Why This Lengthy Detour?

He's one of the world's great missionary doctors, but for a while it looked like God had given him a bum steer. Dr. Paul Brand is the author, along with Philip Yancey, of a wonderful book entitled PAIN: The Gift Nobody Wants. We did a whole week of radio programs a couple of years ago based on this very insightful bestseller.

But in his early life, Paul, a missionary kid whose dad died while serving as a medical doctor in India, wanted nothing to do with medicine. He wasn't much of a student anyway, and he'd already seen enough pain and death in his father's primitive clinics out there in the Kolli hills. So when he finished high school in the English system, he decided to go into construction instead, and spent the next five years taking things like carpentry, architecture, roofing, bricklaying, plumbing, electricity, and stonemasonry.

But as time went by, relatives began to put pressure on him: "Paul, you ought to follow in your dad's footsteps, help fulfill his dreams." And he didn't really want to, but finally with a sigh he enrolled in med school. To his great surprise, he loved it! He was good at it! All sorts of natural aptitudes burst forth, and he's gone on to have a brilliant career, specializing particularly in the treatment of leprosy.

But still one thing nagged at him. Why would a God who promises not only to give us wisdom, but the right kind of wisdom — helpful, applicable, useful wisdom — why had God permitted him to throw away five years learning plumbing and carpentry? I mean, he wasn't ever going to use that stuff now — he was a surgeon! Why wouldn't God keep a missionary like himself, a man whose time was at such a premium, from going down the wrong alleyway for five long years before tapping him on the shoulder and advising a U-turn? He honestly didn't understand how God could have messed that one up.

But he kept on in his practice. And you know, as he sweated away the years in surgery and leprosy consultation in the steaming villages of India, he found himself having to jerry-rig operating equipment. Put up buildings where they could patch together an OR for surgery. In fact, once he was working with a leprosy patient who had formerly been a carpenter. But now because this young man had lost all feeling in his hands, every time he used a hammer now, he'd get splinters and wouldn't know it. Or he'd grip the handle too tight and just wear away the diseased flesh.

And so Paul Brand, without even thinking about it, sat down and designed a special kind of thick, padded hammer handle for the guy. He taught him how to hold nails with a pair of pliers instead of just with his fingers. He developed a kind of casing that would protect this patient from the plane and the saw. And all at once, he realized that he was dipping back into those five "wasted" years in construction. All those skills he'd developed in the woodworking shop and mastering the electrician's trade . . . he was using that stuff all the time now. He hadn't been on a bad detour at all; in fact, he could see now how God had set the whole thing up to give Dr. Paul Brand the fullness of service heaven had intended all along.

"Ever since medical school," he writes, "I had wondered if I had misspent those five years in the construction field. Now I was thankful to find a redeeming purpose to my circuitous career path."

You know, I find this story to be so encouraging to me. And I hope you do too. Because, as our series title says, many of us look up at heaven and say: I ASKED FOR WISDOM — AND GOD SAID NO! It appears that He's given us the wrong tools, or maybe no tools. The dreams we have go unfulfilled because we just plain haven't got what it takes. And yet, if we could look down the road a bit, we might find that God is answering our prayer for "wisdom" in a better way than we realized.

There's a very interesting verse in Proverbs, and of course, its author, Solomon, is the one man we can think of who had God simply hand him a double dose of brain power. But here's what he says in chapter 21:

"There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord."

And really, we can read that two ways. A person can go out and dig and amass a certain amount of what the world would deem as wisdom. But if it's not going to be used according to the Lord's own blueprint, then it's not going to get very far. In terms of eternity, it's not going to succeed. Conversely — and this is the part we should rejoice in — any wisdom that we receive FROM the Lord, which He bestows in order to further His kingdom through us . . . well, if we're willing and if we surrender, that wisdom is going to bring about great results. Great in the Lord's terms; that's for sure.

There's a marvelous sound bite that popped into our minds, and David tracked it down with a research CD ROM in the wonderful old book, The Desire of Ages, by E. G. White. Here's what she writes:

"There is NO LIMIT to the usefulness of one who, by putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit upon his heart, and lives a life wholly consecrated to God." And then she adds just this little bit more: "If men will endure the necessary discipline, without complaining or fainting by the way, God will teach them hour by hour and day by day."

Now friend, that's wisdom. God teaching us hour by hour and day by day? THAT is wisdom! And when she says, " . . . the working of the Holy Spirit upon [the] heart," that's wisdom too. But it's interesting that the receiving of this kind of wisdom means putting self aside. A man says, "I don't want to be a leprosy doctor in India; I'd rather do construction and build luxury condos." But it's only the man who says, "Lord, I'm going to start building these condos while I wait for other instructions from You. But if You want me doing surgery under a tree in India, You just say so" — well, it's that man who's going to get the promised wisdom.

If you're a regular listener to this broadcast, you probably agree with us that the apostle Paul was one who received heaven's wisdom in great abundance. And in chapter 12 of his first epistle to the people in Corinth, he addresses this question of how we all can receive wisdom. Listen to this from verse eight:

"To one there is given THROUGH THE SPIRIT the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit."

And of course, through every single letter Paul writes, he encourages us to submit OUR plans, our skyscraper-building dreams, to the leading of this Spirit . . . just as he did! Paul started out, career-wise, wanting to be the grand inquisitor, the great persecutor of the fledgling Christian faith. But when the Holy Spirit struck him down and put him on a different road, he listened and he submitted. He accepted heaven's wisdom, and the world has never been the same since.

We all should be challenged by the plain Bible truth that this is the formula for everyone! Let me say that again: for everyone! There's not a person who can go it alone, carve out his or her own path to real wisdom. Even kings and presidents are under this heavenly principle. The great prophet Daniel writes in chapter two about God:

"He changes times and seasons; He sets up kings and deposes them."

In other words, no matter how intelligent a ruler is on his own, God can put him on the throne or take him off. At any time! And then speaking of wisdom, Daniel adds in the very next line:

"He [God] gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning."

Even Jesus, the very Son of God, was subject to this spiritual law — that true wisdom comes from God, from a relationship with God, from a spirit of submission to the directives of the Holy Spirit. I'm sure many of you have memorized this beautiful memory gem from Luke chapter two, so I'll share it from the familiar King James:

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature" — and notice what comes next, in this same verse — "AND in favor with God and man."

The boy Jesus lived and thrived in a relationship of "(quote) favor with God." Friend, we can't comprehend the depth of that favor, that closeness, that oneness. We can strive to copy, to emulate, to pray for a taste of it. But what an example Jesus sets for us! And then the results: "Jesus increased in wisdom." Wouldn't you like to increase in wisdom even a tenth or a hundredth of how it happened with our Lord?

Maybe you feel inadequate right now. Your peers don't see much wisdom in you and neither do you when you look at your report card. You know, that's okay. Friend, give it to the Lord. Give your plans to Him. Let Him know that wherever the Holy Spirit leads, you're willing to go. Be determined to do like Jesus and grow "in favor with God and man."

Listen, if you and I do all of that . . . we'll get wisdom all right. The kind God wants us to have. And really, would we want any other kind?

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