7) Wisdom for Sisters (Kannada) — Annie Poonen

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for bringing us together. Thank you for speaking to us yesterday and today. We thank you that you are here in our midst and we pray that you will continue to speak to us, Lord.

Take away all our tiredness and our sleepiness and help us be fresh to hear your word. We want to say, speak Lord, we are listening. We ask in Jesus name, Amen. I am very happy to be here today and happy to see you all.

I was looking forward to coming here. Thank God for the word he gave us yesterday and today. You know the theme of this conference is written there. I like that theme very much. Divine wisdom for our earthly life.

Wisdom for Earthly Life

You know from small we hear our mommies telling us about wisdom. And those of you who are mothers, you talk to your children about getting wisdom. We tell the children, you must study hard. If you eat this good food, you will become very clever, you will become wise.

And we look for some books which will help them to become more intelligent and wise. Especially in our country, even the mothers who are not educated, they are so much wanting their children to get a good education.

We work hard to give them tuition, so they can become better in life. And we tell the pastors and elder brothers to pray for our children, they will get wisdom. And sometimes our children want to play outside, we tell them, come quickly, you have to study.

But yesterday and today, we heard something where we see there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. If you listen carefully, you would have known. Maybe you didn't listen, but I can tell you a summary of that.

In the first day, brother Zach was telling about a wise man who built a house. That is correct, but we don't know what is that good foundation. We used to think good foundation means Jesus, Jesus is the good foundation.

For many years I thought that was the thing. But in the same chapter Matthew 7, if you read, you see what is the meaning of that good foundation. You remember he said that the wise man was wise because he obeyed.

He not only heard, but he obeyed. That's why he was wise. So obedience is the thing that makes us wise. So many times we read the Bible and we understand the verses in our head. That's a very good habit to read the Bible.

Unless we read, we won't even know what is written in the Bible. And I want to encourage all of you sisters who don't know how to read, you don't have to feel bad. Just because you can't read, you can still be a wise woman.

Don't say, I can't read, so this is not for me. Whatever you heard, if you obey, you can be wiser than many people who can read. I know some sisters who can't read at all. Even one elder brother in one of our churches, he can't read.

But he has God's word in his heart. Whatever they hear in the meeting, they keep it in their heart and they live, they want to obey that. And they become wiser than many people who are educated. So those mothers and sisters who can't read, what you can do, you can tell your children, read the Bible to me.

Every evening when they sit down, you can say, read something from Bible to me. The children also will learn and we too can learn. And then we can tell the children, see that verse, we must obey that verse.

Like that we teach our children also to obey and we also will learn to obey. Now there is one very good book, if you want your children to read, you can ask them to read one book of the Bible. And you can ask them to read one chapter every day and in one month that book will be over.

And that is the book of Proverbs. It's very good for young people especially. Lot of advice and it's good for us also. Now if you turn to Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 1. So here we read about a wise woman and she builds her house.

A Wise Woman Builds Her House

Now in the world there are lot of magazines about decorating the house and what type of color and pictures to put in the house. What taste, what color is good and all the earthly wisdom that is. But I told you earlier that what we are talking about is divine wisdom.

The woman who has that godly wisdom, she can really build a house. I will give you one example. Suppose there is a sister who is really keen to obey God's word. But she doesn't have much education or anything like that.

But she has a very submissive spirit. Whatever she hears in God's word she wants to obey. And she wants to submit to her husband. Such a woman can really build a good home. On the other hand suppose there is a very smart lady.

And she got lot of education and degrees. And she has a good job. And she earns lot of money. And she comes with all the money to her husband. But everyday they are fighting. He is saying something and she is talking back.

She says, I am earning the money, why can't I spend how I like. And so on they are going on fighting, fighting. Do you think that woman is building the house, her house with wisdom or the one I talked about earlier?

We have to ask ourselves, what type of woman am I? If I am a lady with lot of degrees but a very independent spirit, I will never be able to build my house. Then we will be like the foolish woman who tears down her house.

We must ask God, Lord help us to be like that wise woman who built her house. And we know that wisdom is not the wisdom of this world. As I was saying that wisdom comes only from God. We have to respect God, God's word, then He will teach us that wisdom.

We must say, Lord when it comes to spiritual things, I am nothing, I need to learn from you. We read a beautiful verse this morning. In James chapter 1, you remember that verse? Verse 5. So in all matters in the home, we must say, Lord I don't have wisdom.

Till now I thought I can do everything by my own strength and by my own cleverness. But all the cleverness of this world is like foolishness in God's eyes. There is a verse like that. Even the wisest person is a fool when he compares to God's wisdom.

So we can come to the Lord and say, Lord up till now I thought I have got a lot of wisdom. But this type of wisdom I don't have. And before it is too late, Lord I ask you to give me this wisdom. And you know what we heard today, if we want to ask anything to the Lord, He will give it to us.

If we listen today morning, there were two conditions. Here it says, God won't scold us. If you read further in James 1, God won't scold us. Why you are not having wisdom? Only earthly mothers will scold.

That's a lesson to us mothers. When our children come to us, don't have the habit of scolding them. Don't say, oh you stupid donkey and such things about them. God doesn't scold us when we don't have wisdom.

Here it says, He gives liberally wisdom. And when we come to Him, He will give us wisdom liberally. And I told you there are two conditions. When we ask anything to the Lord, we should not have any bad attitude towards anybody.

Forgiveness and Faith in Prayer

Jesus said, if you have anything against your brother, and if you haven't forgiven your brother, God won't hear your prayer, God won't forgive you. In the Psalms there is one verse, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

In the Psalms there is one verse, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So when we think of what our need is, we can look in our heart and all of us will find, is there someone against whom we have anything, any bitterness or unforgiving spirit?

Very often some relative, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law, mother-in-law, anybody is there who would have harmed us, don't keep it in your mind. All of us have had people who harmed us.

As long as we live, there will be people who will do some harm to us. But if we keep it in our mind, we are harming ourselves. We must say, Lord, give me the grace to forgive that person. Take it out of my heart, so it won't remain in my heart at all.

Whenever that thought about that person comes to your mind, immediately say, Lord, I want to forgive her. And he will give us the grace to forgive. The second condition is that we must have faith that he will give us what we ask.

Because God wants us to have that wisdom. Here in James 1 .5 it says, if you lack wisdom, you can ask God and ask in faith. And then he will give us that wisdom. And it's not like we get one big supply of wisdom for the rest of our life.

It's not like that. It's like if we eat food today, it's not going to say, Oh, I ate yesterday, so today I don't need to eat. Next whole month I don't need to eat. We don't think like that. Jesus said, when we pray, give us this day our daily bread.

Those of us who are mothers, we say, Lord, I need grace to be a wise mother, a good mother every day. Every day we need God's grace. We don't want our children to leave the home with bad memories of their mother.

When our children leave home, they get married or they go to college, they should not think, Oh, my mother was a terrible lady. They should not think, Oh, she was always scolding us, finding fault with us, always fighting with daddy.

Do any of us want our children to think like that about us? No. We want our children to think of us as good mothers. She sacrificed so much for us. She went without food for our sake. She taught us God's word.

She taught us to obey. Because she was a good wife and respected daddy, we learned to respect her also. We cannot tell our children, Oh, you have to obey me. And we ourselves, if we are not obeying our husband and respecting our husband, we can't expect our children to be better than us.

If our children are stubborn, we must look and see, Am I stubborn? Is that the reason my children are learning to be stubborn? When I am stubborn, my children will be like that. When my children are stubborn, I should test myself.

If we want to be a good mother, we should pray to God, Swami, please help me to become a good mother. We read something more about wisdom. Here we read something more about wisdom. It's like we all are building a house.

This is about a big house made. It is standing on seven pillars. Here we are talking about building a house. Here we are talking about building a big house. It is standing on seven pillars. And that's a picture of our life.

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

If you turn again to James chapter 5, we read something more about wisdom. Verse 15 till the end. Chapter 3, verses 15, 15, 16, 17. Verses 15 to 18. So I want you to imagine us building a beautiful house with seven pillars.

And all those seven pillars are important. And even if one is missing, there will be a loss in that spiritual house. First of all, we read that there should not be any jealousy or selfish ambition. In this house.

Previous verse, 16. If we are jealous about anybody, somebody may be better than us. Somebody may be better looking than us. Their children may be better than our children. If there is any kind of jealousy, then we will lose that wisdom.

We must be satisfied with the way God has made us. Whatever our color is, whatever our appearance is, we must think that God made us like that. He is our father and in his eyes we are beautiful. See, even if whatever our children look like, in our eyes our children are beautiful to us.

We think that they are the most beautiful children in the world. So you think like that, in God's eyes I am beautiful. And that's the most important thing for me. If God has accepted me, that's all that matters.

Then we will be satisfied with whatever state God has put in. Then we won't be jealous of anybody. Only when we compare ourselves with other people, we will have the temptation to be jealous. But if we are thankful, Lord, you made me like this, then there won't be any room for jealousy.

And there should not be any selfish ambition, he says. Nothing for myself. Lord, I want to make you happy. I heard the story of a person who was telling this about himself. If there was famine in the whole land, God will make sure that there will be some bread or something to eat in my house.

Because God knows that I won't keep that bread for myself, I will share it with others. That is an example of not having that selfish ambition. Now if we look at all, let's look at these pillars one by one briefly.

Purity and Seeing God in Every Situation

First of all, pure, this wisdom which comes from above is pure. That is something we have to ask the Lord, always to give us that purity in our life. Nowadays there is so much impurity in the world. If you read any newspaper, there will be some impure stuff.

Wherever we look or listen, we hear stories of impurity. You know in Matthew chapter 5, there is a beautiful verse about those who are pure in heart. Only if we are pure in heart, we will be able to see God.

All of us, if we are using our imagination or filling our mind with impure things, then less space for God in our lives. If we are using our imagination or filling our mind with impure things, then less space for God in our lives.

So any stories of bad things which are happening to people, bad things about other people, don't take the effort not even to listen to that impure things. If anybody is telling a dirty story, we say, no, I don't want to hear that.

Somebody comes and tells us, you know what happened to this sister, that sister, some bad stories. We say, please don't tell me. Then we keep our mind pure. He says, those who are pure in heart, they will see God.

I think of it another way also. If I am pure in heart, I will see God in every situation. I don't have to see God on final day. When I die. I don't have to. Some bad thing happened in my life. Some money loss.

Or some sickness comes. Anything happens. Good things or bad things. If I am pure in heart, in every situation I will see God. If some accident happened to me, I say, Lord, I can see you in this situation.

In this sickness you allowed it, I can see you. You allowed it in my life. So I take this verse like that. Suddenly some sickness comes. Some failure comes. And people are all cursing and say, why this happened, why this government is like that, why this, why that.

But if I am pure in heart, I will see God in every situation. Lord, in this situation I don't know what to do. I don't have anybody to help me. But I look to you. I want to see you in this situation. And that kind of faith we can have only if we have emptied our heart of all the bad things that were there.

If we have the habit of judging others and criticizing others. Finding fault with others. Then if anything happens, we will only see their fault. If we have the habit of judging others and criticizing others.

If something like that happens, if the situation comes like that, we will only find fault with them. Whatever that doctor has done, I will see for that. I will experience the fault that that doctor has done.

But in that situation, if we had seen the Lord, and Lord, without your knowledge, nothing would have happened. You allowed this to happen in my life. And you have a solution for it. So our whole attitude to life will change if we have that pure heart.

Now in God's eyes, none of us have that pure heart. But we can have it. Even if till now we haven't had it, we can ask God, Lord, give me purity in my life. God is not going to scold us or condemn us.

God never scares us or condemns us. Lord, give me that purity in my life. Draw my heart towards goodness and purity. We have to come to God continuously and ask God for that purity in our life. In your mind, you think like, some programs I am not going to watch at all.

Because I am going to get addicted to watching that. Sometimes it may be a serial. In between, some advertisements may come. I don't want to waste any more time. And we keep a check on that and slowly, slowly we find God taking away that desire to watch TV.

Sometimes we think, we tell our children, no, no, don't watch TV, go and study. And they look through the curtain and we are watching the TV. Then what kind of mothers we are. They also will think, it's okay, I can watch TV when mummy is not looking.

When mummy is not looking, I can also watch TV. We have to be an example by our life. Suppose our children are doing the final exam. Or suppose they are sick in hospital. Do you think the TV will be switched on even for one minute?

We won't switch on the TV. We will lock up the TV, we will be with the Bible and we will be praying, praying, praying for them. That means if we want, we can live without that. So, it doesn't matter if we have watched TV till now.

Say, Lord, from now onwards, I am going to discipline my life. That hard. Half an hour which I was watching TV, I am going to use to read the Bible and pray. And when the hand comes tempted to switch on the TV, say, no, I am going to read the five verses on the Bible.

And when the hand comes tempted to switch on the TV, say, no, I am going to read the five verses on the Bible. The sacrifices we make in secret, God will reward us openly. And God will give us that thirst, because He sees we are willing to make sacrifice.

Now, I can say so much about purity, but we each one, we can ask God, Lord, what is the meaning of purity? Help me to have that in my life. We must have a thirst for that purity. Then we will become closer and closer to the Lord.

Peaceable Wisdom in the Home

The second pillar is in James chapter 3, last verse. We are peaceable people. Now, that's also a very difficult quality for earthly-minded ladies. Now, suppose somebody says something, some women have the habit immediately to disagree.

I know some ladies, if you tell them something, immediately they'll say, no, no, no, it's not like that. And they'll give a different opinion. It's very hard for them to agree with anybody. And so it must be very difficult to be a peaceable wife at home.

So, we think of all disagreements that come in a home. Think of children, for example. When you think of a small girl, it starts in a small way in small children. And we tell them to do something. If we tell our daughters to do something, immediately they say, no mummy, I don't want to do that.

Or we say, I'll do it later. Or they say, I'll do it later. Or, I'll do it another way, not your way. And like that, disagreements will come between mother and children. And that little girl grows up and becomes a teenager.

And then that stubborn nature becomes still more stubborn. And the seed is already sown to be a quarrelsome type of person. Always arguing and arguing in the home. So, what kind of wife will that girl become?

Always arguing, arguing with the husband. Arguing with the mother-in-law, father-in-law. All the friends and relatives. Now in the natural world, that is a very, very common thing. And they think they are wise because they can argue.

But this godly wisdom is the opposite of that. We should be people who love peace. In the home, many things can happen. You know, in daily matters, so many things. Somebody might be late, food might be late.

So many things can happen to disturb our peace. The people who work for us may not be working for us. They may not be working properly. But we can ask God, Lord, make me a peace loving person. Even if somebody is cheating me in the market place.

Or the auto rickshaw, they charge me more. The worldly person always wants to have a fight or argue. And that may be our natural nature. But we can ask God, Lord, according to James 3, I want to have that peaceable nature.

I want to be a peace loving person. Then there won't be any quarrel in the house. We like to have a home where there is no quarrel. All of us. Isn't it? Who likes to have a fighting in the house all the time?

No, all of us like peace in our home. We should be the first one to make peace in the home. Even if we think that the temperature is very hot and ready to have a big explosion. We should be the one to bring the temperature down and bring peace in the home.

Next time when there is a chance for something getting upset, think of this beautiful house and one of the important pillar is peace loving. Then we go on to the third pillar. You know, we may think that we are very gentle or so and so is a gentle person.

Learning Gentleness from Jesus

But there is only one person from whom we can learn gentleness. You know that. You know there is a verse in Matthew 11. Last verse. For I am gentle and humble. It says there. I think. It comes in 29. Jesus said we can come to him and learn from him.

Sometimes there are some very good people in the world and we think I wish I could learn from that lady how to be, how to speak, how to be gentle. I want to be like that lady. But here is our example.

The real example. Only example is Jesus. And we can come to him and say, Lord, teach me to be gentle. You know all of us as mothers and as sisters in the home, how easy it is for us to get upset. At 8 .30, the children must leave the house.

The van will come to take them. And we have to wake them up, get them food and get them ready to go to school. As the minute of the clock goes by, we know how the unrest is getting more and more. And then we need to learn from the Lord.

Lord, teach me gentleness, even in this situation. Teach me how to plan my life so I won't put everything for the last minute. Whatever way I do, Lord, I want to learn gentleness from you. And the Lord will give us that beautiful nature.

Reasonableness and Willingness to Yield

Now we go to the fourth pillar. Reasonable. Easy to be entreated. That means if somebody asks us to anything, our first reaction should not be, I will never do that for that person. And if we have that type of nature, it's very difficult for other people.

Now suppose there is some disagreement in the home and we are stubborn, no, I won't give up. I am going to, my way is the right way. I decided to do like that, whoever tells me, I am not going to change.

Then it's very difficult for others to get along with us. Others will find it difficult to get along with us. I have heard in some homes, people, husband and wife, I know a home, where the husband and wife haven't talked to each other for many years.

If the father wants something, he tells the child, go tell mummy like this. And mother sends the message like that to the father. Now, in our lives, not even one minute should go like that. If any disagreement comes, we should be the one, Lord, I don't want this type of thing to happen in my home.

Even if I don't want to do this, in this way, I will do it for your sake. And God will help us and change us and change the people in our home. Nobody need to come and say, please, please, please to us.

But we should be, before anybody asks us, we should be willing to do. That's a very difficult thing, but God can make us that type of wise woman. We will be considerate to the feelings of others. Then fifth pillar, full of mercy and good fruits.

Mercy, Compassion, and Forgiveness

Full of mercy and compassion. We need to meditate on that, Lord, help me to be a very merciful person. Jesus said, if you are merciful, you will receive mercy. If we are not merciful to others, we cannot expect God to be merciful to us.

If we are not merciful to other people's children, maybe the girl who works in our home, then some teacher may be merciful to our children in school. We want those teachers to be merciful to our children, don't we?

We don't want them to beat our children or to be cruel to our children. Then if we are merciful to other people's children, God will be merciful to our children. Suppose there is some boy who is cycling and he comes and crosses and almost makes us have an accident when we are going in the auto rickshaw.

Then we should think, Lord, maybe one day my son will be riding a cycle like this and he might get killed. Have mercy on my son in such a situation. If we have that nature, we entrust our children in God's hands and God will help us to be merciful to other people's children.

Jesus told a story, a parable about a man. You all know that story. A story about a man who was forgiven a large amount of money. One lakh rupees maybe. He said, I can't afford to pay that one lakh. Please excuse me.

And the other man, the master said, okay, okay. The king said, okay, I'll excuse you. Then he went out and he saw another man who owed him just some thousand rupees. And he goes to that man and said, what, what, you are hiding from me?

How many times I have to keep asking you about the thousand rupees? I put you in jail. And he caught that man and put him in jail. Now the rich man who forgave this one lakh, he heard about this. And he said, I forgave you one lakh and you could not forgive one thousand rupees.

Compared to what we have, others have done to us, God has forgiven us so many millions of wrongs. So we should be ready to forgive others the small things which they do against us. Now, may God give us that grace to be merciful to others.

Wholeheartedness Without Hypocrisy

Now briefly the sixth and seventh I'll mention the pillars. Those steady and wholehearted forward. Yeah, those two pillars are also very important. We should be wholehearted in our desire to follow the Lord and decision to follow the Lord.

There should be no hypocrisy in our life. See sometimes we can act as if we are very spiritual people but inside is all bad things. We are not actually what we are. We act as if we are very prayer and we are obeying everything and give a wrong impression to others and we say, Lord I don't want to be like that.

Others shouldn't think that I am better than what I actually am. That doesn't mean that if we are bad inside, we should be bad outside. We should say, Lord make me inside pure and good and outside also will be good.

And we can get all this from only one person. No human being can give us this godly wisdom. Only the Lord can give us. We can say, Lord I am a needy person. Lord, I need this wisdom. I need this godly wisdom.

So many days of my life are going by and one day I am going to meet you. I wouldn't have learnt even one bit of wisdom I wouldn't have got. I don't want to meet you without getting that wisdom. At least the remaining days of my life help me to take it more seriously to get this kind of godly wisdom.

Building the Home and the Church

So I can be a good mother and a good wife in the home, a good sister in the church, where I can not only build my home, I can build the church also. How can we sisters build the church? Not all of us, God wants us to stand up and preach or do such things.

But by being a good godly sister, a submissive wife as God's word teaches and respectful wife and we get this godly wisdom from God. How do we get it? By obeying God's word. Everything that we hear in God's word, we say, Lord, I want to obey it.

May God help each one of us to be godly women because God needs such women in these days. God bless you all. I pray. Our Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. Lord, we want to be godly women. We don't want to live for this world.

We want to live for you, Lord Jesus. Give us grace, Lord and give us this godly wisdom in our life. We pray that you build our homes and build the church. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.