66 Ways To Get Smarter

I have a friend named Jim Zachary who's witnessed what I could almost call a brain transplant. Now, it wasn't a medical moment, but the effect was nearly the same. Back in the year 1970 this Seventh-day Adventist missionary had lived and traveled with his wife Jeane in some of the most primitive parts of the Philippines. As he reports it, this was basically head- hunter territory. They went to a mountain village called Dampaan, way up in the highlands of central Mindanao. And the people there were part of the Minobo tribe which was heavily steeped in animist beliefs and superstitions.

And Jim and Jeane kept a diary where they wrote down the wrenching things they saw. Pagan chicken sacrifices. Pathetic little blood gifts the villagers would make to the spirits, hoping to appease their anger. And of course, fear and all kinds of ritualistic superstitions ruled their lives. They also lived in total poverty, just able to scratch out a living growing a few vegetables and trapping rats for their meals. They had no knowledge of medical advances; basically, 1970 may as well have been the year 1270 as far as progress was concerned for these folks.

Now in 1996, 26 years later, Jim and Jeane were over there again as part of our huge Voice of Prophecy project called TARGET 50,000, where Christians aimed to bring that many people, 50,000, to a knowledge of Jesus in just one calendar year. And this missionary couple had the privilege of visiting some of these same areas again.

But you know, when they came to this village of Dampaan, they discovered that the work of God they had started earlier had been proceeding along quite miraculously. The local chieftain, a man named Datu Tibulawan, had listened to the Zacharies and some student missionaries who had come to serve. He asked the Christians to establish a school in his village. He and some of his people learned some basics about medicine and health. A Bible translator from the Wycliffe organization provided them with a Bible in the Manobo language, and many of the villagers began to read and study. The bottom line is that this chief, Datu Tibulawan, and 26 others were baptized into the Christian faith. This man buried the skulls from his head-hunting days, and a thousand-year legacy of fear and superstition was abandoned forever.

Now here's the point. Jim and Jeane came back to visit. And what a difference! People were friendly and happy. They were educated. They were healthy. They could read and write. They wore clean clothes and held warm, cultured conversations with these visitors. The Christian faith had accomplished in 26 years what a thousand years of animist beliefs could never achieve.

And that's where the brain transplants came in. Jim told us over and over the same line: "Jesus has made a great difference." He met three people who as small girls had learned to sing little Christian hymns back in 1970. Now they were all young ladies — beautiful, educated, bilingual, with college degrees. And he said again: "Boy, Jesus really makes a difference."

And you know, this week we have a curious radio title, which goes like this: I PRAYED FOR WISDOM — AND GOD SAID NO! It certainly is true that God doesn't reach down into every single Christian skull and work a miracle of IQ transformation. What He did for Solomon He doesn't do for His people across the board. You remember how this new king of Israel, intimidated and worried, fell on his knees and asked heaven for this great favor: "Give your servant a discerning heart," he asked. And God gave it to him. In a supernatural way, the Lord made this Israelite king a legend in the world. Visiting rulers went back home with souvenir Solomon cufflinks shaking their heads and saying, "This man's twice as smart as we heard."

But what can God do for the rest of us? Even if Christians everywhere aren't destined to be in the smartest focus groups, does the message of the cross always transform the intellect?

The book of Job has an interesting Q&A moment where Job, in all of his struggles, asks a question.

"But where can wisdom be found"? he asks. "Where does understanding dwell?"

That's in chapter 28. And the answer comes back a few verses later:

"The fear of the Lord — THAT is wisdom."

King David said the very same thing in his 111th Psalm:

"The fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom."

And the prophet Jeremiah adds his testimony on this very point, in chapter nine:

"'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,' declares the Lord."

And I think a case can be made that the Christian faith is itself, as we quoted C. S. Lewis yesterday as saying, an education. The man or woman who believes in God and studies the things of God is going to be transformed into a wiser person. It's as simple as that.

I like a line from Timothy Dwight, who gives us this glimpse of truth:

"The Bible is a window in this prison-world, through which we may look into eternity."

And really, isn't that the truth? Out in the world, we have such huge admiration for these people who gaze beyond the horizons the rest of us notice. They invent the gadgets of the 21st century; they write science fiction. They see an empty cow pasture and envision a huge skyscraper with satellite antennas on it. But the person who reads his Bible can glimpse even a greater future. He can know where he's heading for eternity; he can understand past history and future glories.

I heard about a man who was packing for a trip, and a friend said to him, "What are you taking along?" And he replied, "Well, let's see. I've got some history books. A whole bunch of poetry. Classic letters, philosophy, books on future events. Stories of ancient civilizations. Books that describe the progress of morality in our world. Stories about space travel and intergalactic battles." And he went on and on.

Well, the visitor was floored. "Man, how can you get anything else in your suitcase?" And his friend very calmly reached out and picked up one book, called "Holy Bible," and tucked it in a corner of the case. "There," he said. "I'm packed." And you know, it's true . . . the person who studies the Christian faith gets a tremendous education. The person who practices it day by day has his or her intellect sharpened; their wisdom grows.

I shared a paragraph yesterday from a great classic written by a Christian of the 19th century who herself only had a third-grade education. And yet her book, Steps to Christ, is a blockbuster bestseller, still translated and read all around the world by millions. Notice what she says:

"There is nothing more calculated to strengthen the intellect than the study of the Scriptures. No other book is so potent to elevate the thoughts, to give vigor to the faculties, as the broad, ennobling truths of the Bible. If God's word were studied as it should be, men would have a breadth of mind, a nobility of character, and a stability of purpose rarely seen in these times."

And I daresay, in our times too! Think what it would mean here in 2000 if you and I just had our minds and our lifestyles infused by the truths we can find from Genesis right through to Revelation chapter 22. A few pages later in this same book, Steps to Christ, there's a chapter entitled "What to Do With Doubt." And even very smart people sometimes have doubts, especially spiritual doubts. Which lets us know that wisdom involves more than just smarts, doesn't it? But here's another line to consider:

"God desires man to exercise his reasoning powers; and the study of the Bible will strengthen and elevate the mind as no other study can."

So maybe we still look wistfully at the few Einstein-type stories we find in the Bible, where God almost miraculously hit a switch and a person was a genius. Actually, though, when we dig a little deeper, the Solomon story is about the only one. When the Bible says that after three years of study and testing, Daniel and his three friends were ten times smarter than the other guys attending the University of Babylon, it appears that what God really did was to simply give this blessing of wisdom through the heaven-approved method of just plain digging through Scripture and submitting to the rigors of the Christian life. These four men fed their minds on the Bible. They accepted Christian truths into their lives. They had a faith relationship with God, which the Word of the Lord says many times is the beginning of wisdom. And when the SAT scores came out, there they were in the top four spots. Which means that if God does it for them, He's equally willing to fulfill that promise for you and for me.

Have you ever come up against the limits of your mental powers? It's a frustrating feeling, isn't it? You face a problem, and you know there's an answer out there somewhere, but your brain's just not sharp enough to go out there and grab it. You're in a committee meeting, and all around you people are buzzing with hot ideas that are just too complicated for you. Others are surfing the Web and e-mailing around the world, and you just can't get the hang of it. And you say, "Lord, please . . . give me some wisdom."

Well, friend, right here we have the blueprint for how God answers that prayer.

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