The smartest people in the world don’t always stay so smart. Chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer reportedly had an I.Q. of 187 – but his embrace of bizarre anti-American and anti-Semitic beliefs and conspiracy theories destroyed his life. Bernie Madoff was an investment genius who took $5,000 earned from a summer lifeguarding job and turned it into a fortune – but then he used his financial prowess to swindle his friends and was slapped with a 150-year prison sentence.

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind…that I may discern between good and evil.

I Kings 3:9

King Solomon asked God for wisdom, and his request was granted. He was called the wisest man who ever lived – but it didn’t last. He subsequently did some things that were positively dumb. Among them was his decision, in defiance of God’s direction, to take 700 wives and 300 concubines, many of them foreigners and political and military adversaries. I Kings 11 says that his wives turned his heart away from God.

Make it your practice, today and every day, to pray for America’s leaders and to seek wisdom in your own life. There’s no “set it and forget it” in prayer. His mercies are “new every morning,” (Lamentations 3:23) as you seek Him…each and every day.

Recommended Reading: Lamentations 3:19-26