Proverbs 2:4
"If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures"
Wisdom must be sought. It runs counter to our normal choices and is hidden from view by our own foolish tendencies. It begins to be more predictable once you have found it on a regular basis.
In this Proverb, God tells us that we are needing to conduct a search of all the available options. One or a number of them represent wisdom. We must, however, lean hard into the search so that we will discern the proper direction.
What is interesting is that you will be searching for wisdom, but your will discerns the fear of the Lord first. These are the boundaries of God's moral law. There will probably be a number of fairly obvious and easy ways to accomplish the goals you want that involve cheating, anger, lying, etc. This is where you find the fear of the Lord. Do I really fear Him and believe that He has consequences for my actions, especially when I move beyond the boundaries of the Ten Commandments and God's moral law?
The Lord will give you wisdom, verse 5 says, when you have discerned the fear of the Lord first. Where are the boundaries? Our minds will find the deviant ways to accomplish our goals. But in seeking wisdom, we must reject these. If the goal is to be happily married, our fleshly nature will come up with the new mate, the affair, the alcoholic anesthesia that will make the possibility of a happy marriage look bright. You don't get a happy marriage that way; it just seems like you would. It is just that you have to cross significant moral boundaries to do that to your spouse. This is the direction of choice for many instead of putting in the work to make their present marriage work at a whole new level.
When you are facing a business decision and do not know how to achieve your goals, there will always be some scheme with the books that will come to mind that must be rejected or you will never find stable success or wisdom.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz