The following article is an excerpt from Living in Virtue by Michael Phillips.
One of my personal mentors pointed me in a very unambiguous direction after I had asked him a simple question: “How does one get wisdom.” Adding to the answer he gave me, the following have been extremely helpful in my life in understanding and praying for wisdom.
1. Point the inner compass of character toward God’s North—toward virtue, goodness, right, integrity, decency, and truth.
In other words, live the virtues. Wisdom begins with the direction one chooses to point the compass of motive, will, character, and inner personhood.
2. Pray for wisdom. If you desire wisdom, ask God to develop it in you. Ask him to show you his purposes. Ask him to give you eyes to see things as he sees them. Internalize this verse: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all men generously …and it will be given him.” (James 1:5).
Then pray the wisdom prayer: “God, develop wisdom within me. Give me your eyes to see myself, the world, and people as you see them.”
The four word answer my pastor-mentor gave to my question many years ago was instant: Ask God for it!
3. Discover ways to learn God’s purposes. The four gospels from the New Testament give the clearest articulation of what it truly means to see through God’s eyes. That’s what Jesus was doing all his life. In the gospels, he told us what God’s purposes looked like.
4. Seek out men and women of wisdom and glean from them. Sit silent in their presence and drink from the character of their years. Make men and women of virtue, authenticity, integrity, and wisdom—the lifetime virtues—your personal mentors. Imbibe their character. Many have walked the path toward wisdom before you, but they are becoming increasingly harder to find in today’s world. They will be the quiet ones who have lived long, good lives learning to see with God-eyes.
This mentoring may be accomplished significantly through the writings of such men and women. All my spiritual mentors are now dead. About half of them were dead before I was born. They have mentored me in wisdom through their books.
It can be easy to mistake a quiet, soft-spoken personality with wisdom. It is true—silence is an attribute of wisdom and wisdom will preserve its grace in silence. But silence does not in itself reveal wisdom. It may simply reveal a soft-spoken, reticent individual whose silence may not reveal true wisdom at all.
True wisdom has to be sought with care. Thomas Kempis, whom I have quoted several times, wrote these words, as if foreseeing by half a millennium how many perceptive men and women in future years would stand in relation to him.
I can think of no better advice to close with.
Enquire willingly, and hear with silence the words of holy men.
