WEST CHICAGO, Ill. — “I’ve always looked at the book of Proverbs as a rule book,” Gina Caithamer mused during a break at Lifeway’s In the Word event on April 25-26. “If you follow these, you’re going to live a pretty good life.”

But as Bible teacher Jen Wilkin reminded nearly 1,400 women in Chicagoland, wisdom isn’t transactional. It’s not a set of good choices that yields positive outcomes. In fact, wisdom isn’t nearly as concerned with decision-making as we often think it is.

“God’s will for our lives is not simply that we would make better choices, but that we would become better people by the power of the Spirit in us,” Wilkin said. “And that will require a great deal of wisdom.”

Wisdom — what it is, where it begins and how to get it — was the theme of the two-day conference at Wheaton Bible Church, where women from 25 states and two countries outside of the U.S. participated. The gathering was the second of four In the Word events this year featuring teaching by Wilkin, the author of several in-depth Bible studies and one of six teachers who contributed to “The Way of Wisdom” a study of Proverbs set for release in August.

During the Chicagoland event, Wilkin urged women toward wisdom’s starting point. The “trailhead” of wisdom, she said, is the fear of the Lord. The beginning of wisdom, which she defined as living God’s way in God’s world, is being in awe of Him.

Caithamer, who came to the event from nearby Naperville, has spent years in Bible studies at her church. But she had never thought to approach wisdom in quite that way, she said. “This is really something I need to ponder and meditate on, because the core of wisdom is the fear and the awe of God.”

Less noise, more truth

“We’re going to join together in an act of simplicity,” Wilkin told women at the start of the Friday evening session. She invited listeners to imagine they were gathered in her living room to study Scripture together.

Modern hymn writer Sandra McCracken led women in songs old and new, each printed in a substantial booklet handed to every woman on her way inside. The large screens in the auditorium were used sparingly, and the house lights stayed on throughout each teaching time.

As she has throughout her ministry, Wilkin encouraged women to study God’s Word not to understand themselves better, but to know God more. “We learn the Scriptures for the purpose of knowing God,” she said. “Because the knowledge of God leads us to the love of God, and we want to love Him rightly.”

From her seat in the third row, Beth Beckham noted how Wilkin helps women reorient their thinking about Scripture. “She really takes away all the earthly noise and replaces it with God’s Word, which is so full of wisdom,” Beckham said.

The Bible is indeed full of wisdom about wisdom, which Wilkin showed women again and again over three teaching sessions. From the exhortation to “get wisdom” in Proverbs 4 to the promise in James 1 that God will give it to anyone who asks for it, Scripture calls those who are in Christ to live wisely.

She asked women to think of a scenario in their lives right now in which they need wisdom. When we pray about those things, she said, most of the time we are seeking knowledge that will help us know what to do, what decision to make. But while knowledge is facts, wisdom is using the facts we have right now to make the best decision we can.

“Wisdom is for our equipping. It does something more than just inform us,” Wilkin said. When we reduce what it means to seek God’s wisdom to decision-making, we cheapen what it means to be a follower of Christ, she continued.

“God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than with the decision itself.” Again and again in Scripture, she showed women, God has made clear what His will is for those who are in Christ: a life of holiness, of being set apart.

We’re obsessed with asking, “What should I do?” Wilkin said. “And all the time God is whispering, ‘Ask me who you should be.’”

Wisdom begins with awe

If wisdom is more about who we should be and less about what we should do, Wilkin said, it is also an invitation to become a person who wants to live God’s way in God’s world. It’s how we were created to live all along, she said. But the fall described in Genesis 3 makes us so bad at it.

“Think about wisdom not as an invitation to try something new but to try something old that we forgot,” Wilkin said.

The first, most basic act of wisdom is repentance. It happens when men and women realize who they are in light of who God is, and Scripture is filled with examples: Job’s vision of God high and lifted up reoriented him to the truth of his circumstances. Isaiah grieved his unclean lips in light of God’s holiness. Peter’s huge haul of fish opened his eyes to Jesus.

The fear of the Lord — the recognition of who He is — does the same for us as it did for these heroes of the faith. “Awe has a way of reorienting us rightly to the world around us,” Wilkin said. And if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that basic act of repentance is one we should revisit again and again.

“When the children of God walk in the wisdom of God, we become tiny outposts of ‘shalom,’” Wilkin said. “Walking in wisdom does not promise us perfection. What it does promise is that as we return again to that most basic act of wisdom, that over time we will become quicker to repent and slower to repeat.”

Staying on the path of godly wisdom requires effort, Wilkin said in her final session. Those who are in Christ will find it in a lifetime of studying Scripture — the whole of it, she said. Wisdom is also found in longevity. Younger people should seek out older people in the church. Older people should embrace being old.

Finally, Wilkin said, there is wisdom in the perfect example of Christ. To get wisdom, repent and believe. Keep digging. Trust the promise in James 1:5 that God will give wisdom generously and ungrudgingly to those who ask for it.

“This is the promise of James,” Wilkin said. “If we keep asking, He will keep giving.”

The next In the Word events will be Sept. 12-13, in Santa Clarita, Calif., and Sept. 26-27, in Nashville. For more information, visit Lifeway.com/InTheWord.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Meredith Flynn is a freelance writer in Springfield, Illinois.)