Your House Is on Fire. What Do You Save?

Jewish parents often ask their children a question: "If one day the house caught fire, what would you save?" The children say their toys, their treasures, their piggy banks, and the parents shake their heads. In the end they tell them: everything can burn up. Only one thing can't burn, and that's wisdom.

We Chinese are clever too, and we love our children too. But what we teach our children to seek is usually peace, wealth and a long life. The Bible says all of these are actually in wisdom's hands:

Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

Proverbs 3:16–18

Get wisdom, and all those things we ask for our children come with it. So whether it's our own growth or raising the next generation, the first thing is to ask for wisdom. In this session I want to cover three parts: why wisdom comes first, what wisdom really is, and how we get it.

Solomon asked for "a heart that hears"

Solomon was very young when he took the throne of his father David. One night God appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask what I shall give thee." That's a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Solomon didn't ask for long life, he didn't ask for riches, and he didn't ask for his enemies to be destroyed. He said:

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

1 Kings 3:9

Where this is translated "understanding," the Hebrew means "to hear" (shama). What Solomon asked for was a heart that can hear: a heart that hears God and understands people. God was so pleased. He gave him wisdom and understanding like no one before or after him, and on top of that the riches and honour he hadn't even asked for.

Soon after, two women came to him with a case. Each said the living baby was hers. Solomon said, "Bring me a sword. Cut the child in two." The real mother said at once, "Give her the child. Whatever you do, don't kill him." The other one said, "Cut him." In that moment everyone knew whose child it was. When wisdom shows up, lies can't stand and the quarrel is over. Everyone has a set of scales inside, and one look tells them what's right.

Why I started asking for wisdom

Around 2000, my family nearly fell apart. My husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer, my mother had depression, my child dropped out of school, and our business failed. I was living in a big house by the sea, and from the outside it looked like I had everything. But I had a violent temper. I often hit my children at home. I was broken in pieces.

Because of my mother's many years of prayer, I came to know Jesus. After I became a Christian, I read the Bible three times in one year. When I got to the part where Solomon asks for wisdom, I said to God: I want to ask for wisdom too. Not just for me, but for all the broken families and heartbroken women of our time.

Later God restored my husband's health, and restored our marriage too, which had almost ended. My husband said, "So marriage can be this good. Life can be this beautiful." Starting in 2002, we began helping orphans and widows according to God's word. Back then I had nothing but a little testimony and a heart that asked God for wisdom.