“I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently find me.”
– Proverbs 8:17
Proverbs 8:17 is such a powerful verse when you think about it. This is like wisdom personified and this part of proverbs chapter eight, wisdom is speaking. Picture wisdom as a person saying, I love those who love me and those who seek me diligently find me.
May our lives be characterized by a God-centered and Bible saturated wisdom. Let’s pray to the end that we will walk wisely in every area of our lives.
Proverbs 8:17 Tells Us Wisdom Loves Us
We’ve seen at different points in Proverbs like get wisdom, get wisdom, seek wisdom. But now we see a parallel picture alongside that. It’s not just us loving wisdom, it’s wisdom loving us. I love those who love me. Think about that picture, wisdom, loving you. Don’t you want that in your life? Don’t you want wisdom to love you? I want wisdom to love me. Again, picture wisdom personified like to love someone means to pour yourself out for someone, to give to someone, to bless someone.
Proverbs 8:17 Leads Us to Praise God
I mean, think of all that love means. You want wisdom to love you. You want wisdom to be poured out on you. And y want wisdom to be flowing to you, be giving to you, be blessing you. Obviously we know that God is the fountain of wisdom and so we are driven to pray. God, we love you. We want to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and we want wisdom. Actually, we need wisdom from your hand. We love it when we have it. God it is so good to walk in wisdom, is so not good to walk in foolishness.
I think in my life of all the ways I’ve walked in foolishness that I regret, I don’t regret one moment walking in wisdom. I love wisdom. So God, I pray for the love of wisdom in my life in multiple ways, both from me and God may wisdom just flow in and through me and not just me.
This Verse Leads Us To Ask God For Wisdom
Those who are listening right now, we pray you would give us love for wisdom and an overwhelming sense of wisdom upon us. God, we pray for that. Oh, we want to walk wisely in our lives, in our marriages, in our work, in your church, in every single thing we do in the hidden moments of our mind and our hearts. We want to love wisdom. And we want to seek wisdom. We want to find wisdom. And we want to be captured by wisdom, characterized by wisdom.
Oh God, may that be the commentary on our lives, in my life, the lives of those who are listening right now. May our lives be characterized by wisdom. Not the wisdom of this world, but the wisdom that comes from your word, the wisdom that comes from fearing you, the wisdom that leads to purity before you, the wisdom that leads to zeal for you, the wisdom that leads us to live very differently from the rest of this world. The wisdom that leads us to walk in your word even when it seems foolish to the world because you are wise beyond this world. God, we pray for an other worldly, super natural God centered Bible, saturated wisdom to characterize our lives. May it be so we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
