Three Orientations of Wisdom

1. Looking to God
There is much to look at in life. Our eyes flutter back and forth faster than they can properly process. Wisdom is focusing our gaze on God: looking to him, praying to him, zealously seeking after him. The Psalms constantly reinforce this:

“My eyes are ever toward the Lord” (Ps. 25:15).

“For your steadfast love is before my eyes” (Ps. 26:3).

“Those who look to him are radiant” (Ps. 34:5).

“Our eyes look to the Lord our God” (Ps. 123:2).

The author of Hebrews calls us to “[look] to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2).

 
Tozer describes faith as “the gaze of a soul upon a saving God . . . a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.” This orientation of sight is where wisdom, and life generally, thrive. Look to Jesus for peace instead of your circumstances. Look to Jesus for affirmation instead of Instagram. Look to Jesus for truth instead of yourself. Look to Jesus for wisdom before you look anywhere else.
 
2. Listening to God
Wisdom is quieting ourselves in a noisy age and tuning our ears to God’s speech through Scripture, his creation, and his church. Just as we are inundated with visual stimuli in today’s world, so are we overwhelmed with voices beckoning us to hear their rant or sales pitch. What voices are we listening to? Are they trustworthy, consistent with the divine voice of wisdom (Proverbs 8)? This book has largely been about guiding us through this question.
Proverbs is constantly associating wisdom with listening:
“A wise man listens to advice” (Prov. 12:15).
“The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise” (Prov. 15:31).
“Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future” (Prov. 19:20).
“Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge” (Prov. 19:27).
Our age is unwise in large part because we are going deaf from the cacophony, losing our ability to listen well, if we listen at all. Wisdom means pressing mute on the voices speaking lies, and then opening our ears to the voice of God, listening intently to his every word. As Jesus said repeatedly: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15; 13:9, 43; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8; 14:35).
 
3. Loving God
Wisdom is not just intellectual knowledge of God. It’s a deep longing for God. More than a desire to know the world like God, wisdom is the desire to know the world with God. Wisdom is a relentless pursuit of God’s presence. It is a desperate hunger and thirst for God, the bread of life and living water. Wisdom is worship.
“Do not be content to have right ideas of the love of Christ in your mind unless you have a gracious taste of it in your heart,” wrote John Owen. “Christ is the meat, the bread, the food provided by God for your soul.”

- Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid:

Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World, 2021