Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
– Proverbs 13:20
This verse beckons all of us to ask, who are the people who are having the most influence in your life? Who are the people you are spending the most time with? Proverbs 13:20 says, “When you walk with wise people, when you spend time with wise people, when you expose your life, your mind to wisdom, then you become wise. But the companion of fools, those who spend time with foolish people, those who listen to, fill their minds with what foolish people are saying, will suffer harm.”
Proverbs 13:20 teaches us to surround ourselves with wise people.
Just think about your life, your closest companions, and not just the people who are around you, but the influences in your life, things you’re reading, things you see. You think about the hours we spend on screens every single day, oftentimes exposing our minds to all kinds of messages. Is that which we’re exposing our minds to wise or foolish? And if it’s all foolish, then we will suffer harm. It will not lead to our good. But if it’s wise, that will lead to our good. That will lead to learning and becoming more wise. And then flip that around, you’re around others.
You are influencing others. Are you influencing others with wisdom, or are you influencing others with foolishness? And so we pray. God help us to surround ourselves with wise people and wise influences. And God, we pray that you would help us to be wise people and wise influences on the people around us. God help us to guard our minds, our hearts, our lives. When it comes to our closest companions, God, we pray that you would surround us with wise people that keep us from all of our tendencies to foolishness. God, we pray that you would help us to be wise people that keep others from their tendencies toward foolishness.
Proverbs 13:20 teaches that if we walk with the wise we will become wise.
God help us to do Proverbs 13:20 and to walk with the wise. And as a result, to become wise. God, we pray specifically in light of all the messages we’ll expose our minds and our hearts to today in this world, especially on screens. God to help us to wisely watch what we’re exposing our minds and hearts to, that whatever it is making us more wise and not more foolish.
Oh God, even as I pray all this, I praise you for people in my life who have made me more wise because of their wisdom. I praise you for good friends who have made me more wise, who I’ve had an opportunity to walk through life with as a result of their wisdom. I’ve experienced wisdom.
Prayer for the Wandala People
Oh God, we pray for this over every single one of our lives. Even as we pray that you would help us to be this in other’s lives. Specifically those without the gospel today, that you would help us to be a wise influence, pointing them to who you are and how much you love them.
God, we pray for this around the world, for the Wandala people of Cameroon, this people group who are about 100,000 Muslims. God, we pray that they would be reached with your wisdom in Jesus, in the gospel, in the good news of his death on the cross. We pray for the spread of your wisdom in Jesus, to the Wandala of Cameroon. We pray all of this according to your Word in Proverbs 13:20. Help us to heed it and live according to it today. 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.
