Proverbs Chapter 18, Verse 15, says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” I love that phrase, at the very beginning of the verse, “an intelligent heart.”
Don’t we all want that, an intelligent heart. Nobody wants a dumb heart. We want smart hearts. We want to have an intelligent heart.
The intelligent heart humbly seeks
more knowledge.
If we’re going to have an intelligent heart, we’ve got to realize we need more knowledge. “The ear of the wise seeks more knowledge.” There’s a humility that marks the intelligent heart, that realizes, “There’s a lot of things I don’t know. There’s a lot of areas I need to grow in, my knowledge and my wisdom and my understanding, so I’m going to seek knowledge. I’m going to acquire knowledge.” This is wise.
God, we pray that you would guard us from thinking we know it all, in any situation, just like we’ve seen in other proverbs. Help us, God we pray, not to be wise in our own eyes, but to be humble before you, before others, to realize that we have so much to learn in any and every circumstance. We have so much to learn in life, so help us to learn, help us to acquire more knowledge, help us to seek more knowledge. Guard us from pride that says, “I’ve got it figured out.” I think of so many times I’m prone to think, “I got this one figured,” and then I do something foolish and I have to repent before you, before others, so guard us from that kind of pride, we pray.
Give us a humility that seeks knowledge. In the process of seeking knowledge and acquiring knowledge, we pray that our hearts would grow smarter. That we would grow to have more intelligent hearts, and that we would find wisdom in the process. In Jesus’ name, we pray. 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.
