Walk Like A Wise Man Not Like A Fool

Wisdom and its Prerequisites

Have you ever wondered how can I become more wise? You know, the scripture says wisdom is the principle thing; therefore, get wisdom with all that getting, get understanding. But where do you get that wisdom? Do you go down to, like, the publics and say, “I’d like seven pounds of wisdom, please. How much is it per pound?” Uh, I don’t think so. But I’m gonna share with you some Concepts about how we’re supposed to be wise, uh, from the book of Ephesians.

In Ephesians chapter five, here’s what it says in verse eight: “For ye were sometimes Darkness but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are approved are made manifest by the light, for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.”

Wherefore, he saith, “Awake thou that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” And then it says, “See that ye walk circumspectly.” That word circumspectly means wisely. See that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. And then it says, “Wherefore be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.”

So, it’s really interesting. It says in verse number 15, I think it was, it said, “See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. Don’t walk as a fool, but walk as a wise person.” The scripture says, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

And so, I think we have to first define wisdom. And I know I’ve defined it before in other videos, but I’m going to define it again today. But before I define what wisdom is, I have to define the prerequisites of wisdom. So, wisdom has some prerequisites.

Prerequisites to Wisdom

Some prerequisites to wisdom, and prerequisite number one is, in fact, I’m going to write that, prerequisites. I think that’s how you spell it, which means these are pre-requirements. Prerequisite number one is ignorance. Congratulations, you were born with it, right? All of us were born with it. We were born ignorant. We didn’t know anything. Now, what is ignorance? Ignorance is the absence of Truth.

Ignorance is the absence of Truth. If you don’t know truth, then you’re ignorant. Anything you don’t know when we were born, we didn’t know our head from our foot. We didn’t know our hands from, like, our shoulder. We didn’t know anything, right? And so, we were ignorant. But over time, we began to learn things. I believe probably one day I was sitting there slobbering on myself as a baby, I was going like this, and my mom said, “That’s your hand, baby. That’s your hand.” And I eventually learned that was my hand. But then I found out, guess what? I had another hand. And I found out they’re not the same hands. I got a left hand and a right hand. I got a left foot and a right foot. I was like, “Wow, so not only do I have hands, I have different orientations of hands.” Okay, cool.

So we begin to replace ignorance by gaining the second prerequisite, which is knowledge. Now, what is knowledge? Knowledge is the accumulation.

Wisdom and Its Progression

of Truth, and we begin to accumulate the truth. And when we begin to accumulate the truth, then we have knowledge. So we know things. We know what our hand is, we know what our foot is, we know what our eyes are, we know what our ears are. We gain this knowledge. And a lot of people say knowledge is power. I don’t believe that. Knowledge is potential power. Right? And so we have to understand not the more knowledge we have, the more potential for power we have, but we don’t necessarily have more power just because we have more knowledge. I’m gonna see if I can move this thing over here. I can’t, okay, so I’ll do that after the next video.

So, now the third prerequisite is understanding. Now, what is understanding? Understanding is the assimilation of Truth. See, knowledge is when I know what it is. Understanding is when I know what it means. So this is one of the things I say about the Bible a lot of times. People have biblical knowledge, but they don’t have biblical understanding. They know what the Bible says, but they don’t know what it’s saying. They know the logos, but they don’t know the Rhema. And the Rhema is what it means. It’s what it’s saying. The logos is what it says. So, the scripture says we’re supposed to walk wisely, not as fools.

Okay, well, what is wisdom? Wisdom is the application of Truth. It’s only wise when I actually do it. So the application of Truth is wisdom. If I don’t apply the truth, now there’s one thing that comes after wisdom. What comes after wisdom? Well, the thing that comes after wisdom is foolishness. What is foolishness? Foolishness is the abandonment of Truth. Of Truth. So we walk away from the truth.

Okay, so that’s foolishness. So a person who walks away from the truth, you’ve learned the truth, you understood the truth, you apply the truth for a while, and then you walked away from it. Why? Because maybe your flesh caused you to walk away from it. Maybe your desire to experience something, to feel something, made you walk away from it. Maybe it was your worldly ambitions, your need for other people to think something about you, right? So that’s foolishness. So you walked away.

So the Bible says we’re supposed to walk circumspectly. So the wisdom of your walk is doing the things, applying the knowledge that you have. If you don’t apply the knowledge that you have, you’re not wise. You might be smart, but everybody who’s smart’s not wise. There are a lot of people who are smart fools. I’ve met a lot of smart fools. Can…

Live Like You’re Dying

I get a witness. Where are my people? Okay, so we understand that just because somebody knows something, that does not make them wise. So the Bible says we’re supposed to walk wisely. What does that mean? That means the things that we know to do, we should do. And if I don’t do the things I know to do, I’m walking like a fool. The Bible says, “Don’t walk like a fool, but walk like a wise person.” So make sure you’re taking steps in wisdom.

Now, what do we do when we start walking in wisdom? When we start walking in wisdom, one of the things we learn to do is we learn to realize that we’re expiring. We become more aware of the fact that we are expiring. What did the psalmist say? He said, “Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” What does it say in Ecclesiastes? It says, “Whatsoever thy hand finders do, do it with thy might, for there’s no work nor device nor service in the grave where that goes. You’re not gonna have time to learn anything after you’re dead. Too late to learn when you’re gone. It’s too late to earn when you’re gone. It’s too late to do. It’s too late to love. It’s too late to do anything.”

So what we have to do is we have to walk in the wisdom of an awareness that we are expiring and stop acting as if we think we’re going to live to be 875 years old. We have to go through life with a sense of urgency. If I’m going to be about something, I need to be about it now. So that’s the first thing we find out. It says that we need to walk according to wisdom.

Alright, let me ask you a question. What is the wisdom of your walk? Are you aware of the fact that you’re dying? And are you making every day count because you’re aware that every day you live is one less day you have to live? Are you acting as if, “Oh, it’s just laissez-faire. I’m just gonna go through life and just kind of do what I feel. I’m just gonna chill. I’m just gonna hang out. I’m just gonna waste time. I’m just chilling. I’m just wasting some time.” Are you insane?

We have to have a level of intensity about the number of days we have left. If I’m going to live to be 140, I only have like 30… what do I have? 140? I only have like 80… um, like 78 years left, right? I gotta be about the business. What if I don’t live to be 140? Then I have less, right? So I gotta act like I know this deal ain’t gonna last forever. And because of that, there’s a Country Song. Country music songwriters are so funny.

They love double entendres, right? And there’s a song called “Live Like You’re Dying.” Like, “What would you do if you knew you were dying?” It’s like, you know, “I’d… I’d [Music] um, um, something about go 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu.” Right? They’d go bull riding, go skydiving, go… and you do all of these things that we keep putting off. Why? Because when we think about it, which most people try not to do, when we think about it, we realize that the quality of our life is not measured by the number of years of experience we have doing a thing, but by the number of experiences we put in our years. And see, a person can live to be 70, 80, or 90 years old and have 10 years’ worth of experiences in those 70, 80, 90 years because they just keep doing the same.

Buying Back Time

things over and over or somebody can live to be 35 years old and put 100 years of experiences in those because they don’t just keep doing the same things over and over and over and over and over. It’s really interesting. Like people say, “Well, Myron, this is all I know how to do. I’ve got 40 years of experience driving this forklift.” But I’ve got bad news for you. You don’t, because it doesn’t take that long to learn how to drive one. You’ve got two weeks of experience repeated over a 40-year time period. And that’s how most people live their lives. They learn a skill, they add nothing to the skill, and they just do that same thing over and over and over again. Keep living Groundhog Day every day for the rest of their lives. So we need to apply some wisdom to our walk.

Okay, so we need to walk according to wisdom. Cool, that’s not all. We need to apply wisdom to our work. How do I apply wisdom to my work? Because that’s what it says next. This one’s going to shock you. It says in verse 15, it says, “See that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time because the days are evil.” Now, a lot of people, this is another one of those verses a lot of people know what it says, almost nobody knows what it’s saying. This scripture is telling me to work according to wisdom. What does that mean? It means when I work according to wisdom, I work to redeem the time, redeem my time. Now, what does that mean? What does the word “redeem” mean? That’s what I’m going to go into right now.

So redeem means the first definition that we find when we look it up in the Strong’s Concordance, redeem means to buy back or buy up. So I’m supposed to buy back my time or buy up my time. You’re tracking, y’all tracking? Okay, so I’m buying it back, I’m buying it up. Then the second definition is rescue from loss. So I’m supposed to buy back my time, rescue it from loss. And the last one is improve opportunity. So I’m supposed to buy back my time, rescue it from loss, and improve opportunity.

You say, “Myron, what does that have to do with applying wisdom to my work?” Here’s what it has to do with it. The scripture says I should buy back my time. Let me ask you a question. When you buy coffee, what do you use to buy it with? Coffee money. When you buy clothes, what do you use to buy that with? Money. When you buy a car, what do you buy that with? Money. So when you buy your time, what are you going to use to buy time? Money. How do you buy time with money? You buy time with money by paying someone else to do something that saves you time. So I have a landscape company that comes and cuts my grass every week. If I were to cut my grass every week, it would probably take me at least an hour and a half of my time. When I pay somebody else to do it, I bought that hour back. Oh, I don’t even think y’all understand the significance of what I’m telling you right now. So now I bought that hour back, and I can use that hour to invest in my relationship with my wife, invest that into your relationship with my children, invest that into your relationship with my granddaughter, invest that into my health by working out. I can do something else with that time. Why? Because I bought that time back. Okay, so I’m buying back my time.

Guess what? I have a pool. But if I don’t clean my pool, why? I pay somebody to clean my pool. They come by and clean it every Tuesday. So I… I don’t know how long it would take me to clean the pool. It might take me another hour and a half. So I pay somebody to clean my pool, and guess what? I bought back some more hours of my time. But I’m married. It’s not cool for me to just buy back my time. I need to not just buy back my time. I need to buy back some of my wife’s time, right? So what did I do? I hired a…

Housekeeping and Time Management

Housekeeper she comes by she cleans the house three days a week she does the laundry she owns the clothes she folds.

The clothes she does the vacuuming she mops the floor she cleans the bathrooms.

And so I bought back my wife’s time why because when I come home from work I don’t want to watch my wife clean the house I want us to be able to sit down and invest that time into our relationship.

And so now I’ve bought back some of her time and I bought back some of my time like when I come here like there’s stuff that gets done here that I don’t do there’s stuff here I don’t know how to do so what I do I make my time more valuable by spending my money on time buying back my time.

Time Value of Money

It’s really interesting how you know how if you invest your money over time you become wealthy that’s because there’s something called the time value of money.

And if you invest money at a certain rate of return over a long enough time period that money becomes more because of the time value of money don’t like the present the current value of money is not the only value the money has we have to there’s such a thing as a financial calculator and one of the things you there’s a button on the financial calculator that’s FV what’s FV stand for future value so you can calculate the future value of money.

Here’s what you need here’s what we understand based on compound interest or simple interest or investing here’s what we understand time makes money more valuable.

I know I said that kind of fast I’m gonna say it again time because of investing time makes money more valuable.

Watch this because of delegation money makes time more valuable.

Delegation and Technology

We all have cars cars are nice but they and they buy back some time right so if like having a car gets you from point A to point B a lot faster than your tennis shoes right so we bought back some time when we bought a car right we bought back some time by having running water in our house we don’t have to go out to to the pond behind our house and get buckets of water to wash our clothes so we bought back time through technology and through the Techno leverage of Technology but we also buy back our time not just through automation but also through delegation.

Now here’s what’s really cool if there’s such a thing as the time value of money there’s such a thing as the money value of time what is the money value of time every hour of my life that I buy back by paying somebody else to do something I’m either not good at don’t like to do don’t want to do or don’t or don’t know how to do is an hour of my life I’m buying back in fact I might.

The Value of Time and Money

Pay somebody to do something for an hour that it takes them an hour but it saves me three because I’m not good at it. Are y’all tracking?

Here’s part of the problem. Here’s one of the reasons why the Bible’s not just telling us to be wise in our walk but it’s telling us to be wise in our work. One of the ways that we can be wise in our work is to work in a way that buys back our time. The scripture says we should use our money to get time back. We do the exact opposite; we use our time to get money, and we wonder why we can’t get ahead. I’m doing it backward. Are y’all tracking?

So we go out and we sell our time to the highest bidder. Ten dollars an hour, twenty dollars an hour, thirty dollars an hour, fifty dollars an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, and we sell our time to the highest bidder. We wonder why we can’t get ahead. We can’t get ahead because we’re not walking according to the wisdom of our work by buying back our time.

Now here’s what’s really interesting. I pay you to do something for me that I don’t want to do, can’t do, don’t know how to do, don’t have time to do, or whatever the reason. I’m not going to do it. If I pay you to do that for me, then everybody wins. You get something you want, you get the money, I get something I want, I get the time back. The reason we do the trade is that both of us are getting more than we paid for.

What does that mean? You want the money more than you want the time, and I want the time more than I want the money. So everybody gets what they want.

Here’s the problem. Here’s where you get stuck. When you love the money more than you love the people, that’s where you get stuck. What does that mean? That means if you love the money so much that you don’t want to pay anybody for anything, you just do it yourself because you can save the money because you’ve bought into the LIE that money is a pool to be viewed and not a tool to be used, accumulation.

People say accumulation of wealth. Wealth is not money. If you don’t believe me, go watch the video that I did on the fact that wealth is not money. What is money? What is wealth? Wealth is the ability to create value for someone other than yourself. That’s what wealth is. If you’re stranded on a desert island with 15 billion dollars in briefcases and nobody else is there, how much is it worth? Well, it might be worth if it’s dry paper to use to start a fire. Other than that, it’s worthless.

So money is a way to store value as long as you are in a community of people who value that store. Money is a way to transfer value. It’s not the only way; it’s a way to transfer value. But money itself is not value. Money itself is not wealth. Wealth is your ability to create something for someone other than yourself. That’s why it’s easier to earn a lot of money in a city than it is in a rural area because there are more people to serve. Are y’all tracking? Is what I’m saying making sense?

So we want to walk wisely according to our work, and how do I do that? I do that by two things. There are two things that would be…

Discovering and Living Your Purpose

It’s very wise for me to disconnect my Revenue generation from time. Stop thinking in dollars per hour and start thinking in dollars for value. But what is value? Okay, so let’s talk about what that is. I’ll talk about that on a different video because it would take too long. So, I’ve talked about it on other videos anyway, so just go watch all of my videos, and you’ll have the answer.

Okay, so now I’m going to disconnect my Revenue generation from time; that’s number one. And then number two, I’m going to use my money to buy back my life. The most valuable thing I’ve ever bought in my life is not a house, it’s not a car, it’s not an article of clothing, it’s not a vacation. The most valuable thing I’ve ever bought in my life is I bought back the rest of my life. That’s the most valuable thing I’ve ever bought. I would recommend you do the same thing.

The Will of God and Your Purpose

Now we’re talking about walking wisely according to our work, and we talked about walking wisely, walking in wisdom, period. Then we talked about applying wisdom to our work. And then we need to walk wisely according to the will of God. What does the will of God mean? I’m going to define that for you as well.

In verse number 17, it says, “Wherefore be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” So, I’m not going to go into the details of being filled with the spirit because I just did a video on that a couple of weeks ago. So, I’m not going to do that, but I’m going to go into the detail about walking according to the wisdom of the will of God.

I believe that success can only be defined one way: discovering the purpose of your life, developing yourself for that purpose, and deploying yourself in that purpose. If you do anything else, you’ve wasted your life. I’m going to say that one more time: success can only be defined as discovering the purpose for your life, developing yourself for that purpose, and then deploying yourself in that purpose. That is the purpose. That’s the definition of success. If you do something other than the thing you were created for, you’re not successful. You might make a lot of money, you might be rich, but you’re still not successful if you didn’t do what you were created for.

What is the will of God for my life? I’m going to tell you what your purpose is, and I’m going to say it in a sentence. Then you have to go discover how to fill in the details. I’m going to give you the numbers now; we used to paint by numbers. I’m going to give you the numbers, and you can go paint it later. You ready? Here it is: Your purpose, my purpose, is to live in your creative space and make the world a better place.

How do I live in my creative space? I discover the things that I’m good at and the things that I love to do, and I do those things to serve people other than me. It’s so simple. How could it be that simple?

One of the reasons it’s not good for man to be alone is because no human being, no man, no one man, no one woman has everything. No one man, no one woman is good at everything. What’s amazing, what’s mind-blowingly amazing is I am really good at the stuff that I’m good at, and the stuff I’m bad at, I’m worse at that than I am good. The things I’m good at. But there are so many things that I’m bad at that my wife is great at, and there are things that she’s bad at that I’m great at. If we were both great at the same things, one of us would be unnecessary. In fact, both of us would be unnecessary to each other.

And by the way, I know those differences create friction sometimes. But beyond the friction, they create fulfillment. We can get past the friction; we can get to that place of fulfillment.

There are people in your life that you don’t love, but you ain’t going to like them all the time. Can I get a witness? The reality is a part of our maturity is developing our ability to work well with people who are different from us. Now, when Opposites Attract, it’s great until they attack. But then after that, what we have to do is give people room to be different from us and understand that doesn’t make them wrong; it just makes them different.

I believe this about the will of God: You won’t discover the will of God for your life until you yield to it before you know what it is. You have to be willing to do what God has created you for even before you discover it.

Living According to the Will of God

Therefore, Brethren, “beseech” means beg. I beg you, therefore, Brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a Living Sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. It’s reasonable for us who’ve been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb to yield our bodies as a Living Sacrifice. In the Old Testament, they had burnt offerings where they would kill animals, cut them in pieces, put them on an altar, and burn the whole thing. It’s an illustration that God can have all of this.

Well, our lives are supposed to be living burnt offerings. We’re supposed to burn all the energy of our lives as an offering to God. Anyway, then it says, “Be not conformed to this world.” The word “conformed” means to be made like something with pressure from the outside, like a cookie cutter. Don’t be made like the world with pressure from the outside.

But be transformed, which means metamorphosized, like a caterpillar goes into a cocoon and from the inside out becomes a butterfly. So the Bible says, don’t be made like the world with pressure from the outside but be transformed, metamorphosized by the renewing of your mind from the inside. The word “renew” is not just renew; it means renovation. When you renovate something, you tear out all the old stuff and then put in new stuff. Renovation is not covering up the old stuff with new stuff; it’s tearing out the old stuff and putting in the new stuff.

I submit to you that the biggest problem modern-day churchianity has is that we don’t renew our minds. We don’t tear out all of our old baggage, all of our old habits when we discover a principle in the Word of God. We don’t say, “Okay, I’m going to start doing this, I’m going to stop doing that, I’m going to tear that old way out, throw it away, and I’m going to build my life on this new strategy, on this new truth.” It’s an old truth, but it’s new to me.

He says, “Be not conformed to this world, don’t be made like the world with pressure from the outside, but be transformed by the renewing, renovating of your mind.” Then it says, “That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” That’s not three different wills; God doesn’t have a good will, an acceptable will, and a perfect will. God’s good and acceptable and perfect will are the same thing.

The order in which they’re stated is good first, acceptable second, perfect last. Good is what God knows His will is for your life and my life. God knows it’s good. Acceptable is what God desires it to be for us. He desires for us to accept it as good, even when it doesn’t feel good, sound good, or taste good. When we accept God’s good will as good, even when it doesn’t seem good, then and only then is God’s will perfect or complete.

How do we do that? That’s called walking in the wisdom of the will of God. When we do that, when we apply God’s wisdom to our walk, to our work, and to yielding to His will, we will live a wise and productive life instead of a foolish and destructive life. I trust that this blesses you. If you haven’t done so already, like the video, share it, comment, and all the other YouTube stuff that people do on YouTube. In the meantime, I’ll see you next time. Peace out, Cub Scouts.