, if you prize it, you're willing to pay that price. That's number one. Do I value wisdom? Do I recognize its value? Do I estimate it appropriately? Number two, you have to search for it continually. Again, my mom went on that little route all the time. She had to if she was going to find what she was looking for. It's a continual process. Do you search for wisdom continually? There's a kind of searching that is convenient. It's a kind of searching that only arises when you feel pain. You know, for example, if you've ever lost your keys, you've searched for them. If you have to leave and you can't find your keys, normal thing in my life. You've probably torn your house apart, you've pulled cushions out, and if you're like me and you have kids and you pull cushions out, it's just the most disgusting thing in the world. You're like, how have I been sitting on this? This is awful. I should probably clean this later. And then you never do. But like, you pull out all the cushions, you tear your house apart because you're not looking for your keys, you're searching for your keys. But that's that's something that you only do when you feel pain. You only do that when there's a crisis. There's another kind of searching that is a little bit more forward thinking. You don't have to feel a crisis, you don't have to feel some pain to search for what you're looking for. You're always on the lookout, you're always seeking it. That's the kind of seeking that we need to do to find wisdom. Great example of this would actually be one of the most famous stories in scripture about wisdom. It's 1 Kings chapter 3. It's the story of a king named Solomon finding wisdom. It says Solomon loved the Lord and followed all the decrees of his father David, except that Solomon too offered sacrifices and burned incense at the local places of worship. To set the stage, Solomon has just recently become king. His father David has passed away, he's become the king. In fact, right before this, he has married a princess from Egypt, and now right away he's going to offer sacrifices to the Lord. Said that the most important of these places of worship was at Gibeon. And so the king's, uh so the king went there and sacrificed a thousand burnt offerings. That night the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said, What do you want? Ask and I will give it to you. Solomon replied, You showed great and faithful love to your servant, my father David, because he was honest and true and faithful to you. And you've continued to show this great and faithful love to him today by giving him a son to sit on his throne. Now, O Lord my God, you have made me king instead of my father David. But I'm like a little child who doesn't know his way around. And here I am in the midst of your own chosen people, a nation so great and numerous they cannot be counted. Give me an understanding heart, so that I can govern your people well, and know the difference between right and wrong. For who by himself is able to govern this great people of yours? The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for wisdom. So God replied, Because you have asked for wisdom in governing my people with justice, and have not asked for a long life or wealth or the death of your enemies, I will give you what you've asked for. I will give you a wise and understanding heart, such as no one else has had or ever will have. And I'll also give you what you did not ask for riches and fame. No other king in all the world will be compared to you for the rest of your life. And if you follow me and obey my decrees and my commands as your father David did, I will give you a long life. It's a really interesting story. We could probably spend a month plus just on this story here. I love it for a variety of reasons. Number one, recognize the fact that Solomon was already wise before God gave him wisdom. Because you have to be wise to ask for wisdom in the first place. A fool would never ask for that. Like a fool would never be like, oh, I want wisdom. This story, it shows us what Solomon prized. Just like we talked about a few minutes ago, the first step in getting wisdom is to value it, to prize it. Clearly, Solomon prized wisdom. Because if you're given that opportunity, like this is that classic genie in the bottle type situation. You get a wish. What's your first wish gonna be? It's gonna be whatever you desire the most. Whatever you desire the most. That's what you're gonna wish for first. Like I've watched Aladdin, I know how it works. Aladdin wanted to marry Jasmine, and in his mind, the only way to do that was to be a prince. So the first thing he asked for was make me a prince. Whatever your heart desires the most, that's gonna be what you ask for. Solomon prized wisdom. He was wise enough to ask for it. But what I really love about that story is that it's not as random as we might think it would be. Sometimes we can read stories like this, and it just seems like a person's walking about, they're doing their thing, they're minding their own business, and boom, God shows up and he's like, hey, what do you want? That's not what happens. Where was Solomon when this vision came to him? He was in the temple. He was sacrificing to God. He was there seeking God's favor, seeking God's help to be the king that he knew he was meant to be. God met him there, but but he met him there in part because Solomon was already looking for him. He's just become the king. This would be the time to throw a huge party. He's just gotten married to a princess from Egypt. This would be the time to go on an amazing honeymoon, but not Solomon. Solomon says, No, I need to go worship my God. I need to go to the temple. I need to make a sacrifice. I need to make an offering. I need to seek the will of God. And it's in that mindset, in that place, that God shows up and says, What can I do for you? That's how Solomon lived his life. He was always seeking wisdom. He was already looking for it, searching for it when he found it. And if we would have hearts that would be like that, if we were just on the lookout, expecting to find it because we're looking for it. Sometimes we find things that we aren't looking for. That happens. But real wisdom, it's not like that. You have to seek it, you have to search for it continually, proactively. Value wisdom, search for it continually, and finally go to the source. You gotta go to the source. Solomon was doing that too. You know, for my mom, when she was looking for a toy for us, she went to the source, right? She had Becky. She had like who knows how many toy department heads on the take. I have no idea how deep this criminal enterprise went. I don't know. But all jokes aside, my mom found the people that could help her with what she was looking for. And it was actually a sacrifice to her because growing up, we weren't we weren't really wealthy. Like we lived in a trailer for a really long time. I recognized that my mom was making a sacrifice for all of that. It's pretty cool. But she went to the source. She went to the place that she knew she could find what she was looking for, and then she went to the person that she knew could help her. That's wisdom. If you want real wisdom, you've got to go to the source of wisdom itself. And that source, it's God. Plain and simple. Romans chapter 11, verse 33 says, Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge, how impossible is it for us to understand his decisions and his ways. God has a wisdom unlike anything else in this world. There is a wisdom of the world that we will acquire just by living life. Usually we acquire it by making mistakes, regretting it, and going, never gonna do that again. That's not the kind of wisdom that we're talking about here. 1 Corinthians 1 25 says that the foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. God has a wisdom unlike anything else in this world. 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 10, Paul writes that when he was among mature believers, he spoke with words of wisdom. But he says, But not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world who are soon forgotten. No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God, his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began. But the rulers of this world have not understood it. If they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord. That's what the scriptures mean when they say, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. But it was to us that God revealed these things by his spirit, for his spirit searches out everything and shows us God's deep secrets. Understand this. This is so crucial. You have a spirit, it is who you are. You live in a body, but you are a spirit. And only God can speak spirit to spirit. Only God can speak spirit to spirit. Jesus actually says in John chapter 4 that God is a spirit. So whoever worships God must worship him in spirit. When you serve God, when you follow God, when you seek God, he has the ability, and he loves to do this, by the way, it gives him pleasure and joy to literally speak directly from his spirit to yours. We have a word for that, by the way, uh in our in our faith, in the tradition of our faith. It's called revelation. A lot of times the word revelation has a negative connotation because the last book of the Bible is the book of Revelation, and we associate that with like really crazy bad stuff happening. That's not what revelation's all about. Revelation is about enduring until the very end in your faith and the glory that awaits those who endure. It's an incredible, incredible story. It's also very confusing, so please don't ask me what it means. Um, but like revelation just means God has revealed something. And there's a saying that has kind of developed on our teaching team here at His Hands and our culture of teaching that we should never settle for man's observation when we can have God's revelation. See, there are things I can observe. Like there's a lot of stuff I've observed. Now I'm a slow learner. You'd think I would I would apply a lot of the things I observe, but I often don't. Like I've observed that I should not talk to my wife before she has coffee. I've observed that a lot. I still do it, you know? Because we're all fools at some level. But there's there's a kind of wisdom that you can get by observation. That is the wisdom of the world. And by the way, there's a lot of people who have a lot of that kind of wisdom, and it's great, and it's helpful, and I'm not knocking it. But there's a whole other kind of wisdom that you will never ever get, ever get by observing. It's wisdom that can only be revealed. Spirit to spirit. As you value hearing from the Lord, as you value wisdom enough that you continually seek and you go to the source, and that source is God Himself, He will reveal things to you, spirit to spirit, that you can never understand. When I look at my life and I look at the most significant moments that have ever happened in my life, they've all been moments where God has shown me something. Very often it's it's been something that was challenging. God often hits me between the eyes, and I'm grateful for it. But God will reveal things to me that I could never have observed. He'll show me things in his word, he'll show me things about myself, about my children, about my family, about his church, about him, mostly about him, who he is. And it's spirit to spirit. Never settle for observation when you can have revelation. That's why when we teach, by the way, at his hands we teach from scripture, not with scripture. I'm 37 years old, what do I know? I don't know much. I'm not a life expert. I'm still trying to figure my life out. I'm still trying to figure out my kids and all the stuff you're trying to figure out, I'm trying to figure out. You're probably better at a lot of it than I am. But when when I teach, when we teach here at his hands, we we open up scripture. We start there. We start with God's word and we say, hey, what does this say? What does this mean? We unpack it together because that's revelation. That's why it's so valuable for you in your life on a daily basis to open up the word. And I don't mean you have to go through hours and hours of Bible study on a daily basis. It can be so simple. I know a lot of people who read one chapter of Proverbs every day. Proverbs has 31 chapters, so if you read a chapter a day, you read the entire book in a month, except for February and a couple of those other weird months, like then you gotta stop it at chapter 30. But the first 30 are the best, just in my opinion. So anyway, you you go through those and you'll do that every single month. And I'm telling you, one chapter, which takes about five to seven minutes, one chapter a day, that'll change your life. Because it's God's wisdom revealed to you. We have something at his hands we started this year called the chapter challenge, really simple. If you have our mobile app, you can click on it and you'll be up to date with the chapter challenge, and it's just read one chapter of scripture four days a week. And the reason we do it that way is because it's really simple. If you read one chapter a day, four days a week, you'll be in God's word more often than not. Just more often than not. And that'll change your life. It'll change your life because you will have wisdom revealed to you that you can never observe. Revelation is better than observation. You've got to go to the source. 1 Corinthians 1 30 says, God has united us with Christ Jesus. For our benefit, God has made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God, he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. Therefore, as the scriptures say, if you want to boast, boast only about the Lord. And worship team, you guys can make your way out. We're gonna wrap up. This is what what this is saying is really powerful. That Jesus himself is wisdom. That he is wisdom. And it's so cool because in Proverbs it actually says that by wisdom God founded the earth. By wisdom, God created the earth. And then in John, it says that Jesus was the instrument by which God created the earth. And that's not contradictory. It tells us that Jesus is wisdom itself. To walk with Jesus is to walk with wisdom. To walk with Jesus is to walk with wisdom. Look, if you're here and you're not a believer, no knock to you. I'm I love you, I'm so grateful that you're here. I would, I would like to implore you to give your life to Jesus. And one thing I can tell you with confidence is that the wisest people I have ever known all have one thing in common. And it's not their age, it's not their gender, although many of them are women. Um it's not it's not their ethnicity, it's not how they grew up, what kind of wealth they had, it's not their education level. The one thing that the wisest people I know have in common is that they follow Jesus Christ. They walk with the Lord. And when you walk with the Lord, you walk in wisdom. It's that simple. Jesus is He's real, He's alive, He loves you, He knows you. He knows you so well because He thought you up. I was talking to a young man a few years ago that was kind of going through a little mini life crisis. We have those from time to time. And he said, Man, I just don't know who I am. He said, I just don't, I don't, I don't know who I am. I'm trying to find myself. That's one of the funny things about this world is that it lies to us all the time. Our culture tells us to be ourselves and to find ourselves. You cannot do those things at the same time. Because if you can't be yourself if you're also having to look for yourself. How does that even work? Right? And he was experiencing that. He grew up his whole life being told my culture, just be yourself. And he's like, I don't know who myself is, I gotta go find myself. And he was talking to me about that and how confused he was, and I said, Man, I that makes sense. If I were you and I wanted to discover who I really am, I would probably seek the one who made me. Because he he knows you, he knows you, he knows you on such a deep level, and he loves you so much, guys. That pain that you feel from time to time that you can't quite explain. Those feelings that you have that don't make sense to you, why why you can live sometimes in a situation when outwardly you're blessed, but inwardly something is missing and you don't know what it is, he knows what it is. He loves you, he knows you. And when you walk with him, when you live connected to him, you live connected to wisdom itself. John chapter 4 is this amazing story of a woman at a well that meets Jesus. And the thing that Jesus does that blows her away is Jesus tells her things about her, about her that no one else knows. And she literally runs away from Jesus, not like fleeing for her life, like when the conversation's done. It's appropriate for her to run at this point. She runs away from Jesus, and she runs into the town and she shouts, Come and meet someone who told me everything I ever did. Jesus knew her, he knew everything about her, he knows everything about you because he is wisdom itself. And if you walk with him, if you live connected to him, you will have wisdom because you'll have him. You'll have him, and he will reveal things to you you can never understand, you can never observe, it will go well for you. Think about the promises of wisdom. What were those promises? Long life. You want you want health and wealth and all those things, and I'm not trying to talk about following God and you're you're loaded and you have a Mercedes, and I'm not talking about that at all. Look, wisdom and wealth they tend to go together. At least if it lasts. God desires good things for you. But you need wisdom for it to happen. You need wisdom for it to happen for it to last. He has that space, but you have to value it, you have to seek it continually, you have to go to the source. Jesus Himself, God's word, truth. If you do those things, if you do those things, you will have wisdom. In your life, it will be unlike anything it could be otherwise. It's as plain as simple as that.