Proverbs-Ray Pritchard | Precept Austin

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Studies in Proverbs
by Ray Pritchard

From keepbelieving.com. Used with permission. Purchase these devotionals in Kindle or book format.

Proverbs Devotionals

The ABC’s of Wisdom: Building Character with Solomon - Introduction

Almost everyone agrees that we are living in a day of moral and cultural confusion. Former Secretary of Education William Bennett says that it is almost as if our society has conspired to make it impossible for our children to grow up as decent, moral individuals. He argues that if we want to improve our nation, we must once again dedicate ourselves to the hard work of inculcating virtue in the lives of our children. We must teach them about things like justice, humility, honesty, hard work, thrift, self-control, kindness, and perseverance.

But William Bennett is not the only one saying these things. Newsweek magazine recently published a cover story titled “The New Virtue-Crats.” The lead article reported that 76 percent of all Americans surveyed agree that our nation is in a serious moral and spiritual decline. Although we can argue about why it happened or even about how it happened, the fact itself seems to be beyond debate. Somewhere, somehow, we as a people lost the concept of character and virtue.

Chuck Colson argues that for the first time in our history we have raised an entire generation of young people who have no conscience. Since their parents had no solid moral foundation, they had nothing to pass along to their children. As a result, many young people today do not know the difference between right and wrong.

As a result of losing the concept of absolute standards, we have entered what Newsweek calls “the age of enlightenment skepticism,” where it’s OK for you, but not OK for me; it’s right for you, but not right for me; wrong for you, but not wrong for me; you’ve got your way and I’ve got my way. But if there are no absolute standards, then dishonesty is just as good as honesty, hatred is just as noble as compassion, and laziness is as commendable as hard work.

If America is going to change, the hearts of people have to change one by one. That can only happen as Christians begin to live by moral standards that truly are not of this world. As we face an increasingly skeptical society, we must consciously demonstrate a superior kind of ethical behavior, for we can preach all we want, but until others see the difference incarnated in us, it will be all talk, just another Sunday morning sermon.

All that I have written so far may sound rather gloomy-and indeed there are dark clouds on the national horizon. But here is where the good news begins. If virtue is what we need, then I know where we can go to find it. Three thousand years ago the wisest man who ever lived (with the exception of Jesus Himself) wrote down the fundamental principles of moral behavior that have informed Jewish and Christian thinking ever since. In fact, those truths laid the foundation for what we know today as Western civilization.

I am speaking of the ancient book of Proverbs. King Solomon wrote most of the book. It was evidently intended to be an ancient Book of Virtues for the young people of his day. It represents the distilled wisdom of the ages. His sentences are direct and to the point. He never uses three words when two will do. He doesn’t preach in the normal sense of that word, nor does he threaten. In hundreds of pithy sayings he sets forth the basic principles of moral behavior.

In this book we are going to take a look at one hundred areas of moral and spiritual concern. You should know right up front that this is not a commentary on Proverbs. It is instead a practical handbook for virtuous living based on the sayings of Solomon.

One final note and we’re ready to begin. Please don’t feel compelled to read this book straight through. Actually, I hope you won’t do that. You’ll get the greatest benefit from reading one section at a time and pondering the questions at the end. The sections are arranged alphabetically to make it easy to find the topics of greatest interest to you.

This book is not really about children or even for children. But I do believe that the up-and-coming generation needs to heed these words. For that matter, we could all benefit from some practical, down-to-earth teaching about what is right and what is wrong and how to treat the people we meet every day.

For a world that has lost its way, God wrote a book to bring us back to reality. If you’re interested in learning how life is supposed to work, turn the page, and let’s get started.

PROVERBS 1

Proverbs 1:1-7 Diary of a Wise Old Man

August 1994 – We are beginning a new sermon series. In order to get it off on the right foot, I’d like to ask you to take your Bible and turn with me to Proverbs 1:1-7. The title of this series is Street Smarts, a Handy Guide to Streetwise Living. If you want a theme text for this sermon series, Proverbs 1:20-21 says this. “Wisdom calls aloud in the street. She raises her voice in the public squares. At the head of the noisy streets she cries out. In the gateways of the city she makes her speech.” Wisdom cries from the streets. What we want to do in the following sermons is get street smart. There is church smart, there is book smart, there is school smart, and then there is street smart.

As I begin, I want to make a little exhortation. I want to encourage you to open your Bible every time you’re reading one of these sermons. These sermons will not be nearly as helpful to you without your Bible. This will be really practical, nitty-gritty, not much theory, right down where you live, right where the rubber meets the road. I want you to follow along with me in your Bible because most of the sermons will not be like this one. This one will be just in this one passage. But most of the sermons in this series will take you all over the book of Proverbs, putting verses together, and you will be lost without your Bible.

I imagine that many of you know who William Bennett is. During the Reagan-Bush years he was the Secretary of Education. After that he was the drug czar. After that he resigned from government and went into private consulting practice and began making speeches and writing columns around the country. He became moderately well known. However, about eight or nine months ago, possibly a year ago, his name burst on the national scene in a big way because of a book—a book that he didn’t write. It’s a book that he basically edited, an anthology of stories, short stories, poems, and sayings put together by him called The Book of Virtues. It’s a great book. It’s thick, over 700 pages long, and you wouldn’t think that a hard back book that long would be a best seller. This week it’s on the Best Seller list. It’s been on the list ever since the day it was released. It has sold over 1,000,000 copies, at about $20-25 a copy.

What’s in the book? Why is it a best seller? Basically, it is a book of stories arranged around nine virtues or characteristics of a good or wise or virtuous person. There are a whole bunch of stories about hard work, perseverance, courage, compassion, faith, and several others. In those sections there are famous poems and short stories that illustrate what the virtue of perseverance, or compassion, or faith, or hard work looks like in real life. It is interesting that out of all the things that are being sold today, this thick book should be a best seller.

William Bennett wrote an article in the September 1994 issue of Ladies Home Journal. The article is entitled “How to Teach Children Values”. This is the first sentence. “We live in an era that almost seems dedicated to the corruption of the young, to assuring the loss of children’s innocence before their time.” Then he goes on to give some statistics in the very first paragraph. He says, “Since 1960, there has been more than a 500% increase in violent crime, more than a 400% increase in out of wedlock births, tripling of the percentage of children living in single parent homes, tripling of the teenage suicide rate, doubling of the divorce rate, a drop of almost 75 points in the SAT scores of our students. In comparison with the other nations of the industrialized world, the U.S. ranks at or near the top in the rate of abortion, divorce and unwed births. We lead the industrialized world in murder, rape and violent crime. Intelligent public policy can address some of our plights, but we need to recognize that many of the problems afflicting society today are moral problems, and therefore, remarkably resistant to government cures.”

“After much debate they passed the great crime bill up in Washington—$30,000,000,000 of anti-crime legislation. I know that it has been very controversial. After it was passed, the President said, ‘This is going to make every home and every street in America a safer place.’ I hope and pray that is the truth. But do you feel any safer today? Do you think the streets of your town are going to be measurably different because they passed this huge crime bill in Washington D.C.? I’m not making a political statement at this point. I am just saying that if you really want to get to the root problem of crime, you’re not going to solve it in Washington, D.C. That’s probably the worst place in all of America to solve that problem. The real answer to the perils of our times is that we simply must become more civilized, and the best way to become more civilized is to inculcate virtue in our children. We must pay attention to something that every civilized society has given great importance: instilling in our children some real traits of character. Traits like honesty, compassion, courage, perseverance, altruism and fidelity to one’s commitments.”

Bennett is not the only one saying that. Even such a liberal icon as Newsweek Magazine came out about with it two months ago, on June 13, 1994, in their cover story. This is what really what got my mind moving toward this sermon series. There was a painting of three pictures on the cover—Hillary Clinton, Bill Bennett and Peggy Noon. Underneath the picture it said, “The new virtue-crats.” Not aristocrats, but virtue-crats, holding up those three people who are calling for our nation to return to the teaching of what we used to call old fashioned character and is now called virtue, those traits that Bill Bennett was just talking about. If you read the article, it says that there has been a fraying of the moral fabric of America, that in American today we no longer believe anything is right, we no longer believe anything is wrong, therefore we’re not sure what’s virtuous and what’s not virtuous. The article quotes a survey from this year in which 76% of all Americans surveyed said that America is in a serious moral and spiritual decline. That’s three out of four. (I want to ask what’s wrong with the other 24%!) All you have to do is walk out the door or turn on the TV or read the newspaper or go to a public school or go to a modern office place, and you will see what’s wrong with America today. We have lost the concept of character and virtue.

Have you ever heard that five minute program on the radio by Chuck Colson called “Turning Point"? It’s sort of a commentary. He had a word about this a few weeks ago. He said that America now has gone down to such a point that we basically have done something that has never happened in the whole history of America. Because we have moved away from a moral spiritual foundation, we have now at the end of the 20th century, for the first time raised an entire generation of young people who have no conscience. He said we have a whole generation of teenagers, pre-teens and young adults who have no conscience because their parents have no sense of morality or right and wrong. Since the parents had nothing, they had nothing to pass along to their teenagers. So we are raising a group of young people today who know not the difference between what is right and what is wrong.

Tony Evans, preaching on the same subject, made this observation. The situation in the American cities is this. If you are walking down the street late in the day and you are by yourself and you see a group of teenager kids coming down the street toward you, they are laughing and goofing off and talking, it doesn’t matter the race involved, black, white, Asian or Hispanic, if you’re by yourself and you see a group of kids you don’t know coming down toward you, your first thought is, I’d better cross the street, because I don’t know what these teenagers are going to do. That is why here in Oak Park people are scared to walk the streets. That is why on Harrison Street they are scared. That’s why they have the parents patrolling Riem Park this summer. We have raised a generation without a moral conscience.

What is virtue? A virtue is a universally agreed-upon standard of moral and ethical behavior, like honesty, like compassion. Bill Bennett is right. If we want to change America, what we have to do is go back to the basics, back to things like character and virtue. What has really happened all around us is that our society has lost the concept of absolute standards. We are now living in what Newsweek calls the “age of enlightenment skepticism,” where it’s OK for you, but not OK for me; it’s right for you, but not right for me; wrong for you, but not wrong for me; you’ve got your way and I’ve got my way. There are no standards of absolute right and wrong. But if there are no absolute standards, then dishonesty is just as good as honesty and hatred is just as good as compassion and laziness is just as good as hard work. That’s what happens to a society that loses the concept of what’s right and what’s wrong. If America is going to change, the hearts of people have to change one by one. I think if things in this area on the western side of Chicago are going to change, we have to see a group of people who are living changed lives. We have to see people who hold a different moral standard and values and different kinds of ethical behavior, because we can preach all we want to, but until they see the difference incarnated in us, it will just be talk, another Sunday morning sermon.

So what I want to do in this sermon series is really simple. I wish I had a pulpit to speak to the whole nation, but I don’t. I want to address the inculcation of character and virtue—Street Smart—learning what God has said about what is right and wrong. Practical, down to earth teaching about what is right and what is wrong, and how you ought to treat people and how you ought to live, how your behavior ought to be different if you call yourself a believer in Jesus Christ. For a world that has lost its way, God wrote a book to bring us back. That book is called Proverbs. We don’t often preach on it because its an unusual book. We don’t often do a lot of sermons from this book, but we’re going to be in Proverbs for several sermons. We are going to study what it has to say, learning its principles, trying to become different people so we can make a difference when we go out into the world.

I begin now in Proverbs 1. “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.” If I could say anything about the Book of Proverbs by way of introduction, I think it would be this. I would give you these three words about the book of Proverbs. #1. The Book of Proverbs is practical and down to earth. #2. The Book of Proverbs is timeless. Though it was written 3000 years ago, it speaks to us today. #3. It is amazingly relevant. By the way, the word Proverbs itself in the Latin comes from Pro-verb, and it means in place of words or in place of speaking. What is a proverb? It is a short statement that encapsulates wisdom. In just a few short words it says something that would otherwise take a long sermon to get across. For example: a stitch in time saves nine; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise; trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not onto thine own understanding; in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths; train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Those are proverbs. They are short sayings that take the place of a long explanation. They are practical, timeless, relevant. They will teach you street smart living.

Proverbs are principles, not promises. They tell you how life is supposed to work. Proverbs are short sayings that teach us how to live life skillfully from God’s point of view. Having said that, let’s jump in and look at the four benefits that God promises to you and me from studying this book.

1) You will learn the art of skillful living.

“Wisdom and discipline.” The word for wisdom is “hokma” in the Hebrew. It refers not just to head knowledge or even just heart knowledge. Actually, hokma in the Old Testament was used for anybody who had an unusual skill in any area. For instance, if an artisan was excellent at making something, he was said to have hokma. A composer who could take notes and put them together and make beautiful music was said to be skilled and to have hokma. A person who was a great speaker and who could make his ideas clear was said to have hokma. If he was a good counselor, if he could solve the problems of people, he was said to have hokma. It means to be skilled in some area of life. When you take that definition and apply it to Proverbs 1, wisdom is the ability to live life skillfully from God’s point of view. That is, you’ll be good at living your life, at facing the problems of life, at handling whatever comes your way.

2) You’ll gain mental alertness.

This is something some of us need. Verse 2 says, “For understanding words of insight.” The word understanding means the ability to discriminate between two different things. Look at verse 6, “For understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.” By reading this book you’ll be sharper mentally than you are right now.

3) You’ll develop moral insight.

Look at verse 3, “For acquiring a disciplined and prudent life.” The word prudent means shrewd and clever. I don’t like that because shrewd and clever kind of shade over into the negative area, but in the Hebrew they have a positive sense in this verse. It means street smart. It means that when you’re out on the street you know how to handle yourself. If you have a problem, you know how to get out of it. A person who has prudence is clever and shrewd in the ways of the world. He knows how to do things that need to be done. He defines it here. He says, “Doing what is right and just and fair.” So it’s not just how to do things, but how to do things that are right and just and fair.

4) You begin to grow up.

“For giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young. Let the wise listen and add to their learning. Let the discerning get guidance.” Notice the two groups in verse 4. There are the simple and there are the young. Who are the simple? It does not refer to I.Q. It does not refer to mental ability in any way at all. In the Bible, the word simple refers to people who are naive or gullible. What are the signs that a person is naive or gullible? They are easily tricked, they are a sucker for a sob story, they are easily conned and scammed. They have “SUCKER” written all over their face. And they make the same dumb mistakes over and over again. Sometimes you talk to people and they ask for help. You tell them what went wrong and what they need to do. They agree to do it. But they go out and make the same mistake. They come back and ask what they did wrong. You tell them what they did wrong and tell them what they need to do. They go out and make the same dumb mistake again. And you go through the process again. They get into the same bad relationships over and over again. They make the same bad investments over and over again. They say the same foolish things over and over, they hurt their friends the same way, they make promises they break, they start out trying to do something but they bite off more than they can chew and they have to back off over and over again. Maybe you know somebody like that, or maybe you are like that. This book will teach you how to break the cycle of making the same mistakes over and over again. It will teach you how to get on the right path.

Who are the young? In the biblical sense, the young are people who aren’t old. So who is old? The Bible talks a lot about old people. It talks about the wisdom of the aged and the crown of grey hair being the crown of the godly. That means this: if you follow the Lord from the time you’re young, by the time you’re old you’ll be wise. You may start off foolish, simple and gullible, but by the end you’ll be prudent and disciplined and wise. It’s not chronological, but by the time you’re 40 or 50 you ought to have some street smarts. There is no excuse for being gullible when you’re 45. There are gullible 45-year olds all over the place, people in mid life crises and all that. There is no excuse for it. You ought to wise up and start living the way God says you ought to live. It is not a matter of age, because I have known some 75-year olds who are really quite gullible. They are making the same mistakes they made when they were 25. It’s not strictly chronological, but the older you get, the wiser you ought to become. When you are young, you just don’t know enough yet, you haven’t lived enough, you haven’t seen enough of life yet to be really experienced in street smarts.

How young is young? Let’s say 30 years. You’re young if you’re under 30, because in the Old Testament you had to be 30 to become a priest. If you’re under 20, you’re a child. There is no such category as teenager in the Old Testament. You’re a child, then you’re a young adult, then you’re an adult. If you are young, you really need this book. And the younger you are, the more you need the book, not because of any reason other than when you’re young you haven’t had enough experience to know what life is really all about. That’s why this book is here—to help the young know how to grow up morally, ethically, and spiritually.

Now we come to verse 7, which is really the climax of this whole first passage. Verse 7 is the theme of the book of Proverbs. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” Let’s take the last part of the verse first. “Fools despise wisdom and discipline.” There are about five different words in the book of Proverbs that are translated by the word fool. So when you see the word fool you have to find out what the Hebrew word is because they all have different meanings. There is the young fool, the naive fool, the gullible fool, the angry fool and so on. And there is the arrogant, stubborn, hard-headed fool who will not listen to anybody’s advice. That’s the word used here. It’s the most extreme form of the word.

Here is a two-way test to spot a fool. #1 A fool doesn’t know what he is doing. #2 He doesn’t care. He doesn’t know what is going on around him, and he doesn’t even care enough to wise up and figure it out. There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know.” The wise man has to say that all the time. “I don’t know, would you teach me?” “I don’t know, I’d like to learn.” “I don’t know, can you help me?” But the fool says “I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t want to learn anything and you can’t teach me anything.”

Now let’s look at the beginning of the verse, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The most important word here is “beginning”. It has three meanings. #1 It means that which is first in order of priorities, that which is basic or foundational. #2 The essence or central truth of something. #3 The capstone or the ultimate goal of something. What is the fear of the Lord? It is not cringing terror. It is respecting God for who he is. It is understanding that God is God and you are not. The fear of the Lord is to bow the knee before Almighty God and acknowledge that he made the world and that it runs according to his plan. Respect for God is where knowledge begins, it is where knowledge continues, and it is where all knowledge ends up.

Let me give you my three conclusions.

#1 The road of wisdom leads to a temple, not to a palace. It leads back to God. If your learning leads you away from God, you’re learning the wrong things. If your learning leads you toward greater independence from God and his word, you have been studying at the feet of the wrong teachers, because all true learning begins with the understanding that there is a God to whom all of us must one day give an account.

#2 All education that leaves God out omits the central principle of the universe. Did you know that our public school system was founded 150 years ago by people who, if they were not practicing Christians, at least believed in Judeo-Christian principles and the truth of the Bible as the foundation for all learning? Go back and look it up. The public school system of America was founded on those biblical principles. That is why if you go back to the 19th century and read the McGuffy Readers, when they wanted to teach the ABC’s it was “A—All have sinned,” “B—believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” “C—confess your sins and you will be forgiven.” All education was based on basically biblical foundations.

It occurred to me what would happen up here at this high school where my son just enrolled as a freshman if a teacher stood up the first day of class and said, “Because I am a Christian, I am going to teach you from the standpoint of the Christian faith. I am going to let my Christian faith influence all of my instruction. I am going to be up front about it. You don’t have to believe what I believe, but I am not going to hide my Christian faith any longer. I am going to teach you everything I teach you, whether it’s math or geography or algebra or English or world history or cultural diversity, I’m going to teach it to you from the standpoint of the Christian faith because I believe that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” How long would that teacher last? The students love the protest over the firing of left wing teachers. How much would they protest over that?

Down in Georgia this very week there is a big dispute over the so-called moment of silence. There are teachers who don’t even want to do the moment of silence. Is it any wonder, brothers and sisters, that our young people have no conscience? When you take God out of the equation, there is no basis for a moral conscience. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When you take God out of the process, you are teaching them numbers, reading, writing and arithmetic, but you’re not teaching them the most important thing in all the universe, that there is a God and that he has spoken and that his word is true.

I thank God for every Christian teacher. Those people in public schools have my 100% undivided support. One of the ladies of our chuch just this year started teaching down at Cicero. She came up and said, “Pastor, you have to read this article. It will shock you.” Not much shocks me anymore. I folded it up and put it in my pocket. She said this to me, “You can’t even believe or understand what is going on in the public schools.” I support every coach, every teacher, every faculty and staff member, every administration official, and I say God bless you. You are missionaries. I am totally behind the Christian School, but I am totally behind the teachers and workers and students who are in the public schools. I had one of our teachers say to me a few weeks ago, “You know, I can’t say I’m a Christian, really. But at least I can wear my cross…until they tell me I can’t wear that.”

Chuck Colson is right. When you take God out of society, away from the educational system, what you get is chaos. That’s what we have in America today. No crime bill, no educational bill, no bureaucratic solution can solve that problem until we come back to what God said was the answer 3000 years ago. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” I believe in education. I attended three colleges and four graduate schools of theology. I have a Bachelors degree, a Masters degree, and an earned Doctors degree. There is nobody in here who believes in the value of education more than I do. But if you have a PhD in some field, but you don’t have the fear of the Lord, what you have is an intellectual genius and a spiritual moron. If you have all the book learning and all the degrees but don’t have the fear of the Lord, you would be better to be an illiterate reader of the Bible who at least believes in God. I am in favor of education that also bows the knee before Jesus Christ. If you have to make a choice, choose the fear of the Lord, because without it you’re still in spiritual kindergarten. Without the fear of the Lord you may be an intellectual giant but you are a moral and spiritual pygmy.

#3. God honors those who build their lives on the unshakeable foundation of his unchanging truth. I believe that. I encourage you to do it.

I want to give a closing challenge to four groups of people.

#1 My challenge to the young.

If you’re under 30, you’re young. I want you to come and learn and listen. I am preaching these sermons for you first, for the young generation. I am preaching to my three boys, wherever they are. How many times does Proverbs say,"My son, listen; my son, my son, my son.”

#2 My challenge to the parents or grandparents.

Listen and then pass on what you learn.

#3 My challenge to the men of the congregation.

Let me tell you what that Newsweek article said back in June, from a non-Christian perspective. The article said that one of the problems about teaching virtue is we’ve left it to the women. We have women in Sunday School, women in the church, women doing all the teaching in public school. Newsweek said men have to learn virtue and they have to begin to teach it.

This week Newsweek again wrote an article, this time about Promise Keepers. It was a good article. At the very end, quoting what they called the “pastor of a biker church” in Las Vegas on the importance of men in spiritual leadership, this is what he said, “My grandmother was a praying woman. My granddaddy was a fishing man. It has been that way as long as I can remember. It’s not going to change as long as the women do the praying and the men do the fishing. It’s time for the men to do the praying and the teaching and for men to develop virtue and character and become spiritual leaders in their homes, in the churches, in their places of work, in the school and in our society. It’s not going to change until we men make it change.” Brothers, it has to start with you and me. There is nothing wrong with the women. They have never been the problem. It’s always been us. When we change, our families will change. When we change, our churches will change. When we change, the world around us will change. So men, rise up and take seriously the call to be men of character.

#4 My challenge to all of us.

Pay attention to what God is saying; listen to his word. If you don’t know where else to begin in applying this sermon, let’s do what Billy Graham does. For over 50 years Billy Graham has had a special practice in his devotional life. There are 31 days in the month, and there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs. For 50+ years, Billy Graham has read one chapter a day of the book of Proverbs. If you don’t know where else to begin with this sermon, start right here. Let’s go back to God’s word and let’s get Street Smart.

Proverbs 1:7a FEAR OF THE LORD Where Knowledge Begins

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1:7a

The most important word in this verse is beginning. It has three meanings: (1) that which is first in order of priorities; (2) the essence or central truth of something; (3) the capstone, or the crowning achievement, of something. What is the fear of the Lord? It is not cringing in terror. It is respecting God for who He is. It is understanding that God is God and you are not. Those who fear the Lord bow their knees before almighty God and acknowledge that He made the world and runs it according to His plan. Respect for God is where knowledge begins, where knowledge continues, and where all knowledge ends.

Let’s consider three implications of this truth. First, the road of wisdom leads to a temple, not to a palace. It leads back to God. If your learning leads you away from God, you’re learning the wrong things. If your learning leads you toward greater independence from God and His Word, you have been studying at the feet of the wrong teachers. All true learning begins with the understanding that there is a God to whom all of us must one day give an account.

Second, all education that leaves God out omits the central principle of the universe. Suppose a high school teacher stood up on the first day of class and said, “Because I am a Christian, I am going to teach you from the standpoint of the Christian faith. I am going to let my Christian faith influence all of my instruction. I am going to be up front about it. You don’t have to believe what I believe, but I am not going to hide my Christian faith. Everything I teach you-whether it’s math or geography or algebra or English or world history-will start from the standpoint of the Christian faith because I believe that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” How long would that teacher last? Yet any education that doesn’t begin precisely at that point can hardly be called education at all, for the fear of the Lord is the foundation of all true learning.

Third, education without God produces intellectual giants and moral pygmies. Chuck Colson is right. When you take God away from the educational system, what you get is chaos. No crime bill, no educational bill, no bureaucratic solution can solve that problem until we come back to what God said three thousand years ago: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” If you have four advanced degrees but don’t have the fear of the Lord, you would be better off as an uneducated reader of the Bible who at least believes in God. I am in favor of education that bows the knee to Jesus Christ. If you have to make a choice, choose the fear of the Lord, for without it you’re still in spiritual kindergarten.

Spirit of Truth, help me to know God so that through Him I might understand the universe He created. Amen.

Do you “fear the Lord"? What does that phrase mean to you?

How can Christian students and faculty members take their faith with them into the public school system?

Proverbs 1:10 TEMPTATION Just Say No

My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them. Proverbs 1:10

Playwright Oscar Wilde once jokingly remarked, “I can resist everything except temptation.” We smile when we read those words because they speak an important truth about the human condition. Temptation pays a visit to each of us every day, and most of us struggle to say no.

Temptation is not new in any sense. Temptation is the same for us as it was for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Satan tempts us today in the same way he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. From the very beginning, a battle has raged for the souls of men and women, a battle that touches all of us sooner or later.

Think how many temptations you and I face in an ordinary day. Staying in bed late-the temptation to laziness. Dressing carelessly-the temptation to sloppiness. Growling at the breakfast table-the temptation to unkindness. Arguing over who should change the baby this time-the temptation to selfishness. Starting work ten minutes late-the temptation to slothfulness. Losing your temper when a co-worker crashes your computer- the temptation to impatience. Flirting with that good-looking woman, taking a second look at that good-looking man-the temptation to lust. Refusing to speak to a person who has hurt you-the temptation to malice. Repeating a juicy story of your neighbor’s misfortune-the temptation to gossip. Taking a secret drink at a party- the temptation to drunkenness. Lying awake at night thinking sensual thoughts-the temptation to impurity. Taking your anger out on the children after a hard day- the temptation to cruelty. Going out to eat when you can’t afford it-the temptation to self-indulgence. Having a second helping and then a third-the temptation to gluttony. Firing off a hasty letter to a friend who hurt you-the temptation to revenge.

It’s important to remember that the issue is not the particular temptation we face but how we respond to it. God is able to use even the worst temptation to bring us to the place where we will begin to grow spiritually. When Joseph ran away from Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39), he ended up in jail, but the whole experience produced in him the strength of character that prepared him to become the second most important ruler in Egypt. Lest we miss the point, let’s remember that temptation itself is not evil; only the act of yielding is sinful. When we resist, we actually grow stronger.

Not long ago a friend commented that during a tense exchange with her teenage daughter, she “bit her tongue” instead of blowing her top. Every temptation-whether large or small-requires a moment-by-moment decision. When your boss asks you to fudge the figures on the monthly financial report, you only have a few seconds to decide how to respond. When you are surfing the Internet and happen to run across a site filled with pornography, you must choose immediately whether or not you’ll click the mouse button. Sometimes you truly will have to bite your tongue, and then bite it again to keep from sinning.

When temptation comes knocking at your door, just say no.

Lord, give me the strength to say no when temptation knocks at my door today. Amen.

Name the greatest areas of temptation in your life. Which ones are currently giving you the greatest difficulty?

How has the Lord demonstrated His power to help you overcome a particular temptation?

PROVERBS 3

Proverbs 3:5-6 When You Need to Know, You'll Know

October 2007 – “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

These two verses are among the most beloved in the entire Bible. You may have memorized them in Sunday school when you were a child. Or perhaps you made a cross-stitch pattern of these words and hung it on your wall. Or you may have learned to sing these words as part of a contemporary worship chorus. British Bible teacher G. Campbell Morgan said that when he was leaving home for the first time, his father pressed a note into his hand. When Campbell Morgan unfolded it, he discovered it contained just one verse of Scripture: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Looking back years later, he noted that his father had written that verse with no accompanying comment. No comment, he said, except the comment of his father’s godly life.

This text is striking in its simplicity. There is nothing difficult about it. It is so simple that it can be understood by the youngest believer, and yet it is a comfort to the oldest saint of God. And it is good for everyone in between. These words cling to the soul because they speak to a great need we all feel–the need for guidance. Proverbs 3:5-6 suggests the basis on which guidance will come. It is a short course in knowing God’s will for your life. If you learn what this passage is teaching and begin to apply it to your daily life, it will make a profound difference when you need to make a tough decision.

Five Key Words

I start with the assumption that some of us have known these verses for a long time. Sometimes when we know a passage so well, we almost know it too well. We have heard it so often that we have never stopped to think about what it is really saying. Not long ago I had a chance to study these verses in depth for the first time. As I did, I discovered that five key words unlock the message of this text. Let’s take those key words one by one and see what each one teaches us.

Trust

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart.” The word “trust” in Hebrew means “to lean with the full body,” “to lay upon,” “to rest the full weight upon.” In our thinking the word trust means to rely upon or to have confidence in. But the Hebrew word is stronger. It has the idea of stretching yourself out upon a bed or resting on a hard surface. The word means to put your full weight on something. To trust in the Lord is to rest your whole weight upon him–to depend on him completely.

Lean

“Lean not on your own understanding.” To “lean” means to rest upon something for partial support. Leaning is what you do when you walk with a cane or hold on to a walker because you are unsteady. This word is used for leaning against a tree or a stone cliff. You lean on something when you are not strong enough to stand alone.

Understanding

“Lean not on your own understanding.” “Understanding” refers to the mental processes by which you analyze a problem, break it down into its smaller parts, and then make a decision about what you are going to do. Early in the morning when you make a list of all the things you have to do that day, you use your understanding to sort out your priorities. Or it’s what you use on Sunday night when you map out the upcoming week. That’s understanding. You use it any time you plan your life or solve a problem. Understanding is the decision-making ability that God has given you.

When you take the word “lean” and bring in the idea of “understanding,” then add the negative, the meaning is something like this: “Use all your mental powers, but do not lean on them for total support.” Don’t trust in your own ability to figure out your life. Lean instead on the Lord! Rest your weight on Him!

Acknowledge

“In all your ways acknowledge him.” This word deserves extra consideration because the word “acknowledge” can be hard to understand. In the Hebrew this word is an imperative–a command. You could translate this by saying, “In all your ways know him.” The Hebrew word means to know deeply and intimately. It’s the kind of knowing that comes with personal experience. It means to know something through and through. For instance, somebody might say, “Do you know the President of the United States?” I would say, “Sure, I know the President.” If the President walked in the room, I would know who he is. If I heard his voice coming over the TV, I would recognize it. Or if I saw his picture on the front page of the newspaper, I would know it was the President. Now, I don’t really know him. I can’t pick up the phone and call the White House and say, “Mr. President, this is Ray Pritchard. Let’s do lunch this week.” He won’t take my call because I don’t know him personally. I just know him at the level of head knowledge. I don’t know him intimately or on a friendship level.

There is another kind of knowing. My wife and I know each other in a completely different way. We’ve known each other intimately for over thirty years. After being together that long, strange things begin to happen. I will be sitting in the car thinking about a song–and she’ll start singing it. How does that happen? I don’t know. Or I will be thinking about a question, and before I can ask it, she’ll blurt out the answer. How does she do that? I don’t know. Or I’ll start a sentence, and to my great consternation she will finish the sentence before I do. When I say, “How can you do that?” she says with a smile, “I know what you are thinking even before you say it.” Things like that happen to all married couples eventually. When you live together for many years, you get to know each other at such a deep level that you actually begin to know what the other person is thinking even as he or she is thinking it. You know what your wife is going to say before she says it. You know what your husband is going to do before he does it. You have a deep, personal, intimate knowledge of each other.

Seen in that light, we might translate verse 5 this way: “In all your ways know God intimately … deeply … personally. When you know God that way in every area of your life, he will direct your paths.”

Direct

“He will make your paths straight.” That brings me to the fifth word, which in the King James Version is translated, “He shall direct your paths.” That isn’t bad. But I think the ESV translation is a little better: “he will make straight your paths.” Imagine that you are driving along a road that appears to be impassable. The road winds through the mountains and down into the swamps. It seems to have a thousand switchbacks. As you travel on, you discover that portions of the road are washed out, others are filled with potholes, and still others are blocked by huge boulders. In some places the road apparently becomes a dead end. This is the road of your life. As you look at it, it appears to be covered with boulders and rocks. Some parts of it seem to be filled with potholes; other sections appear to be going nowhere. That’s the way life is.

Here is God’s message to you from Proverbs 3:5-6. If you will know God in every area of your life, he will take personal responsibility to make your way smooth and straight. He will remove the obstacles if they need to be removed. He will fill in the potholes if they need to be filled. He will redirect the detour so that what seemed to be a dead-end turns out to be the shortest way to reach your destination. All you have to do is trust in the Lord. Lay yourself completely on him for full support. Don’t lean for support on your own human understanding. In all your ways know God intimately. He will take the path of your life that seems to go up and down and around and sometimes seems to curve backwards, and He will make your way straight. That’s the promise of Almighty God to you.

Philip Yancey’s Definition

But it won’t always be easy or come quickly. For most of us, most of the time, the exact opposite will be true. Discovering God’s will takes times as the events of life unfold before us, often in ways that seem to make no sense at all. Rarely will we know the whole plan in advance. As I sit at my computer and ponder the course of my life over the last decade, I find it easier to recall the hard times than the good times. A very close friend died suddenly and without warning. Our youngest son went through a harrowing medical crisis seven years ago. Marlene was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 2005.

But that’s only one side of the ledger. In the last decade our three boys graduated from high school. Josh graduated from college, went to China, came back to America, married Leah, and now they are teaching English in China. Mark graduated from college, spent two years in China where he met Vanessa, and they got married after coming back to the States several months ago. Nick graduated from college last May and is now pursuing his master’s degree. I am blessed with a wife of amazing gifts who still loves me after thirty-three years of marriage. After serving many years in the pastorate, we felt led of God to start Keep Believing Ministries. My health is good. Marlene got an “all-clear” at the two-year mark of her breast cancer follow-up. So what do I have to complain about? Not much at all. Ten years ago I had no clue what the next decade would hold. Looking back, I’m happy that I didn’t know anything in advance.

My favorite definition of faith comes from Philip Yancey who said, “Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” We want to know why things happen the way they do and why couldn’t things have happened some other way. It would be wrong to say that faith provides all the answers. It doesn’t. Perhaps in heaven we will fully understand, or in heaven our desire to know will be transformed by our vision of the Lord. By faith we see things that are invisible to others and by faith we believe in advance those things that right now make no sense but one day will make perfect sense because we will view them in reverse.

The world says, “Seeing is believing.” God says, “Believing is seeing.” We believe, therefore we see.

When You Need to Know, You’ll Know

I saw this principle in action when a young couple, recently graduated from college, came to see me. They had just finished the first part of a training course with a missions organization in the Chicago area. Their advisor told them they needed to talk with their pastor before making the next step. So they came to see me with the good news that God was calling them to the mission field. “Where do you want to go?” I asked. “We don’t know,” the husband replied. So I looked at the wife and she smiled in agreement. “You mean you have no idea at all?” “No idea at all.” Then I held up my hand and moved it as if I were twirling a globe. “You mean that in all the world, you don’t have even a tiny idea where you would like to go?” “No.” That does make it difficult when you are trying to raise funds because they couldn’t answer the first question: “Where do you plan to go?” I sat there silently for moment, pondering the situation. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. Suddenly I had a flash of inspiration. Looking right at that young couple, I said, “I’ve got the answer. The reason you don’t know is because you don’t need to know because if you needed to know, you would know, but since you don’t know, you must not need to know, because if you had needed to know by now, you would know by now, but since you don’t know, you must not need to know because when you need to know, you’ll know. If God is God, that must be true.” They were dazzled and speechless, and I was pretty amazed myself because all of that just came popping out at the spur of the moment. We prayed and they left my office, still smiling.

Not long after that, I happened to meet a young lady whose job as a music librarian was about to end in a few months. Our paths crossed in the sanctuary lobby between services. When I asked her what she planned to do next, she said she had no idea. So on the spur of the moment I decided to try it again. “The reason you don’t know is because you don’t need to know because if you needed to know, you would know, but since you don’t know, you must not need to know, because if you had needed to know by now, you would know by now, but since you don’t know, you must not need to know because when you need to know, you’ll know. If God is God, that must be true.” She laughed and said that sounded right. And off she went.

Several weeks later when I saw her again, she had a big smile on her face. “Pastor Ray, you won’t believe what happened. I was talking with a friend about things and my friend asked me if I had ever considered going to the mission field. I said no and she said I should think about it. But I’m a music librarian. What would I do on the mission field? But a few days later I happened to pass by a missions display and saw a representative sitting there. Normally I would just walk right by but this time I stopped to talk. When I asked if they ever needed librarians on the mission field, the man said, ‘Absolutely! We could use some librarians right now.’ So I started doing some research and on a website I discovered a Christian school in Kenya that needed a librarian starting exactly when I finish my current job. I e-mailed them, they e-mailed back, and they checked my references. And guess what, Pastor Ray? I got the job! I’m moving to Nairobi, Kenya, in late July to get started as the librarian for a Christian school.”

Not long after that, the young couple came back to see me with similar good news. “We’re going to Russia.” No kidding. Russia, that’s great. Did you know about this when you came to see me? “No, we had no idea.” So where in Russia are you going? “We’re going to the Black Sea.” That’s fantastic. What are you going to do there? “We’re going to teach in a school and help with church planting.” When I asked them how they ended up going to the Black Sea to teach and do church planting, they told me a story that was so detailed that it was positively Byzantine in its complexity. They met someone who knew someone who “happened” to know a woman whom they met almost by chance. She came over to talk to them and one thing led to another and now there were going to Russia. I couldn’t draw it on a chart if I tried. But they were so happy about it and I was happy for them. They are currently involved in their ministry near the Black Sea teaching and helping plant churches.

I am amazed as I thought about how God led that young woman and that young couple to Kenya and Russia, respectively. But on second thought, why be amazed? That’s how God works, isn’t it? When you need to know, you’ll know. Not one day sooner, not one day later. And if today you don’t know what to do next, it’s because you truly don’t need to know. Because if you needed to know, you would know. If God is God, that must be true.

That’s why the search for God’s will is so exhilarating. When God is leading the way, every obstacle will eventually be removed. The path may have many twists and turns, but in the end he will make your path straight. You have his word on it.

“Bless It All, Lord”

So many people struggle at this very point. The Bible says, in all your ways know God intimately, know him deeply, know him personally. Know him to that depth. Know him with that kind of intimacy. So often we skip this. When we get up in the morning, we say, “O God, help me. I’m busy today. I’ve got so much to do. Lord, I don’t even have time to pray–so here’s my list. Bless it all, Lord. I’ve got to go.” We throw our list up toward heaven while we run out the door. What we are saying is, “God, here’s my schedule. Please rubber-stamp it with your blessing.” And we wonder why our days are filled with frustration.

Many of us go through life leaning almost completely on our own understanding. We like to be in control. I number myself among that group. I like to know what’s going on. I like to be in charge of my own destiny. This passage is a warning to all of us who lay out life the way we want it and then say, “Here, God, stamp it with your blessing because I am going to go out and do it for you.” God says, “I don’t work that way. Know me first. Put me first in everything, including all your plans, all your thinking, and all your scheming. Put me first. And I then will make your way straight.”

Do you want to know the secret of knowing the will of God? Here it is: in everything you do, know God. But we all want a formula. “I don’t like that. Give me a formula. Give me three steps.” Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us that the secret is a relationship with God. Let’s talk about Joe, who has been dating Shirley for nine months. When he picks her up for their Friday night date, she asks the logical question: “Where are we going tonight?” “I don’t know. I want to take you someplace you like. I wish you would give me a three-step formula so I could know where you really want to go on Friday nights.” How would Shirley feel? Angry, upset, frustrated. “How is it that we’ve been dating every week for nine months and you don’t know what I like and don’t like? Where have you been all this time?” She has a right to be angry.

We want to reduce our relationship with God to a formula. God says, “Know Me. Spend time with Me. Put Me first in every area of your life because when you do that I will take care of all those details.” This is a revolutionary way of looking at life.

Minnesota or South Carolina?

We’re hung up on the decisions of life. Should I go here? Should I go there? Should I live in Minnesota? Should I live in South Carolina? Should I marry Jane or Sue or Ellen or Sherry? Should I take the job, or should I say no? Here is the teaching of this passage stated in one sentence: God is much less concerned with what you do than with what kind of person you are. So when you say, “Lord, should I go to Minnesota or should I go to South Carolina?” you are asking the wrong question. The question is not where are you going to go, but what kind of person you are going to be wherever you go. The question is not, who should I marry, but what kind of person am I going to be no matter whom I marry?

While you are wrestling with the question of relocation, God wants to know, “Are you going to be my man or my woman whether you go to Minnesota or South Carolina or whether you stay in Santa Fe?” If you decide to put God first in everything, it doesn’t matter where you live. And if you are not going to put God first in everything, it doesn’t matter where you live either. We focus all our energy on decisions. But God says, “Know me and I will take care of the details.” We want specific direction. God says, “In all your ways know me, and everything else will fall into place.”

A few years ago I heard someone say that most of our decisions won’t matter at all in 10,000 years. That blew my mind at first. What a liberating way to look at life. The next time you face a tough decision, ask yourself, will it really matter in 10,000 years? Ninety-nine percent of what you worried about this week won’t matter three weeks from now, much less 10,000 years from now. In the year 2452 it won’t matter whether you lived in Minnesota, Santa Fe, or South Carolina. But what will matter is that you have decided in all your ways to know God. That is what will really matter. All these trivial, piddly details that just soak up so much energy will in that day be seen for what they really are–trivial, piddly details.

In light of this text, what is the will of God for your life? To know God in everything. To see him present everywhere and in everything, and to live in total surrender to him. The most important thing is not the decisions you face; the most important thing is your relationship with God. And the closer you get to God, the easier it will be for God to guide you in the way he wants you to go.

“Lord, Here Are My Hands”

Knowing God means using all your energies for him.

Lord, here are my hands.

Lord, here are my lips.

Lord, here are my eyes.

Lord, here are my ears.

Lord, here are my feet.

Knowing God means taking all that you have and placing it at the disposal of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Proverbs 3:5-6 ends with a promise: “He will make your paths straight.” God is able to remove the obstacles in front of you. He is able to fill in the potholes and turn a dead-end into a four-lane highway. God rewards those who show regard for him by leading them straight to the right end and removing all the obstacles along the way. We rarely see this in advance. We mostly see the potholes. The boulders block our view. Many times it seems as if there is no path at all. But he will make a way. No one can say how he will do it. There are thousands of ways in which God leads his children. He leads us through delays, detours, miracles, the advice of friends, unexpected opportunities, suddenly closed doors, answered prayer, unanswered prayer, inner impressions, and a still, small voice in the night.

You don’t see it on this side. On this side you see the problems. But when you know God, he leads you step by step. When the journey is done, you will look back and say, “I don’t know how I got from there to here, but I do know this: Jesus led me all the way.”

“How Did We Get Here?”

A friend of ours used those very words to describe a months-long ordeal that involved a change of jobs, a cross-country move, and a total redirection of her life. As the time drew near, the emotional stress of leaving the familiar for the unknown almost overwhelmed her. I think she would probably say that making this particular move was the single most difficult thing she has ever had to do. All along the way she was torn with inner doubts–wanting to do the right thing, but not sure if she was. When I saw her around a campfire one night there were tears in her eyes. “Are we doing the right thing? I’m not sure.” Then two weeks later she took a deep breath and moved to her new home. Just before leaving, she made an interesting comment: “How did we get here? In my heart I believe we’re doing the right thing, but looking back I’m not sure how we got from Point A to Point B. Only God could have done it because I never would have done it myself.” But she smiled when she said it.

Doing God’s will often involves great uncertainty and periods of deep doubt. But if you are willing to do what he wants you to do, he then takes responsibility to reach into the chaos of life and lead you step by step to the place where he wants you to be.

Life is a mysterious journey, full of unexpected twists and turns. The path ahead is a mystery to us all. No one can say for sure what is around the next bend. It may be a smooth road through a lovely valley or we may discover that the bridge is washed out and we have to find a way to cross a deep river. Often the road will seem to disappear or it may suddenly seem to go in three different directions and we won’t know which way to go. But there is One who knows the way because the past, present, and future are all the same to him and the darkness is as the light of day. He knows the way we should go. He promised to direct your path and he will do it. You can count on it.

When you need to know, you’ll know. If God is God, that must be true.

Proverbs 3:5-6 TRUST Learning to Lean on the Lord

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

These two verses are among the most beloved in all the Bible. You may have memorized them in Sunday school when you were a child. Or perhaps you made a cross-stitch pattern of these words and hung it on your wall. Or you may have learned to sing these words as part of a contemporary worship chorus.

These words cling to the soul because they speak to a great need we all feel-the need for guidance. Proverbs 3:5-6 suggests the basis on which guidance will come. It is a short course in knowing God’s will for your life. If you will learn what this passage is teaching and begin to apply it in your daily life, it will make a profound difference when you need to make a tough decision.

Not long ago I had a chance to study these verses for the first time. As I did I discovered that six key words unlock the message of this text. The word trust in Hebrew means “to lean with the full body,” “to lay upon,” “to rest the full weight upon.” To trust in the Lord is to rest your whole weight upon Him.

To lean means to rest upon something for partial support. Understanding refers to the mental processes by which you analyze a problem, break it down into its smaller parts, and then make a decision about what you are going to do. To acknowledge means to know deeply and intimately. It’s the kind of knowing that comes with personal experience. The words make straight picture a road that appears to be impassable. It winds through the mountains and down into the swamps. It seems to have a thousand switchbacks. Portions of the road are washed out, others are filled with potholes, still others are blocked by huge boulders. In some places the road apparently becomes a dead end.

It is the road of your life. As you look at it, it appears to be covered with boulders and rocks. Some parts of it seem to be filled with potholes; other sections appear to be going nowhere. That’s the way life is.

Here is God’s message to you from Proverbs 3:5-6. If you will know God in every area of your life, He will take personal responsibility to make your way smooth and straight. He will remove the obstacles if they need to be removed. He will fill in the potholes if they need to be filled. He will redirect the detour so that what seemed to be a dead end turns out to be the shortest way to reach your destination.

All you have to do is trust in the Lord. Lay yourself completely on Him for full support. Don’t lean for support on your own human understanding. In all your ways know God intimately. He will take the path of your life-which seems to go up and down and around and sometimes seems to curve backwards-and will make your way straight. That’s the promise of almighty God to you.

Lord, teach me to trust You even when I cannot see around the next bend in the road. Amen.

Name a time when God took the road of your life and “made your way straight.”

What obstacles keep you from trusting God on a daily basis? What does it mean to know God deeply and intimately?

Proverbs 3:5-6 How to Make a Tough Decision

Sermon 1 of 4 from the Knowing God's Will series -

November 1993 – "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

These two verses are among the most beloved in all the Bible. Many of us memorized them in Sunday School years ago. In any listing of favorite Bible passages Proverbs 3:5-6 would rank near the top. I’ll bet there are some of you who have those two verses on a plaque in your home somewhere to remind you of their great truth.

G. Campbell Morgan, world-famous Bible teacher of another generation, said that when he was leaving home for the first time to go out on his own, his father pressed a note into his hand. When Campbell Morgan unfolded it, he discovered it contained just one verse of scripture: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Looking back years later, he noted there was that text and no comment. No comment, he said, except the comment of my father’s godly life.

This text is striking in its simplicity. There is nothing difficult about it. It is so simple that it can be understood by the youngest believer and yet it is a comfort to the oldest saint of God. And it is good for all Christians in-between. It has been the hope and encouragement of countless multitudes of God’s people across the centuries.

A Short Course in God’s Will

Because it is utterly simple, we may prove it true any time we like. These words cling to the soul because they speak to a great need we all feel—the need for guidance. After all, there is no question greater than this: What is the will of God for my life? I do not know a Christian who does not wrestle with God’s will sooner or later:

—"I wonder if I should get married. And if I should, should I marry Molly, Mabel, Melba or Marlene?”

—"I’ve been offered a new job. Should I take it or wait for a better offer?”

—"I’ve been accepted at two colleges. Which one should I attend?”

—"Should I go back to school for my master’s degree?”

—"Should I try out for cheerleader?”

—"What courses should I take next semester?”

—"Lord, what do you want me to do?”

Proverbs 3:5-6 suggests the basis on which guidance will come. It is a short course in knowing God’s will for your life. If you will learn what this passage really is teaching, and begin to apply it in your daily life, it will make a profound difference when you come to make those really tough decisions.

I am beginning this study with the assumption that most of us have known these verses for a long time. Sometimes when we know a passage so well, we almost know it too well. We know it so much that we really have never stopped to think about what its words are really saying.

Five Key Words

Not long ago I had a chance to study these verses for the first time ever. As I did, I discovered that five key words unlock the message of this text. Let’s take those key words one by one and see what each one teaches us.

1. Trust.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” That’s a word that in Hebrew means “to lean with the full body,” “to lay upon,” “to rest the full weight upon.” In our thinking the word trust means to rely upon or to have confidence in. But the Hebrew word is stronger. It is the idea of stretching yourself out upon a bed or laying on a hard surface. The word means to put your full weight prostrate on something. To trust in the Lord is to lay your whole weight upon him.

2. Lean.

“Lean not to your own understanding.” It means to rest upon for partial support. Leaning is what you do when you walk with a cane or grab a walker because you are unsteady. It is used in the Old Testament for leaning against a tree or a stone cliff. You lean on something when you are not strong enough to stand alone.

3. Understanding.

“Lean not on your own understanding.” The word has to do with your mental faculties. It refers to the mental processes by which you analyze a problem, break it down into its smaller parts, and then you make a decision about what you are going to do. It’s what you use early in the morning when you make a list on a three-by-five card of all the things you have to do that day. You use your understanding to chart out the priorities of each day. Or it’s what you use on Sunday night when you map out the oncoming week. That’s understanding. You use it any time you plan your life or solve a problem. So the word understanding refers to those mental processes by which you look at a problem, you analyze it, and you decide how you are going to solve it. It is also how you set up the order of your life. It is not a bad word. Understanding is simply the decision-making ability that God has given you.

When you take the word “lean,” put it with the word “understanding” and add the negative, you get an idea like this: “Use all your mental powers, but do not lean on them for total support.” Don’t trust in your own ability to figure out your life. Lean instead on the Lord! Rest your weight on him!

4. Acknowledge.

I am going to stop and say a little bit more about this word because I think that “acknowledge” doesn’t do full justice to the original text. In the Hebrew this word is an imperative. It is a command. It is the imperative form of the verb to know. You could translate this by saying, “In all your ways know him.”

The underlying Hebrew word means to know deeply and intimately. It’s the kind of knowing that comes with personal experience. It means to know something through and through.

“Do You Know the President?”

For instance, somebody might say, “Do you know the President of the United States?” I would say, “Sure, I know the President of the United States.” What I mean is if the President walked in, I would know who he is. If I were in a room and heard his voice coming over the TV, I would recognize the distinctive voice of the President of the United States. Or if I picked up a newspaper, I might see his picture on the front page, and I would say, “I know who that is, I know that man. That is the President of the United States.”

Now, I don’t really know him. I can’t pick up the phone and call the White House, and say, “Bill, this is Ray. Let’s do lunch this week.” He won’t take my call because I don’t know him personally. I just know him at the level of head knowledge. I don’t know him intimately or on a friendship level.

Singing the Same Song

There is another way of knowing. I know my wife and she knows me in a completely different way. We’ve known each other intimately for 20 years. After being together that long, strange things begin to happen. You will be sitting there thinking about a song. And she’ll start singing it. How does that happen? I don’t know. Or you will be thinking about a question, and before you can ask it, she’ll blurt out the answer. How did she do that? I don’t know. Or you’ll start a sentence, and to your great irritation, she will finish the sentence before you will. When you say, “How can you do that?” she says with a smile, “I know what you are thinking even before you say it.”

Things like that happen to all married couples eventually. When you live together that long, you get to know each other at such a deep level, that you just don’t know each other on the outside, you actually begin to know what the other person is thinking as they are thinking it, you know what they are going to say before they say it, you know what they are going to do before they do it because you have a deep, personal, intimate knowledge of each other.

Seen in that light, we might translate verse 5 this way: “In all your ways know God intimately. In all your ways know God deeply. In all your ways know God personally. In every area of your life know God intimately, deeply and personally because when you know God that way in every area of your life, then he will direct your paths.”

5. Direct.

“He will make your paths straight.” That brings me to the fifth word, which in the King James is translated “He shall direct your paths.” That is not bad. But I think the NIV is a little better: “He will make your paths straight.”

It has the idea of a road which appears to be impassable. The road winds through the mountains and goes down into the swamps. It seems to have a thousand switchbacks. As you study it, you discover that portions of the road are washed out, others are filled with potholes, still others with huge boulders. In some places the road apparently becomes a dead end.

It is the road of your life. That’s the road you are traveling right now. As you look at it, it appears to be covered with boulders and rocks. It appears to be filled with potholes. It appears to be a road to nowhere. That’s the way life is. Some of you have come through a week filled with boulders. And you spent your whole week trying to drive around them. And as far as you can see in the future, the road is filled with nothing but potholes and nothing but sewage in the bottom of those potholes. So you’ve come out of the tough week, and you are not looking to the week ahead with any excitement because the road seems filled with obstacles and potholes.

He Will Move the Boulders

Here is God’s message to you from Proverbs 3:5-6. If you will know God in every area of your life, he himself will take personal responsibility to make your way smooth and straight. He will remove the obstacles if they need to be removed. He will fill in the potholes if they need to be filled. He will redirect the detour so that what seemed to be a dead-end turns out to be the shortest way to reach your destination.

All you have to do is trust in the Lord. Lay yourself completely on him for full support upon him. Don’t lean for support on your own human understanding. In all your ways know God intimately. He will take the path of your life which seems to go up and down and around and sometimes seems to curve backwards , and he will make your way straight. That’s the promise of Almighty God to you.

“Bless It All, Lord.”

You are trusting when you are waiting on God to show you the next step you should take. So many of us don’t do that. The Bible says in all your ways know him intimately, know him deeply, know him personally. As a man knows a woman, know God that way. Know him to that depth. Know him to that kind of fellowship and that kind of intimacy.

So often we skip this. When we get up in the morning, and we say, “O God, help us. I’m busy today. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do. Lord, I don’t even have time to pray so here’s my list. Bless it all, Lord. I’ve got to go.” We throw our list up toward heaven while we run out the door. What we are saying is, “God, here’s my schedule, rubber stamp it with your blessing.” And we wonder why our days are filled with frustration.

Many of us want to go through life leaning almost completely upon our own understanding. A lot of us are basically control freaks. I number myself among that group. I like to know what’s going on. I like to be in charge of my own destiny. This passage is a warning to all of us control freaks who lay out life the way we want it and then say, “Here, God, you stamp it with your blessing because I am going to go out and do it for you.”

God says, “I don’t work that way. You know me first. Put me first in everything including all your plans and all your thinking and all your scheming. Put me first. And I then will make your way straight.”

We Want a Formula, God Wants a Relationship

Do you want to know the secret of knowing the will of God? Here it is. In everything you do, know God. But we all want a formula. “Pastor Ray, I don’t like that. Give me a formula. Give me three steps.” Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us that the secret is a relationship with God. But we want a formula.

Let’s talk about Joe who has been dating Shirley for nine months. They have a date on Friday night. When he picks her up, she asks the logical question: “Where are we going tonight?” “I don’t know. I want to take you someplace you like. I wish you would give me a three-step formula so I could know where you really want to go on Friday nights.” How would Shirley feel? Angry, upset, frustrated. “We’ve been dating every week for nine months. And you don’t know what I like and don’t like? Where have you been all this time?”

We want to reduce our relationship with God to a formula. Give me three steps so I will know what to do. God says, “Know me. Spend time with me. Put me first in every area of your life because when you do that I will take care of all those details.” Wow! Brothers and sisters, do you understand that this is a revolutionary way of looking at life?

Minnesota or South Carolina?

Here is the teaching of this passage stated in one sentence: God is much less concerned with what you do than with what kind of person you are. He is much less concerned with what you do; he is much more concerned with what kind of person you are. So when you say, “Lord, should I go to Minnesota or should I go to South Carolina?” you are asking the wrong question. The question is not where are you going to go, but what kind of person are you going to be wherever you go. The question is not: Who should I marry, but what kind of person am I going to be no matter who I marry?

Wasting Energy on the Wrong Questions

While you are wrestling with the question of relocation, God wants to know, “Are you going to be my man whether you go to Minnesota or South Carolina or whether you stay here in Oak Park?” If you decide to put God first in everything, it doesn’t matter whether you do that in Minnesota or South Carolina or Oak Park. And if you are not going to put God first in everything, it doesn’t matter whether you do that in Minnesota or South Carolina or Oak Park.

We focus all our energy on decisions. God says, Know me. And I will take care of the details. We want specific direction. God says, In all your ways know me and everything else will fall into place.

What Difference Will It Make in 10,000 Years?

That is a revolutionary way of looking at life. A few years ago I heard Vernon Grounds say that most of our decisions won’t matter at all in 10,000 years. That blew my mind at first. What a liberating way to look at life. The next time you face a tough decision, ask yourself, Will it really matter in 10,000 years? And 99 percent of the stuff you worried about this week won’t even matter three weeks from now much less than 10,000 years from now. In the year 1994, it won’t matter whether you lived in Minnesota, Oak Park, or South Carolina. But what will matter 10,000 times 10,000 years from now is that you have decided in all your ways to know God, to put him first in everything. That is what will really matter. All these trivial, piddly details that just soak up so much energy will in that day be seen for what they really are—trivial, piddly details.

In light of this text, what is the will of God for your life? To know God in everything. To see him present everywhere and in everything.

Here in the sanctuary, there in the workplace.

Here when we sing, there when we work.

Here when we worship, there when we study.

Here when we pray, there when we play.

Here when we clap, there when we date.

Here when we listen, there when we speak.

God is saying, “I want you to know me just as much out there as you do in here. I want you to know me on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday just as much as you do on Sunday morning at 10:45 AM.” That’s crucial. When you decide to know God in every area of life, he takes charge of the details.

So the most important thing is not just the decisions you are facing. The most important thing is your relationship with God. And the closer you get to God, the easier it will be for God to guide you in the way he wants you to go.

Lord, Here Are My Hands

Knowing God means using all your energies for him:

Lord, here are my hands. Use them to do your will this week.

Lord, here are my lips. Speak through them this week.

Lord, here are my eyes. I am going to be watching for you this week.

Lord, here are my ears. I am going to be listening for you this week.

Lord, here are my feet. I am going to be going for you this week.

Knowing God means taking all that you have and placing it at the disposal of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

Rarely Seen in Advance

Our text ends with a promise. “He will make your paths straight.” God is able to remove the obstacles in front of you. He is able to fill in the potholes and turn a dead-end into a short-cut. God rewards those who show regard to him by leading them straight to the right end and removing all the obstacles along the way.

We rarely see this in advance. We mostly see the potholes. The boulders block our view. Many times it seems as if there is no path at all. But he will make a way.

No one can say how he will do it. There are thousands of ways in which God leads his children. He leads us through delays, detours, miracles, the advice of friends, unexpected opportunities, suddenly closed doors, answered prayer, unanswered prayer, inner impressions, and a still small voice in the night. The old hymn says, “All the way my Savior leads me, What have I to ask beside? Can I doubt his tender mercy, he through life has been my guide.”

You don’t see it on this side. On this side you see the problems. But when you know God, he leads you step by step. When the journey is done, you look back and say, “I don’t know how I got from there to here, but I do know this: Jesus led me all the way.”

This verse is true. Thousands of saints living and dead can testify to that fact. He will lead the way. He will remove the obstacles. You will have a straight path for your journey.

The Final Secret

One more thought and I am done. What is the secret of this text? One word: He shall direct thy path. Who is the “he” of Proverbs 3:6? The “he” is the God of the Bible. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of Moses. The God of Israel. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The God who spoke and a thousand million galaxies sprang into being. The God who has numbered the grains of sand. The God who knows the hair on your head. The God who sees the sparrow when it falls. The God who holds the universe in his hands. That God, the Almighty, Transcendent God of the universe, he will direct your paths. That’s the God who says, “If you will but know me, I will take care of the details. Trust me. Rest your full weight on me. Know me in everything. And I, the God of the universe, will direct your paths.”

If God has said he will lead you, then why are you so fearful? If God has said he will take up your cause, then why are you worried about tomorrow?

No evil can battle if he leads the way.

No enemy can stop you if he leads the way.

No opposition can derail you if he leads the way.

No obstacle can stand forever if he leads the way.

In all your ways know him, and he shall direct your paths. He has promised, and it is so. It may not be easy. It may not be exactly the way you want to go. It may not be what seems to you the shortest way. But he will direct your paths.

All he says is “Know me. Know me deeply and intimately in every area of your life, and I will take care of all the rest.” What is the will of God for your life? The will of God for your life is that you in all your ways should know him because when you know him in every area he has said he will direct your paths.

He promised—and he will not fail—he will direct your paths.

Proverbs 3:34 The Rod of God: When Love Says No
Hebrews 12:5-11; Proverbs 3:34

May 1999 – “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” It’s an old saying and like most things old, it has been neglected of late. But there is the ring of truth about it. If you spare the rod, you will indeed spoil your child. This is the clear testimony of Holy Scripture and of centuries of human experience.

To begin my sermon that way is to wade into the waters of hot controversy. Not everyone agrees with what I have just said and many people disagree vehemently (dare I say violently?). Many experts flatly declare that corporal punishment is wrong and some even say it should be outlawed. They believe it is the first step on the road to child abuse.

Well, now, before going any further, let me say that this is not a sermon about spanking. To be more precise, it is and it isn’t. I’m going to talk about spanking because I don’t think you can discuss the topic of child discipline without at least touching on corporal punishment.

This week it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I preached on child discipline. In checking my records, I discovered that the last time was December 7, 1980—when I was only two years out of seminary and pastoring Redeemer Covenant Church in Downey, California. Back then we had only one child who was 13 months old. For whatever reason I have not revisited this topic since then. During the intervening years two other boys have joined our household. I hardly qualify as an expert on childrearing and I gladly confess to my share of mistakes. Like most parents Marlene and I have learned as we have gone along and we have discovered that what works with one child doesn’t necessarily apply at all to the others. I hope I have gained some wisdom and a better perspective than I had the last time I approached this topic.

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

This marvelous passage teaches us how God deals with his children. Along the way we learn by analogy something about the way earthly parents discipline their children. Three points deserve our attention:

Discipline is a sign of love. v. 6

Discipline is a sign of sonship. vv. 7-8

Discipline produces godly fruit. vv. 10-11

We discipline our children because we love them, because they are our children (and not someone else’s children), and because we want to produce the fruit of godly character in them. This perspective is vitally important because from a biblical point of view, discipline is far more than correction of wrongdoing. It is everything parents do to raise their children successfully. It involves years of teaching, training, direction-giving, instruction, praising, rebuking, correcting, and sometimes punishing. It requires patience, prayer, positive reinforcement, and helping children see the consequences of bad behavior. When we have done our job well, our children grow up healthy, independent, productive, positive, well-balanced, obedient, respectful, enthusiastic about life, and wholly devoted to Jesus Christ. That’s a tall order, and it won’t be realized overnight, but this is our aim as Christian parents. In a sense Hebrews 12 calls us to look to God as the model parent. We are to study God’s methods in dealing with us and then use those methods in dealing with our children. As God raises his children, so we are to raise ours. Godly parenting begins with the study of God—his character, his methods, his ways, and most of all, his Word.

With that as background, we turn now to consider biblical principles regarding raising our children for the Lord. I’m going to organize my remarks under six major headings.

Fact #1: We shy away from this topic because of cultural pressure, past mistakes, and our own personal uncertainty.

Earlier I mentioned the issue of corporal punishment. As I researched this sermon, I discovered that there is a large, well-organized, well-financed, and well-publicized antispanking movement in America. It is led by psychologists, social workers, and educational leaders who strongly oppose all forms of physical discipline of children. It has led to something called “child-centered parenting” where parents are instructed to look at their children as friends more than as children needing their direction and guidance. (See “When to Spank,” US News and World Report, April 13, 1998 for a detailed analysis of the factors that led to the antispanking movement.).

It isn’t my purpose to offer a detailed argument in favor of spanking. I would note that Focus on the Family believes there is a place for mild spanking in the discipline of children ages two to ten. I would also refer you to the policy statement by the Family Research Council called “Spare the Rod?” which offers a detailed rebuttal to the antispanking arguments.

It’s also fair to say that no one I know believes that spanking should be the major tool parents use to raise their children. If you are spanking your children every day, or almost every day, then you probably need some instruction in good childrearing methods. I urge you to contact Pastor Bob Boerman who heads the Family Ministries at Calvary. We offer numerous classes that can help you refine your parenting skills. Our position is the same as Focus on the Family: Mild spanking has a place in a child’s discipline but it should never be the main tool parents use to motivate their children to obey.

As I look back to the way I was raised, it occurs to me that either there was no antispanking movement when I was growing up or else my parents had never heard of it. I was spanked a few times (probably more than a few but I seem to have forgotten most of them) during my growing-up years. As far as I can tell, I seem to be none the worse for it. As I recall I think my Mom did most of the spanking but we always knew that if Dad got involved he was going to get his money’s worth, so to speak. In my memory my father doesn’t strike me as a mean or harsh man at all. He was a very good father who was no-nonsense when it came to raising children. You obeyed or eventually you would pay the price. That price might be exacted in a number of ways but judgment day would come sooner or later. There is ample biblical precedent for that approach to raising children.

Fact #2: Biblical discipline must reflect a proper mixture of law and grace.

Ray Stedman makes this point in his sermon called “The Disciplines of God.” He notes that God always begins with law and moves to grace. Even in the Garden of Eden, God told Adam not to eat from one particular tree. That’s law. Later would come words of grace and forgiveness. When we raise our children, we must start with law. We must give them rules and we must set limits. We must tell them what to do and what not to do. Grace must be our attitude but law must flow from our lips. If we leave our children to fend for themselves, we have abdicated our parental calling before the Lord.

Fact # 3: Biblical discipline produces the following positive results.

For parents who want God’s view of childrearing, I recommend the book of Proverbs. Over and over again Solomon says, “My son, listen to my commandments and take heed to my words.” If we would raise our children according to Proverbs, we could dispense with 99% of the secular books on childrearing.

Since this sermon is about discipline, I have chosen five passages that deal directly with this topic. They show the good things that happen when parents dare to follow God’s plan:

A. It teaches wisdom. Proverbs 29:15

“The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.” The “rod of correction” stands for the instrument used in discipline. It might be a belt, an actual rod, the palm of the hand, or from days gone by, a switch off a tree. In the larger context, it refers to whatever means you use to punish misbehavior, such as a time-out chair, taking away privileges, grounding a teenager, and so on. Children learn wisdom when there are consequences for disobedience. And when they “get away with murder” at home, that may be precisely what they do years later.

B. It purges evil. Proverbs 20:30

“Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.” I include this verse primarily because of the phrase “cleanse away evil.” It’s important to note that this verse is not talking about childrearing specifically. It probably has more to do with crime and punishment in ancient Israel. But the principle is the same. Effective discipline restrains evil by making the consequences so distasteful that the child wants no part of it.

C. It saves from death. Proverbs 23:13-14

“Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.” Don’t misread verse 13. It’s not calling for beating a child unmercifully, but it does remind us that God has arranged the human anatomy so that a mild swat on the buttocks can be useful in punishing misbehavior. And our discipline—though it may seem painful at the time—can actually save a person from physical death and perhaps also from spiritual death. Better to discipline today even though your child sheds a few tears than to look back and say that you failed to give proper guidance.

D. It demonstrates love. Proverbs 13:24

“He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” The word “careful” means “discriminating.” It implies that godly parents watch their children at all times to make sure they are on the right road in life. To do anything less means you don’t really love your child, no matter what you may say.

E. It promotes domestic peace. Proverbs 29:17

“Discipline your son, and he will give you peace; he will bring delight to your soul.” Parents who care enough to say no, who set limits and then enforce them, who reward good behavior and punish disobedience—those parents are usually blessed with happy, well-adjusted, obedient children who bring delight to their souls. And what could be better than that?

Fact #4: When we discipline, our purpose is not simply to correct wrongdoing, but to encourage wise choices in the future.

Sometimes parents act as if discipline is just about crime and punishment. But that is an extremely short-sighted view. Here’s a brief comparison of right and wrong reasons to discipline your children: [1]

Three Wrong Reasons

1. Anger

2. Arouse Fear

3. Seek Revenge

Three Right Reasons:

1. Teach right from wrong

2. Teach respect for authority

3. Establish justice

A few days ago Pastor Boerman gave me a statement regarding the Family Ministries position on the discipline of children. Here it is. Note that Bob uses the old word “chastisement,” which means the same thing as discipline:

Chastisement is biblical and should not be ignored for correcting acts of foolishness. Foolishness is defined as acts of willful disobedience. Foolishness is different from childishness. Example: Young Mary runs through the house and knocks over a lamp, breaking it. She’s young and no one had told her to not run through the house. This is childishness. If Mary had been told by her parents to not run through the house and she did it, breaking the lamp, that would be considered foolishness. The first example would require her to help clean up the mess from the broken lamp, the second would bring on discipline. Maybe chastisement, helping to pay for the lamp, etc.

Fact # 5: We are to raise our children the way God raises us – with grace, patience, individual attention, and a clear purpose.

This brings us back to Hebrews 12 with its emphasis on how God raises his children. We are to do what he does. He disciplines us to bring forth the godly fruit of holiness and righteousness. To do that, he uses hardship, trials, setbacks, sickness, pain, unanswered prayer, and all manner of difficulties that at the time seem hard to endure. Yet in the end they bring us to maturity and conform us to the image of Christ.

Last week I mentioned that as parents our goal is to move our children from 100% dependence on us to the place of independence so that when they leave the home they are able to function successfully as adults. After the third service a friend told me she had heard it said this way. Our goal is to move our children from 100% dependence on us to 100% dependence on God. That’s good, isn’t it? When we have done our job well, our children will depend on the Lord just as much as they once depended on us.

Fact # 6: The Seven Bs of good discipline

Here are seven practical guidelines that will help you discipline your children the right way.

Be consistent

Have fewer rules and enforce them fairly. Remember, God summarized his will in only ten commandments. Wise parents keep it simple so their children won’t forget what really matters.

Be calm

Many parents have gotten into trouble because they disciplined during a moment of sudden anger. Often our temper causes us to do or say things we later regret. It is better to walk away than to discipline in anger. This is why Colossians 3:21 warns fathers not to exasperate their children. And Ephesians 4:31 tells us to put away anger, malice, wrath, clamor, bitterness, strife and rage.

Be clear

Have definite standards of right and wrong. Make sure your child knows the consequences of disobedience. Before you punish, tell the child what rule he or she has broken. Otherwise, the opportunity for learning may be lost.

Be prompt

Don’t drag out your discipline. Deal with the problem at hand and then move on. According to Ecclesiastes 8:11, “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong.”

Be fair

When your children disobey, make sure you get all the facts before you do anything. Proverbs 18:17tells us that “the first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.” Substitute “his sister” or “his brother” for “another” and you quickly get the point. Take time to hear all sides before you render your final verdict.

Be merciful

This is a basic biblical principle covering all human relationships. Be merciful just as God is merciful. Don’t break the spirit of your children. Don’t beat them or abuse them. Don’t humiliate them in public or in private.

Be forgiving

When the discipline is done, don’t hold a grudge. Do what needs to be done and then move on. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t hold grudges with us? He forgives and forgets. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Let God’s forgiveness be the standard and your discipline will lead to joy and not to heartache.

In making these suggestions, I am simply calling on parents to practice tough love. If we want to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids, we must love them enough to say no, to set limits, to establish boundaries, and to take action when those limits are willfully violated.

Shaping our Children for Eternity

Let’s wrap this up with three words of application. First, a word to fathers. Get involved with your children. Don’t leave all the hard work of discipline to your wife. Make childbearing a team effort in your home. Second, a word to single parents. You carry a heavy load that most of us will never understand. I thank God for all the single parents at Calvary. We love you and we pray for you and we want to do whatever we can to help you. I urge you to get involved in our Family Ministries’ classes. Don’t give up on your children. With God’s help you can raise a happy family. Third, a word to all of us. Pray for your children and your grandchildren. Pray for the children under your care. Pray for the children you know. Pray for the children on your block and in your extended family. Our kids are under enormous pressure today. They need our prayers to make it.

Parents have an awesome responsibility. God has ordained that parents are the single greatest factor in the spiritual growth of their children. Mom, Dad, no one can take your place. The pastor can’t, the Sunday School teacher can’t, the Awana workers can’t, the Christian school teachers can’t, the Allied Force leaders can’t. God uses believing parents to shape children for eternity. Every day by our influence we are preparing our children for eternal joy or eternal woe. A child can never cease to exist because all our children will live forever somewhere.

How quickly they fly away. I have one son in college, another finishing his junior year in high school, and another finishing the eighth grade. There are no diapers in our home. The blocks and the Play-Dough have long since been put away. When I last preached on this topic, I had one son who was only 13 months old. How long ago and how far away that seems. Before we know it all three of our boys will be out on their own. The days of childrearing end almost as soon as they begin.

Someday we will all stand before the Lord to give an account of what we have done on earth. As parents we will answer for how we raised our children. In that day the Lord will not ask, “Did you know the latest theory on how to raise children?” But he will ask, “Did you train your children to love and serve me?” What answer will you give? No excuses will be accepted. [2]

From Littleton to Oak Park

I come now to the close of this sermon series. This is the first time I have preached on marriage and the family in the ten years I have been your pastor. I think I waited a long time because I wanted to be sure I had something worth saying. When I began this series on April 11, I did so with some hesitation, wondering how you would respond. Nine days later what happened in Littleton, Colorado changed the world. After the massacre at Columbine High School, the family has taken first place on the American agenda. From the White House to every house, people are discussing the disintegration of the family. We all know the problem, but few seem to have any answers.

A few days ago I received a message from a young man in our congregation. He wrote to compare Oak Park with Littleton and in so doing, he pointed out that similar killings have taken place for years in the inner city but we managed to ignore them. Now that white children in “safe” suburban schools are being shot, we are suddenly upset. His words were hard to read, but they are true. I liked his words so much that I sent them to a few friends. One person wrote back agreeing with his perspective and adding some important words of hope. Here is an abridged version of what she said:

Without figuring in God in our worldview, there is no avoiding the evil we face and are impotent to oppose. Often, we have even diagnosed the problems well, but collectively are too selfish to effect change for the better because the sacrifice to our personal comfort is too great.

People say, “It shouldn’t take another massacre like this to get one’s attention.” But it often does – compromising on slavery, which paved the way to the Civil War, tolerating the AIDS epidemic, putting up with dictatorial regimes, ignoring the budding “Storm troopers” in Germany, the gay movement, rise of porn, rise of pedophilia, abortion. A pretty depressing pattern.

However, there’s a lightning bolt from above. Christians are uniquely positioned to bless our society even though many today will not see it that way. Christianity offers the best understanding and logic to analyze and diagnose our society’s ills, (the propensity towards evil, sin nature or whatever name we choose to call it) but better than that, it can offer healthy answers. Though our society may continue to reject our message, we must continue to offer God’s answers, in swallowable sizes, bite by bite – recognizing the obstacles we face but trusting in God to direct.

History teaches us that individual Christians have changed the world through obedience to Christ (ending slavery, sponsoring child labor laws, building orphanages and hospitals, establishing police forces, humanizing the treatment of women, educating women, stopping infanticide, the binding of feet in China, bride burning, and the offering of young girls as human sacrifices in India, establishing representative government, improving economic conditions of primitive peoples, to name a few). The challenge really is to the Church, and ultimately, to us as individuals.

As a people we typically need to hurt a lot before we are willing to fix anything. Our tolerance for evil is far too high! However, we have a lot of hope in the analogy Jesus used in calling his people “salt” (Matthew 5:13). Salt is never the main ingredient in a recipe, but its presence is all pervasive! We need not be discouraged in well-doing no matter how small.

I have one little P.S. to what she wrote. In the 21st century Christian families will be more important than ever because Littleton is not the end. First there was Paducah, then Pearl, then that town in Oregon, and now Littleton. But the end is not yet. As our society disintegrates, we can expect more chaos. I wish it were not so, but we will see more heartbreak in the future. Against that backdrop Christians have an enormous open door into our culture. If we can create a community of families where husbands and wives love each other and stay together for the long haul, if we can build families where the father is the spiritual leader and the mother truly loves her husband and her children, and the children love and respect their parents, if we can do that, it will be like a beacon of light in the prevailing darkness. People will come running to discover our secret. When they do, we will point them to Jesus. In the years to come our families may become our ultimate apologetic. The world can answer our arguments, but it cannot answer a happy Christian home.

And to make that kind of difference we all need Jesus, don’t we? There can be no Christian family without Christ as the true head of the home. And to be head of the home, he must be resident in every heart. Yesterday I met a woman who spoke with love and admiration for her brother. “He is such a fine man,” she said. “I pray for him to be saved. He’s so good in so many ways but he needs to be born again.” All he needs is Jesus.

That is where this sermon and this series will end. We all need Jesus and we need him more than we know. Without him we are truly lost in this life and in the life to come. But with him we can build strong Christian families that will stand during all the storms of life. If you want heaven to help your home, you need Jesus in your heart. Trust in him. Make him your Lord and Savior. I urge you to open your heart and invite him to come in. May God help you to do it. Your life and your family will never be the same.

Notes:

1. The comparison comes from the Ray Stedman sermon mentioned above.

2. Many of the thoughts in this section come from a sermon by Carl Haak, “The Duties of Parents.”

Proverbs 3:27-28 INITIATIVE No More Excuses

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back later; I’ll give it tomorrow"-when you now have it with you. Proverbs 3:27-28

Here is a warning against procrastination in well doing. It is a clarion call for doing good today-not tomorrow or some other time in the distant future. How easy it is for all of us to be great intenders. We intend to be generous, we plan to be kind, we even dream about the good things we would do if we ever won a million dollars.

But God is less concerned about the million you might someday have than He is with the twenty dollars in your pocket right now. By the same token, you can’t help the poor, visit the sick, or lift up the fallen by putting these tasks off until tomorrow. As James 4:13-17 reminds us, how do you even know if you will be alive tomorrow? Or what if you lose your money in the meantime?

Life is uncertain. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, noted radio commentator Paul Harvey replied, “I want to be remembered as a man who left the woodpile a little higher than when he found it.” That’s a noble goal, but it won’t happen by accident and you can’t wait till the end of life to start stacking that wood. You have to pick up a few logs each day.

Galatians 6:2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” When you help someone with his burden, your own burden grows lighter. When you reach out a helping hand to someone else, the Lord makes the way easier for you. So many of us are a little too inward-focused, a little too myopic, looking at ourselves. Write down the names of at least three people who have a burden you could help carry this week. Maybe you could give them a call, write them a letter, give them some money, give them a hug, go to see them, help them with a project, bake them some cookies or food, or spend some time with them. Instead of focusing on your own problems, think about carrying a burden for someone else. Ask the Lord to show you who you could help this week.

Oh, I know the excuses we make. “Let somebody else do it.” “Let them get a job and earn some money.” “I don’t want to think about it.” “Who cares, anyway?” “Nobody ever gave me anything.” “You’re just trying to make me feel guilty.”

Hear the Word of the Lord:

When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14:12-14)

What are you doing in a practical way to help the poor, the needy, the hurting, and the hopeless? Before you answer, just remember three little words. No more excuses.

Lord, stop me in my tracks so that I won’t insult You with more excuses for not doing what You have told me to do. Amen.

Name someone you know who is consistently involved with helping others in need. Would anyone list you as a good example in this area? Why or why not?

Name a situation where you are making some inward excuses for not getting involved. What should you do about it?

PROVERBS 4

Proverbs 4:7-9 WISDOM The Art of Skillful Living

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. She will set a garland of grace on your head and present you with a crown of splendor. Proverbs 4:7-9

The Hebrew word for wisdom refers to much more than an accumulation of facts. In the Old Testament this word was used for anyone who had an unusual degree of skill in a given area. For instance, if a potter could create beautiful tableware, he was said to have wisdom. The same thing would be said of a composer who could take notes and put them together to make beautiful music. A gifted speaker who knew how to use words to move people was called wise by those who heard him. The word means to be skilled in some area of life. Wisdom in the book of Proverbs might be defined as the ability to live life skillfully from God’s point of view. It comes from viewing life from a vertical perspective and acting accordingly.

That’s why the first step in acquiring wisdom is simply to desire it more than anything else. Like everything else in the spiritual realm, wisdom is free for the asking, but it will cost you all you have. Because it is supreme among the virtues, it cannot be had at a bargain basement price. Let no man think he will become wise by accident. No such thing has ever happened since the beginning of creation. No, a man must search after wisdom as if he were searching for silver or gold; he must set aside trivial pursuits in favor of that which comes only from God.

You must turn from evil if you truly want wisdom. In one place we are told that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (9:10); in another, that to fear the Lord means hating evil (8:13). You can live in the darkness or you can walk in the light, but you cannot do both at the same time. God invites you to a brand-new life. Do you want wisdom? Then “come . . . eat. . . drink. . . leave . . . walk” (9:5-6). You can have it if you want it, but you must make the decision and pursue wisdom with all your heart.

But there is a further step you must take. It involves humbling yourself, admitting your need, confessing your lack, and asking God to help you. Several times Solomon warns against the man who is “wise in his own eyes” (26:12; 28:11). If you think you have arrived-well, you’re right, for with that attitude, you aren’t going to go any further with the Lord.

After his retirement, someone asked Charlie Riggs the secret of his success in overseeing follow-up and new believer discipleship for the Billy Graham organization. “Every day I always prayed, ‘Lord, put me in over my head.’ That way I knew if the Lord didn’t help me, I was sunk,” he replied. Solomon would heartily approve.

If you want wisdom, you can have it. It’s free, but it will cost you all you have.

Lord, I seek Your wisdom-nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Amen.

In what areas of your life do you need God’s wisdom? What do you think it will cost you to get it?

Proverbs 4:18 PROGRESS Walking Toward the Light

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. Proverbs 4:18

Here is a wonderful promise for the believer. God has ordained that as we walk in His ways, obedient to His will, our path will grow brighter and brighter. Theologians call this “progressive sanctification,” which refers to the process whereby we are changed little by little, day by day into the likeness of Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).

This is God’s promise, but like most of His promises, it isn’t fulfilled all at once. No matter how long we live, God has more light for us to receive. We’ll never be completely in “the light” until we stand in the presence of Jesus, the Light of the world.

Not long ago I ran into a friend who is involved in a twelve-step program. As we talked, he passed along a slogan that he first learned in his weekly meetings: “Our goal is not perfection, but progress.”

A little bell started ringing in my mind when I heard those words. “Not perfection, but progress.” My friend told me that whenever he falls back into his old way of thinking, he feels so defeated he wants to give up. When that happens, he said, the key is to remember that his goal is not perfection-which is always unattainable- but simple day-by-day progress.

What difference does it make?

Perfection says, “I must do this right all the time or I am a failure.” Progress says, “I know I’m going to fail occasionally, but that won’t stop me from getting up and trying again.”

Perfection says, “If I fail, people will think I’m a loser.” Progress says, “If I fail, people will understand as long as I don’t give up and quit.”

Perfection says, “It’s wrong to admit my weaknesses.” Progress says, “Admitting my weaknesses is the only way to get better.”

Perfection says, “I’ve got all the answers.” Progress says, “I’ve got a few answers and a lot of questions.”

Perfection says, “It’s not my fault.” Progress says, “I was wrong.”

Perfection says, “I can do it by myself.” Progress says, “I think I can do it, but I need the help of God and a few good friends.”

If we dwell on our failures, we will soon grow despondent. Who among us has not made mistakes that today make us blush with shame? But the past is more than a record of personal failure. It’s also the story of God’s amazing grace to us. Time after time God bailed us out when by all rights He should have given up on us. We were bankrupt and badly overdrawn in the Bank of Heaven when suddenly we discovered Someone had put more grace in our account.

In a fallen world we should not be surprised that we fall flat on our faces from time to time. It’s what you do after you fall that makes all the difference. Remember, with God s help you can get back up and start moving in the right direction again.

Lord Jesus, You are a wonderful Savior. May I never delay when You call me to take another step toward the light. Amen.

How would you chart your spiritual growth over the last five years? In what areas would you most like to grow in the next five years?

Name several ways in which you have experienced God s grace recently.

Proverbs 4:23 HEART
Where Life Makes Up Its Mind

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23

The term heart in the Bible generally refers to the innermost part of life. It is the decision-making center, the source of motives, the seat of the passions, and the center of the conscience. It is truly the place “where life makes up its mind.”

Proverbs has a great deal to say about the heart. It is the source of wisdom (2:10) and understanding (8:5, KJV), the origin of both deceit (6:14) and joy (15:30). The heart may backslide (14:14, KJV) or trust in God (3:5). It may be cheerful (15:13), prideful (16:5), bitter (14:10), haughty (18:12), or prudent (18:15, KJV). The heart may lust after an adulterous woman (6:25), rage against the Lord (19:3), and eventually be hardened against God altogether (28:14). The Lord tests the heart (17:3) because He knows what is in it (24:12), which is why the heart must be guarded all the time (4:23).

Jesus almost certainly had this verse in mind when He spoke to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:34b: “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” This verse cuts both ways. Whatever is on the inside will eventually come out-whether good or bad (v. 35). If a person’s heart is dirty, he cannot produce purity in his life. Likewise, if the heart is stayed on the Lord, it will be seen on the outside eventually. The King James Version of Proverbs 23:7 reads, “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

If you think angry thoughts, angry words are sure to follow.
If you fill your mind with sexual fantasies, your body will find a way to fulfill those desires.
If you dwell on your problems, they will soon overwhelm you.
If you feel like a victim, soon you will become one.
If you give way to worry, don’t be surprised when you get ulcers.
If you focus on how others misunderstand you, you will soon become angry and bitter.

What goes in must come out. Sooner or later your thoughts translate into reality. You’re not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.

The flip side is also true.

If you focus on the truth, you will speak the truth.
If you look on noble things, nobility will mark your life.
If you seek out lovely things, your life will be lovely to others.
If you dwell on the right, the wrong will seem less attractive to you.
If you look for virtue, you will find it.
If you search for higher things, you will elevate your own life.

Recently a friend sent me this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. It seems a fitting way to apply the words of Proverbs 4:23.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

What words would you use to describe the state of your heart right now?

What has your heart been dwelling on recently? What has that produced in your own life?

PROVERBS 5

Proverbs 5 - Purity: Staying Clean In A Dirty World –
Proverbs 5 Sermon 5 of 12 from the Street Smarts series

October 1994 – This sermon is different, unusual, in that it is directed only to men. In 16 years as a pastor I have never directed a sermon only to to men, but I am this time. My heart has been heavily burdened on this subject. As I thought and prayed about this sermon Tuesday afternoon as I was driving back from the Billy Graham Center, I felt an overwhelming sense from the Lord that I should address my remarks to men. I hope women gather something of usefulness and ask you to pray for the men.

Men, I am going to ask you to do two things. I am going to ask you to listen with all your heart, then I am going to ask you to respond.

My focus this morning is on sexual purity. The Bible has a great deal to say about the subject of purity, but the greater part of what it has to say has to do with the whole area of sexual purity, morality vs. immorality. So this sermon speaks as a brother to my brothers on the subject that every man here has thought greatly about—the subject of sexual purity.

I. The Trap Pr 5:1-5

It is not easy these days. There is a lot that militates against sexual purity. For one thing, the media is all against us. Every year, every week, every month, every day you turn on the TV, listen to the radio, buy a magazine, read a book, put a video into the VCR, and out comes a veritable tidal wave of sexual innuendo. Did you know that in America on the major TV network screens this year there will be over 20,000 acts of simulated or suggested physical intercourse? It will be there for everybody to see. And Ted Turner was absolutely right a few years ago when he said that the media is the most powerful force in America today. The media taken together is a vast conglomerate that is pushing our society in a particular direction—far more powerful than education, far more powerful than the churches of America, far more powerful than the government in Washington. Take the media moguls of today and the leading media companies of today, and those are the people who are setting the agenda for the American culture. They are not setting it toward biblical morality. They are certainly not setting it toward purity.

There is a second reason it is difficult, and that is the scourge of pornography. Pornography in America today has become a multi-billion dollar business. I speak not just of adult pornography, but also of child pornography. It is as if somebody has turned a valve and a giant sewer has been let loose, pouring raw sewage of pornography across our society. We’re all slimed with it today. I think the main change today is that if 40 years ago you wanted to buy a dirty magazine, you would go down to some disreputable portion of town with $5.00 in your pocket, and would find some disreputable type person and slip them the $5.00. They would reach down under the counter and out of that brown wrapping paper they would pull a magazine and off you’d slink back to the darkness to look at it. But today all kinds of pornography are easily available, not just to adults but to teenagers and children. I read an article the other day by somebody who said that the main problem facing our children today is boredom because by the age of 10 the average child in America will have seen, read or heard implied every kind of sexual activity there is. Between man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, man and beast, every possible grouping of degenerate and perverted sex that could be. The problem is that in the old days sex was something mysterious. There is no mystery anymore. Now kids are simply bored with it. We as men understand that.

Then there is the problem of divorce and remarriage. There was a time when the church of Jesus Christ was hardly affected by divorce. Thirty or forty years ago divorce was like the scarlet sin. People who had been divorced had a hard time coming to church on Sunday morning. I am glad things have changed in one sense, because now we tell people that it doesn’t matter what their past is, we’re glad to have them here. But I think it has been a mixed blessing, because as our society has begun to change and disintegrate and as the traditional family has begun to disintegrate and as the nuclear family has blown up and exploded into smithereens, we see now there is divorce and remarriage and sexual innuendo. We are now in a society where marriages aren’t expected to last very long and where the traditional family isn’t much in evidence anymore. Now it seems as if the moral standard of our society has gone downhill and now we’re heading on down to the bottom.

And so, men, I want to ask the question this morning: where are the men who will stand against the tide? Where are the men who will dare to be different? Where are the men who cannot be bought and sold on the altar of sexual expediency? Where are the men who make a promise and keep it? Where are the men who say, “I will wait,” and wait. Where are the men who say, “I won’t,” and don’t. Where are the men who will say, “I am faithful,” and are faithful? Where are those men?

I want to tell you something right up front. I think women have a right to know. I think our wives and daughters have a right to know. I think our parents, our grandchildren, the girls in the youth group have a right to know whether the guys they date are committed to moral purity.

I have been preaching from the book of Proverbs, taking a different subject each week. We come this time to the subject of purity. There are two whole chapters in the book of Proverbs that are devoted to the question of sexual purity. One is Proverbs Chapter 5 and the other is Chapter 7. Taken together, those two chapters form the longest, most extensive teaching on sexual morality that is found in all the pages of God’s Word, in the Old Testament or the New Testament. I find it very interesting that the writer of Proverbs, King Solomon, decided to put down his words of wisdom. He felt it important to spend so much time and so much space on the subject of sexual purity. He knew, even back 3000 years ago, that it is hard to stay clean in a dirty world. It is hard to stay pure in a world that has decided to live in the sewer.

This sermon is about what Solomon had to say about the young people of his generation. In so doing, we are moving toward the answer to the question: where are the men who will stand against the tide?

Yesterday somebody came into my office and said to me, “Pastor Ray, what does that passage mean that talks about the qualifications for elders and says ‘he must be the husband of one wife’?” There has been a lot of controversy about that. I will tell you what I think it means. At Calvary we understand it to mean that the elder, the spiritual leader, must be a one-woman man. That is not just a statement about whether you have ever been divorced or not. It is a statement about fidelity. It is a statement about honor, about integrity, about the focus of your life. That is to say, those who are spiritual leaders are expected to be men who are focused on just one woman. A husband, focused on just one wife. Not just that he has been married to her, but that his heart is toward her. Not just that he has never been divorced, but that he is focused on her and her alone, that she is the object of his affection, that he is not flirtatious, that he is not known as a ladies’ man.

This week I made a list of the Christian men I have known who have fallen into immorality. There was a doctor, a principal, a businessman, an accountant, a pastor, another pastor, a union man, a small business owner, a pastor, most recently another pastor, an investor and another doctor. It took me only five minutes to come up with this list.

Where are the men who will stand against the tide? Where are the men whose word is their bond? Where are the men that the women of this church can trust? Where are the men who will say, “We will be different?”

II. The Warning Pr 5:7-14

Proverbs 5:1 says, “My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen well to my words of insight, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.” Then he explains to the young men of his day how women with bad motives will come and lead a man away. He says, “For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.” It is true that most of us men struggle with the question of ego. Most of us for all our bravado on the outside basically are weak on the inside and need somebody to come alongside and scratch us on the head and pat us on the back and kiss us on the cheek and tell us how good we are and how good-looking we are and how wonderful, great, strong and powerful we are. That’s what this woman does. She comes along to this man who is craving affection and attention, and she says, “Oh, you’re so cute. You’re so strong. You’re so muscular. You are the best there is!” She’s got dripping lips. That’s a trap. And she uses her lips to entice you in. But read on to what it says. “In the end she’s bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.” Her lips promise honey, but her feet lead you straight to hell. Solomon warns men to be careful what they listen to, be careful of the women they look at, who they shower their attention on, because out there are women whose lips drip honey, but once they get you near, they stab you with a two-edged sword and lead you on the primrose path down to destruction. And he begins to give warning in verse 7, “Now then, my sons, listen to me; do not turn aside from what I say. Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house.” If you do, there are four things you are going to lose.

A. Your strength.

Proverbs 5:9 says, “Lest you give your best strength to others and your years to one who is cruel.” If you follow a woman like that, your strength is going to be dissipated, you will end up weak in the end, old and grey and worn out.

B. Your wealth.

Proverbs 5:10 says, “Lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich another man’s house.” Men, if you decide to commit adultery, somebody is going to get rich—it’s going to be your wife’s lawyer. If you decide to break God’s law, you will be sorry in 1000 ways, and one of them is that you will be dragged into court and it will cost you thousands of dollars. You will watch all that money you saved disappear before your eyes.

C. Your health.

Proverbs 5:11 says, “At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent.” In the sex education classes at school they teach our kids three letters—STD, sexually transmitted disease. Way before the federal government discovered that, the Bible told us 3000 years ago that men who commit adultery are open to the risk of venereal disease, syphilis, hepatitis, a hundred other diseases, and worst of all, HIV developing into AIDS. We are seeing all of it in our society around us. Open the Tribune or the Sun Times and you see people dying of AIDS and these other sicknesses. Solomon warned us about it. He said if you go down that path and follow that road, this will be how you end up.

D. Your reputation.

Proverbs 5:14 says, “I have come to the brink of utter ruin in the midst of the whole assembly.” Men, I hope you enjoy it, because we are going to find out about it. You will try to keep it quiet, you will do those telephone calls late at night, fax back and forth, write little notes in secret, but be sure that your sin will find you out. I hope you enjoy your ten or fifteen minutes of happiness because that is all that you are going to get.

Sometimes we talk about breaking the Ten Commandments. Brothers, nobody has ever broken the Ten Commandments. You are broken on the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are like the huge boulders at the base of the cliff. If you decide to jump off the cliff and you hit the boulders, you will not break the boulder, the boulder will break you. When you dare to disobey what God has said, you will pay the price.

Here is the problem in verse 12. “You will say, ‘How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or listen to my instructors.’ “ Brothers, the reason we get in trouble in this area is because we will not listen. I have to speak loudly about this, because I have to shout over ABC, NBC, CBS, Ted Turner, CNN, TNT, Lifetime, MTV, VH-1 and all the rest, and they are shouting a lot louder than I am. They are begging you to come on in. Come on in and have some fun. Come on in, nobody will know. God says don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.

III. The Alternative Pr 5:15-20

Is there any good news? Yes. Proverbs 5:15 says, “Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.” God has given you a biblical way for handling the sexual drive within you. It’s called marriage. Read on. “A loving doe, a graceful deer —may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated (in the Hebrew this word means intoxicated) by her love. Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?” Listen to me, brothers. God has created a way that is better than looking at dirty movies. He has created a way that is better than going to some prostitute, a way that is better than looking at some cheap magazine, than flirting with someone else on the job. It’s called loving your wife. If you love your wife and enjoy her and her body, you will find release for what God has put within you. Before Hugh Hefner messed it up, God thought it up. As man and woman come from the hand of Almighty God, they come as male and female. Within that relationship, the sexual relationship of a man and woman is holy, righteous, pure, good and ought to be enjoyed. That’s what the Bible says. To men who feel this tremendous urge, don’t go running somewhere else, go back to the wife that God has given you.

IV. The Reminder Pr 5:21-23

Finally, there is a warning at the end. Proverbs 5:21 says, “For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord.” That means he sees everything you do. He sees what you do, where you go, who you go with, even the thoughts you think. That ought to make you stop and think. Verse 22 says, “The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast.” That means that sexual sin is self-defeating. It never satisfies or brings happiness in the long run. This is the promise in verse 23, “He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.”

You want a good biblical example of what happens when a man ignores those words? Look at Solomon, the man who wrote those words. Later in his life, led astray by his many wives, he got into immorality and idolatry. He died basically a broken and ruined man. The man who wrote those words came to no good end.

First Steps in a New Direction

Do you want to make a new start? I give you three suggestions.

1. Listen to what God is saying. Turn off the TV, the radio, put those books away.

2. Talk it over with another godly man. If you have a struggle in this area, and about 75-80% of men do struggle in this area, don’t fight this battle alone.

3. Stay away from temptation. This is very simple. Brothers, there are some books you ought not to read. I don’t know which ones they are because I don’t know what you’re reading. But every time you read it you know it. There are some magazines you ought not to read, some radio stations you ought not to listen to, some TV programs you ought to turn off. There are some relationships you ought to be breaking in your life right now because they are leading you in the wrong direction. It could be a group of guys just kind of pulling you that way by their talk. Or it could be a relationship with a woman in your life that you know is not going in the right direction. You need to break it off right now. If you have the Holy Spirit living inside you and you know Jesus Christ, then you know what you ought to and ought not to be doing, so stay away from temptation. If you play with fire long enough, you will get burned.

The temptation to sexual impurity is very real. A man would be a fool to deny it. The problem is very prevalent because we live in a sex-saturated society. We’re told in Proverbs 5 that we have a two-fold defense.

1. Stay out of harm’s way.

2. Enjoy your own wife.

I tell you this on the basis of God’s word. If you choose to ignore this teaching, you will die. We’ll be having a premature funeral for you, because sexual immorality leads to an early grave.

Now then, where are the men who will say, “I will be different. I will be pure. You can count on me.” The women deserve to be told by the men that they can trust us. And if they can’t trust us, then they need to know that as well. Where are the men who will say, “Honey, you don’t have to worry about me any more. If I go on a business trip, you don’t have to worry about me. When I go into that motel room and see that stuff on top of the TV and can push a button, you don’t have to worry about me any more. I’m not going to do that.” For the sake of your wife, for the sake of your children, for the sake of your mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and for the sake of the unsaved multitudes out there who expect us to be different, where are the men who will say, “By God’s grace I will be pure. I will be clean. I will be different.”

I have spoken to men, but many men are single. Some are in high school, junior high, students at Moody Bible Institute or others colleges and universities in our area. Some are career professionals who are single. What are you supposed to do? That’s another sermon. But let’s understand this. God doesn’t have two standards. He doesn’t have a high standard for married men and a low standard for singles. You are still called to purity, faithfulness, holiness, and abstinence. I am not saying it is going to be easy. God set the bar, not me. Singles have to make the same commitment as married men.

There is a certain category of people who have dirty hands, dirty bodies. They would say, “You don’t know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing.” I am not that interested where you slept last night. I want to know where you’re going to sleep tonight. I am not interested in what you read last week, I want to know what you are going to read this afternoon and tomorrow morning. I am not that concerned with what you watched on TV last week. I want to know what you will watch in the weeks to come. I am not too concerned about your past. I am concerned about your future. I want to know where you are going to go from here. If you are feeling guilty, the Lord can take that guilt away and you can have a fresh start.

If you don’t know Jesus Christ, your deepest need is to know him.

I want to know where are the men who are willing to stand for purity and righteousness. Let’s stand together in the name of Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 5:19 PASSION The Flame That Keeps a Marriage Burning

A loving doe, a graceful deer-may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love. Proverbs 5:19

There are many secrets to a good marriage, such as respect, communication, commitment, forgiveness, a good sense of humor, and the ability to disagree agreeably. While it may not be the most important factor, certainly a healthy sexual relationship must be high on any such list.

Solomon emphasizes this truth in his warning against adultery in Proverbs 5. First, he details the terrible cost of unfaithfulness. You lose your strength (v. 9), your wealth (v. 10), your health (v. 11), and your reputation (v. 14). Is there any good news? Yes. Proverbs 5:15-18 says,

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

God has given you a biblical way for handling the sexual drive within you. It’s called marriage. Verse 19 offers a graphic explanation: “A loving doe, a graceful deer-may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated [in the Hebrew this word means “intoxicated"] by her love.” Verse 20 gives the alternative, “Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?” God has created a way that is better than looking at dirty movies. He has created a way that is better than going to some prostitute, a way that is better than looking at some cheap magazine, than flirting with someone else on the job. It’s called loving your wife. If you love your wife and enjoy her and her body, you will find release for what God has put within you. As man and woman come from the hand of almighty God, they come as male and female. Within that relationship, the sexual relationship of a man and woman is holy, righteous, pure, good, and ought to be enjoyed. That’s what the Bible says. To men who feel this tremendous sexual urge, don’t go running somewhere else; go back to the wife God has given you.

There you have the whole case for marital faithfulness. Stay home and enjoy your wife. Don’t be a fool and look at some other woman. Enjoy the wife you have. Let her body satisfy you. Be intoxicated with her love.

If you wonder about the propriety of that statement, I encourage you to read the Song of Solomon. It contains the Bible’s most detailed description of romantic love between a man and a woman. It is sensual, yet pure; frank, yet chaste; erotic, yet ennobling. Many couples would find their love life rejuvenated simply by reading the Song of Solomon out loud together. So how does a wife keep her husband satisfied? God has given you a way. Men, how do you stay satisfied? Solomon-who had great experience in this area-spelled it out. Enjoy your wife. And not just her cooking either.

Father, I thank You for creating the human race as male and female. When I am tempted to misuse Your gifts, remind me of the joy that comes from following Your plan. Amen.

If you are single, will you commit yourself to sexual purity in all your relationships?

If you are married, will you commit yourself to faithfulness so that you can enjoy your spouse as God intended?

PROVERBS 6

Proverbs 6:6 Common Goal

“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” Proverbs 6:6

Let’s start with a piece of Bible trivia. How many times are ants mentioned the Bible? Ants are mentioned in only one book once in Proverbs 6:6-8 and once in Proverbs 30:25.

Both references are worth considering. In Proverbs 6 Solomon invites us to study the ant for the purpose of learning wisdom. For instance, ants have no commanders (v. 7), yet they work together to store food for the winter (v. 8). Proverbs 30:25 makes a similar point: “Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.” How do the ants with little strength manage to store enough food to make it through the long winter months? The answer is, they start early, they look to the future, they pool their strength, and they work together for the common good.

Several years ago I had a chance to see this for myself. As I was taking an afternoon walk, I looked down and saw a vast army of ants carrying an earthworm. It was so startling that I stopped to watch the action.

The earthworm shaped more or less like a treble clef appeared to have dried out in the sun. All around the earthworm were ants pushing away. And they were moving it one micro-inch at a time. I didn’t count but I would bet there were at least 50 ants pushing away at that poor dead earthworm. All around them were other ants, several hundred of them, “junior varsity” ants waiting for their chance to get in the game.

As I watched they slowly pushed that ant toward the grassy edge of the sidewalk. I didn’t stay for the denouement but I suppose the ants feasted on filet of earthworm that night. There was certainly enough food to feed the whole colony for many days to come.

One thought lingered in my mind: A single ant is no match for an earthworm. As Proverbs 30:25 says, “Ants are creatures of little strength.” A single ant could push for a year and never move an earthworm off the sidewalk. But what one ant couldn’t do, many ants did by working together. Which is why Proverbs 6:6 says, “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise.”

By the way, it’s no accident that I saw the ants during the summer. You can’t find many earthworms in Chicago in January. The ants know that (with an instinct placed in them by God), so they gather their food now in preparation for the cold weather which must eventually come. Solomon saw the same thing I did and he praised the ants because “they store up their food in the summer.”

There’s a lesson here about individual weakness and united strength. There’s also a lesson about the value of working together to accomplish the greater good. And finally, there’s also a lesson about preparing for the future. An old children’s song says, “The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.” Indeed they do, which is why they teach us that we can accomplish so much more when we work together.

As you have placed me in the body of Christ, Lord, so teach me to depend upon my brothers and sisters to accomplish your work. Amen

Going Deeper
Name a time recently when, by working with others, you accomplished a significant task.
Would your friends say that you are better at cooperation or competition?

Proverbs 6:6-11 Hard Work:
The Reason We Get Out of Bed

September 1994 – Turn in your Bible to the Book of Proverbs, beginning in Chapter 6. We are going to begin the sermon with a number of verses from Proverbs.

Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.”

Proverbs 10:4 “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. He who gathers crops in the summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.”

Proverbs 10:26 “As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to those who send him.”

Proverbs 12:11 “He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.”

Proverbs 12:14 “From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things, as surely the work of his hands rewards him.”

Proverbs 12:24 “Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor.”

Proverbs 12:27 “The lazy man does not roast his game, but the diligent man prizes his possessions.” That’s a picture of the man who goes out hunting and he captures his prey, but because he is lazy, he doesn’t even bother to roast it. He just lets it sit there and rot. It is just a game to him. He’s not even taking care of the things he has, whereas a diligent man prizes everything that he has because he had to work to earn it.

Proverbs 13:4 “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.”

Proverbs 14:23 “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” That is a warning to those of us who make our living speaking.

Proverbs 15:19 “The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.”

Proverbs 16:26 “The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.”

Proverbs 17:2 “A wise servant will rule over a disgraceful son and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers.” That means that if you are a servant and you work hard, you will some day be promoted over a son who is legally due the inheritance. You will be honored because of your hard work.

Proverbs 18:9 “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.”

Proverbs 19:24 “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. He will not even bring it back to his mouth.” It’s the picture of the man who is so lazy that the food is put in front of him and he just dips his hand in the soup or in the dish and is too lazy to bring it to his mouth. He wants somebody to spoonfeed him.

Proverbs 20:4 “A sluggard does not plow in season, so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.

Proverbs 20:13 “Do not love sleep or you will grow poor. Stay awake and you will have food to spare.”

Proverbs 21:5 “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.”

Proverbs 21:17 “He who loves pleasure will become poor. Whoever loves wine and oil will never be rich.”

Proverbs 21:25 “The sluggard’s craving will be the death of him because his hands refuse to work. All day long he craves for more, but the righteous give without sparing.”

Proverbs 22:13 “The sluggard says, ‘There’s a lion outside’ or ‘I’ll be murdered in the streets’ “ This is the man who makes silly excuses for not going to work.

Proverbs 22:29 “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings. He will not serve before obscure men.” This is an important verse for children and young adults, because we are told over and over again that it is not what you know, it’s who you know. There is some truth to that. But a more fundamental truth is this: the key to success in life is finding out what it is that you like to do, what it is that is the passion of your life, and then become very good at it. Be skilled in what excites you in life, because once you have determined what it is that God has gifted you to do, if you will become skilled at it, you will not serve before obscure men. You will rise until you serve before kings. That is the word of God.

Proverbs 24:27 “Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready. After that, build your house.” Interpreted, this means, take care of business first, then take care of your personal affairs.

Proverbs 24:30 “I went past the field of the sluggard and past the vineyard of the man who lacks judgement. Thorns had come up everywhere. The ground was covered with weeds and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man.”

Proverbs 26:14 “As the door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.” He just rolls over and puts the pillow over his head and doesn’t get up in the morning. He just sleeps his life away.

Proverbs “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.

Proverbs 27: “He who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit and he who looks after his master will be honored.” That is to say, when you watch out for your own affairs, and then when you take care of the business that you are employed in, you will be honored.

Proverbs 27:23 “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks. Give careful attention to your herds. For riches do not endure forever and the crown is not secure for all generations.” Hard work yesterday does not guarantee tomorrow’s success. Hard work yesterday has to be followed up with hard work today to guarantee tomorrow’s prosperity.

Proverbs “When the hay is removed and new growth appeared and the grass from the hills is gathered in, what will happen when the harvest does come in? The lambs will provide you will clothing and goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty of goat’s milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your servant girls.”

I am struck with how much Proverbs has to say about hard work. I did not read every single verse that addresses this subject. There are other verses in there that apply to the whole topic of hard work. I am impressed and amazed with how much God’s Word has to say about it.

This is Labor Day Weekend, the weekend when everybody who can go somewhere goes somewhere so they can play for one last weekend because the real hard work of the last part of the year starts on Tuesday morning.

In all of life, every day you face a choice of going one of two ways. You can go the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is the way of procrastination. It is the way of staying in bed. It is the way of saying it doesn’t matter whether I work today or not, it doesn’t matter what time I show up at work, it doesn’t matter if I check out of here a few minutes early. The easy way is the way of saying the boss isn’t around, nobody is seeing me, it is good enough for government work. The easy way is saying take it easy, slow down, back off, don’t have a heart attack. It is saying tomorrow. It is the way of no plans, no forethought, no enthusiasm, no diligence. That is the easy way. It is the soft and cuddly way. It is the pleasurable and luxurious way. It’s the way of laziness, the way of the sluggard. Understand something. All of us are born on the easy way. What does the Bible say? “Foolishness is born in the heart of a child.” We’re born wanting to go the easy way. That’s what the sin nature does. It says, “Take a short cut. Cheat if you have to. Cut some corners. Pull some strings. Take it easy. Don’t work too hard. Where’s the fire? Slow down, man.” That’s the way our society is going today. Our number one concern now is not what is the work, but how much vacation time do we get? It’s not what job do you want me to do, but how many benefits can I get? How much time off? How many days and weekends off? That’s American society today.

Here’s the hard way. It is the way of getting up early and staying up late. It is the way of working with your hands. It is preparation, long-range planning, goal setting, future orientation, diligence, forethought, preparation, showing up for work on time, giving eight hours of work for eight hours pay, doing what you’re told and then doing what needs to be done even if you’re not told.

God is over on the hard road. He is not with the couch potatoes. That’s where we are. The hard road looks difficult and daunting. All of us would rather be on the easy road. God is calling all of us to the hard road.

Do you want to know the ironic thing between the easy road and the hard road? The easy road looks easy but once you get on it, it turns into the hard road. And the hard road looks hard but once you do the hard thing in life, it turns out to be the easy thing. The easy road is deceptive. It is the way of destruction, poverty, starvation and desperation. It is the way of total financial collapse, the way to wasted days, wasted weeks, wasted months, wasted lives. The hard road which appears to be so difficult is ultimately the road of prosperity, the road of wealth and blessing, the road of fulfillment, happiness, and personal satisfaction. It is the road that leads you to the top. The easy road takes you down to the bottom. The only road that goes to the top is the hard road. It is tough, but it is the only one that goes where you want to go with your life.

We were on vacation a few weeks ago. Let the records show I am in favor of vacations. We went down to Mississippi and saw my brother, then went to Memphis, to Graceland (that’s another story), to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, the biggest tourist trap east of the Mississippi River, and were meandering our way back up toward Chicago. We came through Knoxville and got on I-75 heading toward Lexington and Cincinnati. We weren’t in any hurry, and soon it was past lunch time. Sounds began to come from the back seat indicating that an imminent stop would be well advised. We stopped in a little town called Corbin, Kentucky. We drove through that little town, looking for a fast food place.

There was a sign up that said, “Visit the original Kentucky Fried Chicken.” We went there and found out that it was a regular KFC, but besides being a restaurant, it was also a museum. Back in 1940 a man named Harlan Sanders was in Corbin, KY and he bought this old dilapidated restaurant and built a motel which was very advanced for that day. There was one in Asheville, NC and one in Corbin, KY. The number one recipe in the restaurant at the motel was the best fried chicken in all the state of Kentucky, made from 11 herbs and spices. 1

In 1956, 16 years later, he was successful, but he was not known. He was just successful locally. He was now 66 years old, the time when most men retire. Calamity struck—I-75 was being built, and would bypass the town of Corbin, KY, meaning nobody would stop at the motel or eat at his restaurant. If he was going to survive, he had to do something else. So he sold his restaurant and the motel and went into the chicken spice business. supplying to restaurants. Out of that little business, at the age of 66, came the idea to start a restaurant where people would come in and buy nothing but fried chicken which used his 11 herbs and spices, and he decided to call it Kentucky Fried Chicken. The rest is history.

If you go to Corbin, KY and if you visit that museum at the restaurant, there is a sign that I took pictures of. It is the credo of Colonel Harlan Sanders. It is called “The Hard Way.” “It is comparatively easy to prosper by trickery, the violation of confidence, oppression of the weak, sharp practices, cutting corners, all those methods we are so prone to pileate and condone as business shrewdness. It is difficult to prosper by the keeping of promises, the deliverance of value and goods and services and deeds and denouncing the so-called shrewdness with sound merit and good ethics. The easy way is efficacious and speedy, the hard way arduous and long. But as the clock ticks away, the easy way becomes harder, and the hard way becomes easier. As the calendar records the years, it becomes increasingly evident that the easy way rests upon a hazardous foundation of shifting sands, whereas the hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away. Thus we build it.”

The next time you go to Kentucky Fried Chicken, remember that those thousands of restaurants all over America and now all over the world were started by a man who at the age of 66 decided that he was not going to go the easy way. He, by the way, was a born again Christian. He decided that at the age of retirement he was going to go the hard way and every one of those restaurants is a testimony to the fact that when you take the easy way, it turns out hard but when you take the hard way of hard work and diligence, it always ultimately turns out to be the only easy way there it.

I close this sermon with several conclusions.

1) Hard work is a Christian virtue. It is a sign of increasing godliness. Somebody said to me, “Well, what about the work-aholics?” I answered, “One sermon at a time, please. I am preaching about the value of hard work. We’ll come to the other later.” I am not talking about the number of hours that you work. I am not calling on you to work 70 or 80 or 90 or100 hours a week. I am calling on you not to let life pass you by. The call to hard work is a call to truly purposeful living. It is a call not to waste your life but to get up and get out and do something with the opportunities that God has placed before you. Don’t just sit there, don’t just roll over, don’t be a couch potato. Get up and in the name of God do something Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Use your power, your intelligence, your vision, your gifts and all that God gave you, to do something. So many Christians just while away the hours, looking at the flowers, consulting with the rain. All the while the game of life is being played all around us and we are sitting on the bench, sound asleep.

2) Though your work will differ from my work and from everybody else’s work, the qualities of success are always the same: planning, forethought, diligence, enthusiasm and full commitment to whatever God has called you to do.

3) Rest and relaxation are good. They too are a gift from God, but they are meant to be a reward for hard work and preparation for more hard work.

4) Hard work is God’s work when you are doing what God wants you to do.

5) God honors hard workers by crowning them with his personal blessing.

There is a world out there. Get in it. There is something going on out there. Don’t sit on the sidelines. God gave you two hands. Use them. God gave you a voice. Speak up. God gave you two feet. Go on a journey. Do something with the life that God gave you Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

Here is the application. What is it that you know you need to do this week that is undone in your life? It will take you less than three seconds to answer that question. I already know what it is in my life. Now that you know what it is, name it. Plan it. Schedule it. Do it. This week. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might because in the grave where you are going there is no planning, no foresight, no work. You want to rest? You will have time later. Go out to the cemetery. There is not much work out there.

An old gospel song says it this way:

Oh land of rest, for thee I sigh

When will the moment come

When I can lay my burden down

And dwell in peace at home?

We’ll work ’til Jesus comes

Then we’ll be gathered home.

May God help us to let our light shine this week by going from this place and doing hard work for the glory of god. Amen.

Proverbs 6:6 Cooperation

Proverbs 6:6 COOPERATION Working with Others on a Common Goal –

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! Proverbs 6:6

Let’s start with a piece of Bible trivia. How many times are ants mentioned the Bible? Ants are mentioned in only one book-once in Proverbs 6:6-8 and once in Proverbs 30:25.

Both references are worth considering. In Proverbs 6, Solomon invites us to study the ant for the purpose of learning wisdom. For instance, ants have no commanders (v. 7), yet they work together to store food for the winter (v. 8). Proverbs 30:25 makes a similar point: “Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.” How do the ants with little strength manage to store enough food to make it through the long winter months? The answer is, they start early, they look to the future, they pool their strength, and they work together for the common good.

The earthworm-shaped more or less like a treble clef-appeared to have dried out in the sun. All around the earthworm were ants, pushing away. And they were moving it one micro-inch at a time. I didn’t count, but I would bet there were at least fifty ants pushing away at that poor dead earthworm. All around them were other ants, several hundred of them, “junior varsity” ants waiting for their chance to get in the game.

As I watched, they slowly pushed that worm toward the grassy edge of the sidewalk. I didn’t stay for the denouement, but I suppose the ants feasted on filet of earthworm that night. There was certainly enough food to feed the whole colony for many days to come.

By the way, it’s no accident that I saw the ants during the summer. You can’t find many earthworms in Chicago in January. The ants know that (with an instinct placed in them by God), so they gather their food early in preparation for the cold weather that must eventually come. Solomon saw the same thing I did, and he praised the ants because “they store up their food in the summer.”

An old children’s song says, “The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.” Indeed they do, which is why they teach us that we can accomplish so much more when we work together.

As You have placed me in the body of Christ, Lord, so teach me to depend upon my brothers and sisters to accomplish Your work. Amen.

Name a time recently when, by working with others, you accomplished a significant task.

Would your friends say that you are better at cooperation or competition?

Proverbs 6:20 PARENTS Treat Them with Respect

My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Proverbs 6:20

The eye that mocks a father, that scorns obedience to a mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by the vultures. Proverbs 30:17

The fifth commandment says, “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). For too long we have relegated this commandment to young children and sometimes even used it as a club over their heads. But God never intended that this commandment be aimed primarily at young children. This commandment is primarily for grown-up children. It is God’s way of telling us how to treat our parents!

But how can we honor our parents when we no longer live under their authority? First, by speaking well of them. Sometimes I hear adults saying terribly disrespectful things about their parents. They speak with bitterness and anger over things that happened many years ago. That raises a question: How do you speak well of people who hurt you deeply? Here I think we’re left with some advice we all learned as children. “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all.” Speak well of your parents if you can; if you can’t, refuse to speak evil of them.

Second, by obeying them. This sounds odd to our modern way of thinking. For many people the whole point of moving away from home is so that you won’t have to obey your parents anymore. Most of us have heard it said that while you don’t have to obey your parents, you always have to honor them. That’s true enough, but it doesn’t grasp the full biblical implication of the fifth commandment. In God’s eyes we are forever children, always under obligation to honor and-as far as possible-to obey our parents.

Third, we honor our parents by forgiving them. Here we come to the heart of the problem for many people. How do you honor parents who have hurt and abused you? By choosing to forgive the unforgivable. We must not use the hurts of the past as an excuse to evade this commandment. Think of it this way: If we do not forgive our parents, we may repeat their mistakes with our own children.

Fourth, by not forsaking them. At this point we have the example of Jesus who, while hanging on the cross, took time to remember His aging mother. To His mother He said, “Dear woman, here is your son.” To John He said, “Here is your mother” (see John 19:26-27). While dying for the sins of the world, He took time to keep the fifth commandment!

D. L. Moody said, “I have lived over sixty years, and I have learned one thing if I have learned nothing else-no man or woman who dishonors his father or mother ever prospers.”

This commandment is the one that helps you obey all the rest. The first place you can show the reality of your religion is at home. To say it another way, religion that doesn’t begin at home doesn’t begin at all.

Lord God, if I would call You heavenly Father, I must learn to honor my earthly father and mother. Show me what that means. Amen.

Do you find it easy to honor your parents? Why or why not?

Which of the four steps listed above is most difficult for you? Name one way you could honor your parents today.

PROVERBS 7

Proverbs 7:4-5 PURITY Staying Clean in a Dirty World

Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your kinsman; they will keep you from the adulteress, from the wayward wife with her seductive words. Proverbs 7:4-5

Solomon felt so strongly about the dangers of sexual temptation that he devoted three chapters of Proverbs (5-7) to this subject. Three thousand years have passed and his words still ring true. How can we stay pure in a very dirty world? There are four decisions you must make.

First, you must purposely avoid lust-producing situations. This is an extremely personal matter. Each one must know his own limits. What produces lust in my life may bore you. What makes you think impure thoughts may put me to sleep. That’s why it’s hard to draw absolute limits. But there is a line you must not cross. Make sure you know where that line is for you-and then make sure you don’t cross it!

Second, you must purposely avoid provoking lust in other people. This is another very sensitive area. Sometimes we Christians act as if freedom in Christ means we no longer need to worry about how other people think or feel. But that’s not true. We have to be concerned about the way we dress, but purity in this area also involves our language and our casual physical contact. It even includes our facial language-the smile, the glance, the wink, the knowing look. The rule is simple: Don’t lead other people on! Don’t be a tease! Don’t be a flirt! Even if “nothing” happens, you have defrauded the other person.

Third, you must purposely choose purity. The decision to choose purity must be made in advance, based on a daily walk with God and grounded in a life of healthy activity.

So many people think Christianity is prudish. Far from it. Christianity is not prudish, but it is modest and clean. This week I ran across a striking sentence: “The way to clean out a stable is not with a shovel but with the Mississippi River.” Nothing will clean out the corners of your life like a commitment to a life filled with wholesome activity. When the “Dos” outweigh the “Don’ts,” you will begin to experience the joy of purity and the thrill of victory.

But you must make the choice! Not just once-but every single day-and often you must make the choice many times a day.

Fourth, you must be honest about your personal struggles. Lust is such a tricky matter that you will never win the victory on your own. Let me say that again: You will never win the victory over lust simply by praying by yourself. God never intended you to fight this battle alone.

Find a friend or a small group of friends and ask them to hold you accountable. Tell them you want them to ask you hard questions. Tell them not to let you off easily. Ask them to be tough enough so that you can’t get by with sin.

The temptation to sexual impurity is very real. A man would be a fool to deny it. But you can stay clean- even in this dirty world-if you are willing to pay the price.

Heavenly Father, purify my heart, so that I will be clean from the inside out. Amen.

Which one of the four decisions do you most need to make right now? Who do you need to tell about the decision you are making?

What does it mean to you to purposely choose purity?

PROVERBS 8

Proverbs 8:32 Obedience The Benefits of Playing by the Rules

Now then, my sons, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Proverbs 8:32

Here is a simple promise from God. Those who walk in the way of wisdom will be blessed. The word listen means to hear and to obey. After all, any fool can hear the truth, but the truth means nothing until it has penetrated the heart and changed the way you live. A thousand sermons on purity won’t keep you from a tragic mistake until you set your heart to obey God’s command.

A friend pressed a cartoon into my hand just before a worship service. Because it was a long day and I was busy, I didn’t get a chance to look at it until Monday. The cartoon strip is called “Hagar the Horrible.” It shows a short, squatly Viking laboring up a steep, snow-covered mountain. As he nears the top, he cries out, “What is the key to happiness?” The wise man answers, “Abstinence, poverty, fasting and celibacy.” With a crestfallen look, the Viking shouts, “Is there anyone else up there I could talk to?”

Good question. All of us would like it if there were someone else “up there” who would tell us what we really want to hear-that life is basically easy, that the key to happiness is self-indulgence, that you can take shortcuts and still make it to the top.

As I ponder the matter, the following facts seem true to me:

1. Life is hard.

2. Even the best days are filled with difficulty.

3. We’re all secretly looking for “someone else” to tell us what we want to hear.

4. Abstinence, poverty, fasting, and celibacy are not much fun-but they bring more lasting joy than their opposites.

5. Happiness isn’t found in self-indulgence.

6. In general, happiness isn’t “found” at all.

7. Happiness comes as a by-product of other things.

8. There is little, if any, correlation between leisure, luxury, and happiness.

9. Obedience won’t necessarily make you happy, but disobedience will definitely disappoint you in the end.

On the campus of the Moody Bible Institute there is a small plaque on the brick wall of one of the dormitories. This is what it says: “Near this spot in the spring of 1889 Dwight L. Moody knelt in prayer and asked God for this land on which to build a Bible school.” Underneath are the words of 1 John 2:17 from the King James Version: “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

Was D. L. Moody a happy man? Historians tell us that he was a jovial, gregarious man whose heart burned with a passion to win the lost to Jesus Christ. His life stands as a testimony that the happiest people on earth are those who seek and find the will of God. If you seek happiness, you will never find it; if you seek to do the will of God, you will find more happiness by accident than most people find on purpose.

Lord God, I want to do Your will more than anything else. If that is not true of me, do whatever it takes to make it true. Amen.

Do you agree that happiness is a by-product of doing the will of God? How does your life match up with that principle? What act of obedience have you been putting off? What are you going to do about it?

PROVERBS 10

Proverbs 10:4 DILIGENCE Staying by the Stuff

Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10:4

Ponder this definition of diligence: “Long, steady application to one’s occupation or studies; persistent effort.” That’s clear, isn’t it? If you want to make it to the top in any field of endeavor, you need many things working in your favor. Some of them can’t be orchestrated but must be supplied by the Lord’s providential favor. However, Solomon teaches us that you can tip the scales of life in your favor through “long, steady application” and “persistent effort.”

Often that will require persistence in the face of doubt and ridicule. Michelangelo took a piece of marble that no one else could use and eventually produced the incomparable David. Christopher Columbus ignored his critics and eventually discovered America. Skeptics tried to convince Henry Ford to abandon his idea of a mass-produced motorcar. People laughed at Wilbur and Orville Wright when they attempted to create a flying machine. But in each case diligence won the day.

Most of us have heard the story of Thomas Edison and the invention of the incandescent light bulb. For months he struggled to find the proper material for the filament inside the bulb. Nothing seemed to work. Some materials would conduct electricity but wouldn’t produce light; others produced light but immediately burned up. Month after month he stayed in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, doggedly trying one combination after another. Eventually he had tried 799 different combinations. “Don’t you feel like you’ve wasted your time?” someone asked him. “Oh no,” Edison replied, “now I know 799 things that won’t work.”

In a recent article in Leaders for Today, Harold Keown examined the lives of Christian leaders from many countries and asked how it was that, in the face of intense opposition, they accomplished so much for Jesus Christ. His conclusion startled me: “People serious about achieving seemingly impossible goals often assume the stance of a turtle.”

It sounds strange because turtles seem like anything but a role model for outstanding achievers. But it’s true. As Aesop pointed out several thousand years ago, the turtle plods along even though he is soon passed by the swift-running hare. But who gets to the finish line first? The turtle, because he just kept on going. That’s a turtle truism: Successful people just keep on going despite the opposition, despite their apparent lack of progress, despite the fact that others pass them by. They stay the course, keep moving ahead, always marching toward godly goals.

Calvin Coolidge summed it up well when he said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (KJV). Do you feel defeated today, trapped on a dead-end street? Remember the turtle and take hope. You can do more than you think you can.

Lord God, forgive me for giving up too soon. Create in me new determination to keep on moving in the right direction. Amen.

Have you ever known someone who succeeded in some worthwhile project through nothing more than sheer determination and persistence?

Can you think of a part of your life where you are currently tempted to give up too soon? What do you need to do about it?

Proverbs 10:8 SUBMISSION How God Works Through Others

The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin. Proverbs 10:8

Submission is one of the more difficult lessons to learn, especially when we have more wisdom than the person to whom we must submit. It’s not that difficult to obey a person we admire greatly. Most of us will even obey people we don’t like if they seem to know what they are talking about. But what do you do when you don’t like the person, don’t respect him, and truly believe he doesn’t have a clue?

The temptation at that point is to become a “chattering fool.” We talk back, we argue incessantly, we filibuster, we stonewall, we make excuses for not obeying, we stage a work slowdown, we gossip, we complain-we do everything but accept the commands of those in authority over us.

“But a chattering fool comes to ruin.” Talking too much eventually gets us into trouble. We may end up losing our job or that promotion we coveted. It might mean that we irritate our superiors to the point that they take action against us.

Shouldn’t we speak out when we have valid concerns? Yes, of course. But there is a fundamental difference between expressing a concern and refusing to accept direction from others.

Behind the principle of submission stands the truth of God’s providence. If you believe that God works through the details of life, then you must also believe that He has placed you exactly where you are right now for a particular purpose. Consider Joseph. First he was Jacob’s favored son; then he found himself in a pit; then in Potiphar’s house; then in prison. Finally he became prime minister of Egypt and, as a result, was reunited with the brothers who sold him into slavery. In the end he could confidently proclaim, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20, NKJV).

When everything else is stripped away, we are to accept commands from others because we believe in God, not because we believe in the person giving commands. He (or she) may or may not be a worthy person. We may in fact be more qualified. But that has nothing to do with how we respond. If we believe that God is in charge of where we are right now, we can obey with joy (if not with happiness), because we know with certainly that by receiving commands from others, we are ultimately obeying God-who definitely has more wisdom than we do.

This has very practical ramifications for Christian wives who struggle with the issue of submission to their husbands. In the light of God’s providence, submission means believing that God is able to work through your husband to accomplish His will in your life, to protect your interests, and to meet your deepest needs. To state the matter this way does not answer every question, nor does it make submission easy, but at least it puts the matter in the proper context-not between a wife and her husband but ultimately between a woman and her God.

Submission to any human authority doesn’t come naturally to any of us. But if we believe in God and His involvement in our lives, we can find the strength to submit when we’re tempted to become chattering fools.

Lord, give me eyes to see Your invisible hand at work through those in authority over me. Amen.

At what points in your life are you most tempted to talk back instead of obey?

How do you personally define the difference between expressing valid concerns and refusing to accept direction from others?

Proverbs 10:9 INTEGRITY The Ultimate Virtue

The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out. Proverbs 10:9

The dictionary uses words such as whole and complete to describe what integrity means. To borrow a modern expression, a man with integrity “has his act together.” There are no loose ends that threaten his reputation.

Recently I ran across a full-page ad for an international relief organization. The picture shows a young child-perhaps from Central America or possibly Asia- writing at her desk. The ad copy contains the following sentence: “Integrity. It’s as simple as being what you say you are.” That strikes me as an excellent definition of integrity. It means being what you say you are-all the time and in every situation.

To be called a man of integrity is the highest possible compliment. Several years ago my older brother took me to visit a cemetery outside Florence, Alabama, near the remains of an antebellum mansion called Forks of Cypress. The mansion was built in the 1820s by James Jackson, an early settler of northwest Alabama. My brother and I walked among the ruins of the mansion and then crossed the country road into the dense forest on the other side. After a quarter mile we found the Jackson family cemetery. There is no sign marking the spot, only a five-foot-high stone wall surrounding about fifty graves. Inside we found a tall marker over James Jackson’s grave, with a long inscription extolling his virtues, which were many.

I walked along, my eyes fastened on the marker for one of his sons, William Moore Jackson. There was his name, the dates 1824-1891, and this simple five-word epitaph: “A man of unquestioned integrity.”

Five words to sum up an entire life. Sixty-plus years distilled into five words. But, oh, what truth they tell.

“A man of unquestioned integrity.” I cannot think of a better tribute. Then the thought came: What will they put on my tombstone?

At a recent leadership retreat, the speaker hammered away at one point: A ministry with integrity will stand the test of time. Everything else fades away-fads come and go, glitz will attract people but it won’t hold them, good programs lose their appeal, new buildings grow old, pastors stay for a while and then leave. But integrity never goes out of style. If you have it, people trust you; if you don’t, they don’t. And if you lose their trust, it’s hard to get it back.

We hear a lot these days about family values and the need to rediscover virtue in American society. The basic building blocks of virtue are actually very simple. We’ve known them all along:

Honesty, perseverance, faithfulness, determination, kindness, loyalty, self-control.

We’ve known these truths since the beginning of time. The problem isn’t in the knowing; it’s in the doing.

The mind wanders back to a forgotten tombstone and to those five simple words: “A man of unquestioned integrity.” The more you think about it, the greater it seems. Five words aren’t much to sum up a life of sixty-seven years, but those five will do nicely. In fact, you could do much worse.

I’m not sure what anyone will write on my tombstone. But I wouldn’t mind if someone felt I deserved those five words.

Lord, help me to live in such a way that integrity will be one of the first things people think of when they think of me. Amen.

Related Sermon

January 1995 – I want to begin this sermon by giving you a verse of Scripture that is hard to know where it fits. It is Proverbs 24:26. It seems to fit well on the first Sunday of the new year. It says, “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.” What does that mean? What is the relationship between an honest answer and a kiss on the lips. I think it is three things.

1. Just as it is relatively rare to be kissed on the lips, even so it is relatively rare to hear a true and honest answer.

2. Just as the kiss on the lips means more than the kiss on the cheek, even so an honest answer is a mark of true sincerity.

3. Just as a kiss on the lips can be and should be deeply satisfying to the soul, even so an honest answer is satisfying to the soul.

I was reading Proverbs, literally thumbing through it, and came across that verse. It seemed to me to say so much to us that we need to think about. An honest answer is as rare, as sincere and as satisfying as a kiss on the lips.

If you look in the the dictionary for the word integrity, what you will find is almost always a definition that includes the word “wholeness,” because the very word integrity itself has the idea of that which is wholehearted, that which is completely honest, whole, complete and true. I actually did a little study in the Bible to see how many times the word integrity comes up. I am going to read you several verses.

The first is a reference to King David’s integrity. It is found in Psalm 78:72. “And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; and with skillful hands he led them.” That text is telling us that the thing that made David’s reign as king so wonderful was that he was a man who performed his task of leadership with integrity.

I Kings 9:4-5 is what the Lord said to Solomon, who followed his father, David. “As for you, if you walk before me in integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever.” God told Solomon that he values integrity so much, that if he would be a man of integrity as David was, what God did for him, he would do for Solomon, and even more than that, and establish him on his throne forever.

I Chronicles 29:17 is what David said, “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.” That tells us two things. First, that God does indeed search the human heart. Second, what God is looking for inside the human heart is this quality of integrity.

Nehemiah 7:2 says, “I put in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanani, along with Hananiah the commander of the citadel, because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do.” That is an unusual phrase.

Proverbs 10:9 says, “The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.” The man of integrity has security in his life, whereas the man of crooked paths is going to be uncovered.

Proverbs 11:3 says, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” Notice the comparison between the man of integrity and the unfaithful who are destroyed by duplicity. What is integrity? It is wholeness of purpose, total honesty, a whole-hearted, blameless approach to life. It is the opposite of those unfaithful, unreliable people who say one thing and then do another.

Proverbs 13:6 says, “Righteousness guards the man of integrity, but wickedness overthrows the sinner.” We are being told that the man of integrity is kept straight by God.

Proverbs 29:10 says, “Bloodthirsty men hate a man of integrity and seek to kill the upright.” That is a warning that if you decide to live according to integrity, not everybody will like the way you are living. Integrity will bring you protection from God, but it does not mean that you will have an easy road in the world.

Matthew 22:16 is a comment by the Pharisees who are talking to Jesus. “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity.” That is important because that testimony comes from the Pharisees, who basically were trying to trap him. This is a testimony even by his enemies—even his enemies had to say that Jesus was a man of integrity. “You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are.” Integrity means that you tell the truth, and aren’t unduly swayed by human opinion.

Integrity is a combination of three things: honesty, dependability, and purity of motive.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday we went down to visit my brother Andy in Florence, Alabama. Andy asked me if I would like to go see a mansion built by a man who was a general for Andrew Jackson. I did, so he took our family out to a place called Cyprus Forks, which is about 12 miles west of Florence. There is a beautiful mansion that is mostly burned down. The columns are still remaining. The mansion is about 150 years old, built by General James Jackson (no relation) who was a general serving under General Andrew Jackson. Andy showed us around the remains of the mansion, then said he wanted to show us the cemetery. We crossed the road, way out in the country. Nobody else was living out there at all. We walked through the woods and down the dirt road until we arrived at the cemetery. It is the cemetery of the James Jackson family. Most of the graves in there are 150-160 years olds. There I saw the monument to General James Jackson, but I also saw the monuments to his sons who were buried in the graveyard. One caught my eye. It was one of the sons who served during the Civil War and who died about the time the Civil War was coming to an end. Underneath his name they had this sentence: A man of unquestioned integrity. What a phrase to put on your tombstone! A man whose integrity was so strong that during his life and even after his death, no one could call his integrity into question at all.

I want to give you the four marks of integrity, what it looks like in the life of the believer on a practical basis.

1. Integrity means telling the truth even when it hurts.
Proverbs 12:17 says, “A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells lies.”

Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” The first mark of integrity is that you tell the truth even when it hurts you.

Not long ago I had a discussion with a man who is living far away from here. This is a man who is undergoing a difficult and bloody, bitter divorce. The facts of it do not matter for my story. As I listened to his story, I could not say for sure who was right and who was wrong. It seems that in those situations there is plenty of guilty to pass around on both sides. As we talked about his upcoming divorce proceedings, this man told me that some things had been uncovered that he hoped would not come out in court. He said, “If I get up there, I will deny it.” He would get on the stand and tell a lie because the truth would hurt him badly in the divorce proceedings. I looked at him straight in the eye and said, “My friend, whatever you do, tell the truth, even if it hurts you. Remember, you can always get your money back, but you can’t get your integrity back.” You can’t. Once that is gone, you can never really get it back again. If you do, it will take you years. Tell the truth even when it hurts you. Integrity means that you are an honest witness, that what you say is the truth of what actually is.

2. Integrity means keeping a promise when you would rather not.
Psalm 15:1 says, “Who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous.” Then he gives a list of what it means to be righteous. Psalm 15:4 says, “He who keeps his oath even when it hurts.” The man of integrity keeps his promise even when he would rather not. He keeps his oath even when it hurts. How do you do that? When you sign a contract, you are making a promise. When you use a credit card, you are making a promise. When you sign up to do something, you are making a promise. When you say you are going to join something, you are making a promise. When you set an appointment, you are making an promise. When you say you are going to teach a class, you are making a promise. When you say you will be there, you are making a promise. And the man of integrity keeps his promises even when he would rather not.

How can we be the kind of people who keep our promises?
A. Watch your words.
B. Make fewer promises.
C. If you can’t, don’t say you can.
D. If you don’t know, say you don’t know.
E. Avoid rash vows.
F. Learn to say no.

3. Integrity means that you confront problems when it would be easier to walk away.
Proverbs 27:5-6 says, “Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” I like the King James much better here. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Sometimes being a man or woman of integrity means that you don’t walk away from a problem. It means you see a problem and you hit it head on, when it would be easier and more convenient and pleasant to just walk away.

A couple of years ago I was talking with one of the women of this church. She had a very interesting statement that stuck in my mind and came back to me as I thought about this sermon. She was talking about somebody else in our congregation that she needed to go talk to. She said this, “Pastor Ray, it is not going to be easy for me to do this because I don’t like doing this kind of thing. It won’t be easy for me to say what needs to be said. But I have now learned that I am old enough to do what I have to do.” Integrity means that you see a problem and hit it head-on.

Norman Schwartzkopf, the great general of the Persian Gulf War, gave this response when asked what was his secret of leadership. “I never walk past a problem. I never see something going wrong and forget about it. I always stop and confront it right there.”

I remember something I was told by a fellow pastor who has been in his church in the Chicago area for 27-28 years now, and has built one of the great churches of the Chicago area. We were together one night and I asked him how he survived 25 years in a church. He said, “I learned years ago when I was just starting out in the ministry that my tendency was when I see a problem, it is easier to just walk away. I discovered that I had to fight that tendency. I discovered through hard experience that the first price you pay is always the cheapest.” What that means is that the first price you pay in handling human relational conflicts is always the cheapest. The reason that we don’t want to get involved in solving problems that we see around us is that we think that if we just wait, they will solve themselves. That is rarely the case. We think the price will go down if we wait. I have discovered that this pastor friend is right. It applies to marriage problems. It applies to parent-child problems. It applies to relationships of any kind within the family, at work, in the church. Integrity means that you see a problem and you deal with it when it comes up. Problems never get better when you ignore them. You may think you love someone too much to say anything. No, if you really love them,. you would speak the truth. You would speak it in love, but you will speak the truth they need to hear. Integrity does not ignore the problems of life.

3. Integrity means forgiving when you’d rather hold a grudge.
Some of us have come into the new year with some bitterness over things that have happened in the past. Maybe as you look at the holiday season, you feel that you have been mistreated. May I remind you of two truths. First, you are to forgive because God has already forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you. Second, you are to forgive because you promised God you would forgive. Every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer you are promising to forgive. “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.”

You are to forgive because bitterness destroys, while forgiveness sets you free.

You are to forgive because forgiveness sets you free to minister to those who have hurt you. As long as you hold a grudge, you are chained to the past. As long as you are angry about the way you have been treated, you are still living back in the past.

I was having a conversation with somebody two or three weeks ago. A statement stuck in my mind. Out of the blue, she said, “I have decided to forgive him.” That, my friend, is a Christian statement. Integrity chooses to forgive. Integrity means forgiving when you’d rather hold a grudge.

It is always good to think about how you want the year to go. This year we ought to be people of unquestioned integrity. We ought to be people of honesty, truthfulness, dependability, people of truly pure motives. That means telling the truth even when it hurts. That means keeping your promises when you’d rather not. That means confronting problems when it would be easier to walk away. That means forgiving others when you’d rather hold a grudge.

As we stand on the brink of a new year, we know that our Lord Jesus Christ was and is a man of unquestioned integrity. If you are going to follow him this year, you are going to walk in integrity, you are going to live in integrity, you’re going to be honest, truthful, dependable. The good news is this: integrity may seem hard, but through Jesus Christ, it is really easy. Dishonesty may seem easy, but for the Christian it is always hard. Jesus Christ can give you the power to be a person of unquestioned integrity this year. Honesty, facing your problems, paying the price, forgiving others, keeping your promises.

It’s going to be a great year. Let’s go through it as men and women committed to the ultimate virtue: the virtue of integrity.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for a brand new year. Please help us as we move through it. Lord, without you we can do nothing, but through your power all things are possible. So help us to be truthful, honest, open, and straightforward in all of our relationships. Help us to be men and women who walk before you with integrity of heart this year. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Proverbs 10:26 PUNCTUALITY On Time Every Time

As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to those who send him. Proverbs 10:26

If you’ve ever sipped raw vinegar or stood downwind from a campfire, you know exactly what Solomon means. Raw vinegar is so sour it sets the teeth on edge. Hot smoke irritates the eyes. That’s what a sluggard is like when you send him to do a job.

This poor fellow has several problems. He doesn’t understand why you want him when you could have chosen old Joe at the next desk. He’s not very interested in delivering the message because it doesn’t seem important to him. He’s not sure of the address, and besides that, it’s nearly lunchtime, so he’s bound to stop for an hour or so at the local hamburger joint. What should have been a short trip ends up taking the entire day. No wonder the boss gets ulcers just thinking about it.

What is the cure for such deliberate procrastination? To do your work as if God were watching-because He is. Colossians 3:23 reminds us that “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” What does it mean-"working for the Lord"? It means understanding that every deed-whether small or large-is done for Him and in His name. His reputation is at stake when you show up at work fifteen minutes late or leave ten minutes early. People draw conclusions about the Lord Jesus from the way you do your work each day. If you do just enough to slide by but never enough to satisfy your employer, you are like raw vinegar to the teeth and hot smoke to the eyes-an irritation and not a blessing.

Sometimes we hear it said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” That’s good advice if it simply means, “Focus on the things that really matter.” But for the Christian on the job, there is no “small stuff.” Details matter, deadlines count, promises must be kept, assignments must be completed, orders must be filled, records kept, and bills paid.

Punctuality is not the highest or most important issue in life. But it’s not in the bottom ten, either. It matters more than we think. Some of us may have a lousy reputation simply because we don t do our jobs in a timely fashion.

Someone has pointed out that Jesus provides the perfect picture of a man who was never in haste, yet never missed an appointment. Because He was totally committed to doing His Father’s will, He moved with purposeful dignity from one place to another.

Here is a good model for life. If you want to do the will of God on your job, a good place to begin is by showing up on time every time. Others will notice, our Lord will be honored, and you will find that punctuality brings its own reward.

Help me to be like Jesus, who was never in a hurry, never early, never late, but always on time. Amen.

Are you a punctual person? Can you be counted on to be on time every time? Why or why not? What excuses do you make for being late or missing an appointment?

Does your procrastination bother you? If so, what do you plan to do about it? If it doesn’t bother you, please reread this section.

PROVERBS 11

Proverbs 11:2 HUMILITY The Way Up Is Down

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2

It’s always tricky to talk about humility. How do you know when you’re truly humble? Come to think of it, if you are truly humble, will you even know it? Humility is the virtue which, when you think you have it, you’ve lost it.

It’s helpful to know that the Hebrew word for “proud” is related to the Hebrew word for “high.” In the Old Testament, it was used for high trees and high mountains. It was used to describe King Saul, who stood higher than anyone else in Israel. It was also used of God, who was said to be “on high” and whose thoughts are higher than the thoughts of man. We use the word in the same way when we say, “Get off your high horse, buster.”

We live in a culture that puts a very low value on humility. They don’t give out merit badges for humility. From the moment we enter the world we are urged to get ahead, to climb the ladder, to “look out for number one,” to win through intimidation, and to prove our success by the car we drive, the home we buy, the clothes we wear, and the friends we keep.

Humility in this context simply means that you don’t run the world, you don’t have all the answers, you know your limits. That last one is a hard one for some people- the idea that you have limits. It’s sort of a trendy, New Age-type idea to talk about unlimited potential and the untapped resources within. The truth is, our potential is very limited and the only untapped resources are the ones we discover when we come to the end and admit that we are limited but God is not.

What is humility? It’s having a right view of yourself because you have a right view of God. Humility does not mean saying, “I’m a nothing, I’m a worm, I’m useless.” That’s not humility; that’s self-pity, which is really another form of pride.

And what is pride? It’s having too large a view of yourself because you have too small a view of God. When your God is big, you will be small and pride will be impossible.

This is humility: “God made me and I belong to Him. Every good thing I have in life is a gift from the Almighty. Some have more, some have less. It matters not to me. I thank God for what I have, and I’m going to do the best I can with what God has given me, and I’m going to leave the outcome with Him.”

If we live that way, it will save us so much trouble. We won’t have to get into a power game at work or live in the rat race or sell our convictions to get ahead. We won’t get angry at the silly comments people make. Humility enables us to be who we are in Christ. And we won’t have to worry about what others think.

Humble me, Lord, lest I should think more of myself than I ought and block Your power in my life. Amen.

Name three people you would call humble. What qualities do they have in common?

Why is self-pity just another form of pride?

MERCY

Proverbs 11:17a Doing unto Others As God Has Done unto You

A kind man benefits himself. Proverbs 11:17a

Whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Proverbs 14:31b

He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward him for what he has done. Proverbs 19:17

The principal Hebrew word for mercy is racham, which speaks of an emotional response to the needs of others. It means to feel the pain of another person so deeply that you are compelled to do something about it. The ancients believed that the seat of the emotions was found in the intestinal area. That is why the King James Version uses the phrase “bowels of mercy.” When we say, “I have a gut feeling” about something, we are using the same concept.

Mercy is an attribute of God’s character. First Chronicles 21:13 tells us that “his mercy is very great.” Nehemiah 9:31 speaks of “your great mercy.” Luke 1:78 tells us that Christ came because of the “tender mercy” of our God. Romans 9:16 says that God’s election springs from His mercy. Ephesians 2:4 says that God is “rich in mercy.” And Hebrews 4:16 tells us that when we come to Jesus in prayer we are coming to a throne of grace where we can receive mercy and find grace. According to Titus 3:5, God saved us because of his mercy. James 5:11 declares that “the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.

These famous lines from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice are true in every way. Mercy always comes down. It starts with God and moves to man; it begins in heaven and ends on earth. You don’t bargain for mercy, for to make a bargain you’ve got to have something to offer-and we have nothing to offer God. And mercy is indeed like the gentle rain that softens the hard soil of the human heart.

We need this because we are sinners worse than we know. Even the best Christian would have no hope of heaven without the shining mercy of God. If God did not forgive and keep on forgiving, if He did not continue to pour out His mercy like the “gentle rain from heaven,” we would be utterly and completely lost.

Here’s a simple definition of mercy: Doing unto others as God has done unto you. How has God treated you? Has God blessed you? Then bless others. Has God forgiven you? Then forgive others. Has God lifted you up when you were down? Then lift others up when they are down. Has God overlooked your faults? Then overlook the faults of others.

Mercy includes three elements:

“I see the need"-that’s recognition.

“I am moved by the need"-that’s motivation.

“I move to meet the need"-that’s action.

Mercy is one of God’s chief attributes. It is a fundamental part of His basic nature. When I show mercy, I am in the place of God in someone’s life. I am doing to them what God would do. The world cannot see mercy in the abstract but only in the concrete. If you and I don’t show mercy, where in the world will it be found?

Holy Father, as You have shown mercy to me, now enable me to show mercy to others. Amen.

How has God blessed you in the last year? How could you be a greater blessing to others?

Think of a time when someone showed mercy to you. Think of a time when you showed mercy to someone else. In retrospect, which time was more personally satisfying to you?

Proverbs 11:13 CONFIDENTIALITY How to Say Nothing Nicely

A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret. Proverbs 11:13

How good are you at keeping a secret? I don’t mean a big, world-shaking secret, but the kind of secret you hear almost every day. Perhaps your best friend confides in you that he is thinking of changing jobs. Or your friend says that she and her husband are having marital problems. Or your boss confides in you that the company is about to relocate to another state. What do you do with that kind of information?

Let’s face it-everyone loves a secret. We love to hear them and, unfortunately, we love to tell them. When someone says, “Let me tell you a secret,” the world stops to listen.

Turn it around. What do you do when someone says, “I’m sorry. I promised I wouldn’t tell.” Be honest. It drives most of us up the wall, doesn’t it? We can’t stand to be left out. So we badger the person; we keep asking questions (“Don’t tell me the whole thing, just tell me part of it”); we hound them until finally they give in.

We all know people who can’t keep a secret. Some people love to share their tidbits of inside information to one person at a time. Others won’t tell the whole secret, but will drop hints so you can figure it out on your own. Occasionally Christians reveal secrets by calling them prayer requests.

Here’s a simple rule: If you promise to keep a secret, then keep it. If you don’t intend to keep the secret, don’t make the promise. If someone objects that a person must sometimes tell a secret for the good of everyone involved, the answer is yes, sometimes that happens, but not as often as we think.

The ability to keep a secret is a mark of maturity; the compulsion to reveal a secret is a mark of immaturity. And it also is a mark of maturity to respect a person who says, “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.”

How about you? What is the level of your maturity? Are you the kind of person who can be trusted not to reveal confidential information? When a friend comes to you confessing serious personal problems, do you phone someone else so they can “pray about it?” Or are you strong enough to keep it to yourself?

These are searching questions. One reason hurting Christians often drift away from the church is that they simply cannot trust fellow believers to keep their struggles private. How many churches have split because someone began spreading rumors and revealing secrets! How many believers are defiled because we are too curious, too quick to pry, and too prone to repeat things in public that would be better dealt with in private?

God bless those believers who can keep a secret. They bear a heavy burden that only God knows.

During World War II it was said that “loose lips sink ships.” They also destroy lives, break up marriages, split churches, and ruin reputations.

Remember, you don’t have to tell everything you know. If you can’t keep a secret, don’t listen to it in the first place.

Lord Jesus, I pray to become the kind of person others can trust with their secrets. Amen.

Do you find it hard to keep a secret? How do you feel when others refuse to tell the secrets they know?

In what sense do those who keep a secret bear a heavy burden?

What happens when people tell their secrets indiscriminately?

Proverbs 11:25 GENEROSITY What Size Is Your Shovel?

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. Proverbs 11:25

The blessings of generosity are mentioned several times in the book of Proverbs. Those who honor the Lord with their wealth will find their barns filled to overflowing (3:9-10), and the generous will be blessed (22:9), especially those who give to the poor (19:17). In essence, God is saying, “If you give to the poor (who can’t return the favor), it’s as if you gave it to Me personally, and I will see that you are repaid.”

Generous giving is not difficult when we understand that everything we have comes from God. This is the basic truth that animates all Christian giving. All that we are and all that we have comes from God. Everything is a gift. Nothing is earned; everything is given.

You own nothing. Everything you have is on loan from God. He gives it to you for a little while and says, “Take care of it.” We hold on tight because we think it all belongs to us. Sooner or later we’ll understand that it doesn’t belong to us-and it never did.

What do you do when you’re running short on money but see a need and you want to get involved? I think the answer is clear. You give whatever you can and trust God to take care of you. It may not be a lot. Indeed, it may be very small. The amount doesn’t matter. What matters is the attitude of the heart.

God specifically promises to take care of generous givers. And He promises to give back to you in accordance with the measure of generosity you use in your giving in the first place. Jesus specifically made that promise in Luke 6:38: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” My friend Howard Harvey calls this the Shovel Principle: “I shovel it out and God shovels it in, and He’s got a bigger shovel than I do.”

I like that because it perfectly catches the spirit of Jesus’ words. Generous givers are not the people with a large bank account, but the people with a large view of God. We often look at people who give generously and think, “They must be rich.” But it is not so. Poor people are often very generous, and rich people can be very stingy. Generosity has nothing to do with how much money you have. But it has everything to do with your view of God.

If your God is big, you will be generous. If He is small, you will be stingy. If you struggle with your giving, it may be because your God is too small. The bigger your God, the easier it will be for you to give.

Someone has said that since we can’t take it with us, the best thing we can do with our money is to give it away. I have a feeling that Solomon (who was an extremely rich man) would agree with that thought. God takes care of generous givers. You may not get rich by giving your money away, but you’ll never know as long as you keep it all for yourself.

Lord God, open my eyes to see how much You have given me and how rich I already am. Amen.

How big is your God? How does your view of God impact your giving?

Do you really believe what Jesus says in Luke 6:38?

Proverbs 11:30 EVANGELISM He Who Wins Souls Is Wise

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise. Proverbs 11:30

The phrase “tree of life” takes us back to the very beginning of the Bible. Genesis 2 tells us that God planted the “tree of life” in the center of the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of that tree, they would have lived forever (Genesis 3:22). The “tree of life” appears again in Revelation 22 in the New Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God’s people throughout eternity. So the Bible begins and ends with the “tree of life.”

But in between, every believer is called to be a “tree of life.” The expression refers to the life-giving influence we can have on those around us. In the same way that we are to be salt and light in the midst of decay and darkness (Matthew 5:13-16), we are also called to be life-givers to those who are spiritually dead.

This is the greatest privilege any Christian can ever have-to lead another person to Jesus Christ. To use the terminology of Proverbs 11:30, you have “won” his soul for the Lord; you can truly be called a “soul-winner.”

After preaching a sermon on prayer, I received the following message from a member of my congregation:

I wanted to share with you something interesting that happened a few days ago. Last Saturday afternoon my wife and I happened to park our car near the church before we went downtown. While we were walking back to our car, we happened to be discussing your sermon from last Sunday on prayer. I didn’t even notice a man sitting on the bench by the sidewalk. As we were getting into our car, the man said that he overheard us talking about prayer and that he could use some prayer right now. So we sat down and talked with him. We spent about 30 minutes with him. He told us that he was down on his luck and that he felt like he needed prayer. So we prayed with him. We asked him if he knew Jesus and he said no. So we explained God’s salvation plan and he prayed with us and accepted Jesus into his heart. I thought you might like to know that it was discussing your sermon on prayer that caused him to ask us to pray with him. It’s great how God can work.

This wonderful story offers many good lessons. It reinforces the truth that there are hungry hearts all around us. There is no shortage of lost people in the world. All God needs is someone willing to spread the Word.

Sometimes we make evangelism more difficult than it really is. Let the image of the “tree of life” be a guide. Put your roots down deep in the soil of God’s Word. As the fruit of a new life begins to appear, it will attract others. When they start asking questions, tell them about Jesus. If they are ready, lead them to Christ.

Solomon said, “He who wins souls is wise.” This is why Jesus came-to seek and to save the lost. Will you join Him in this great work?

Lead me to some soul today. O teach me, Lord, just what to say. Make me a “tree of life, “I pray. Amen.

Who were the “trees of life” God used to bring you to Jesus? Have you ever thanked them for their godly influence?

Who are three people you would like to see come to Christ? Stop right now and pray that God would make you a “tree of life” to them.

PROVERBS 12

Proverbs 12:11 HARD WORK The Reason We Get Out of Bed

He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment. Proverbs 12:11

Hard work yesterday does not guarantee tomorrow’s success. Hard work yesterday has to be followed up with hard work today to guarantee tomorrow’s prosperity.

Every day you face a choice of going one of two ways. You can go the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is the way of procrastination. It is the way of staying in bed when the alarm clock goes off. The easy way is the way of saying it doesn’t matter whether I work today or not; it doesn’t matter what time I show up; it doesn’t matter if I check out a few minutes early-the boss isn’t around, and, after all, it’s good enough for government work. It is the way of no plans, no forethought, no enthusiasm, no diligence. The easy way says take it easy, slow down, back off, don’t have a heart attack. It is the soft and cuddly way. It is the way of laziness, the way of the sluggard.

All of us are born on the easy way. A voice inside whispers, “Take a shortcut. Cheat if you have to. Cut some corners. Pull some strings. Take it easy. Don’t work too hard. Where’s the fire? Slow down, man.”

The hard way means getting up early to have your daily devotions whether you feel like it or not. It involves preparation, long-range planning, goal setting, future orientation, diligence, forethought, showing up for work on time, giving eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, doing what you’re told and then doing what needs to be done, even if you’re not told. It means paying the price to cross racial lines for the sake of Jesus Christ. The man who takes the hard way doesn’t send his children to church; he takes them with him. He sacrifices time out with his buddies so he can spend time with his wife. The hard way means putting God’s kingdom ahead of your own interests, even at the expense of career advancement. If you decide to go the hard way, you’re going to have to get in shape mentally, physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.

Here’s an important insight that many men never discover: God is on the hard road. He’s not sitting with the couch potatoes. The hard road looks difficult and daunting. All of us would rather be on the easy road. God is calling you to stop making excuses and get in the ball game.

Do you want to know the ironic thing about the easy road and the hard road? The easy road looks easy, but once you get on it, it turns into the hard road. And the hard road looks hard, but once you do the hard thing in life, it turns out to be the easy road. The easy road is deceptive. It is the way of destruction, poverty, starvation, and desperation. It is the way to wasted days, wasted weeks, wasted months, and wasted years. The hard road that appears to be so difficult is ultimately the road of blessing, fulfillment, and lasting spiritual growth. It is the road that leads you to the top. The easy road takes you down to the bottom. Smart people take the hard road and end up smiling, while the folks on the easy road can only dream of what might have been.

Lord God, give me the courage and the discipline to stay on the hard road today. Amen.

How do you spot a person on the “hard road"? the “easy road"?

What is the “hard road” for you personally, and what is your version of the “easy road"?

Which road are you traveling right now?

Proverbs 12:20 PEACEMAKING The Mark of the Children of God

There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil, but joy for those who promote peace. Proverbs 12:20

A few years ago pollster George Gallup surveyed Americans on the top five questions they would most like to ask God. The list included the following question: “Will there ever be lasting world peace?”

It’s a fitting question to ask as we near the end of the bloodiest century in world history. More people have died in this century because of warfare than in any other since the dawn of the human race. As President Eisenhower once said, we have become a race of intellectual giants and moral pygmies. Despite our great technological advances, we continue to devise more efficient means of killing each other.

In this bloody world, peace must be made. Peace never happens by chance. Someone has to drag the combatants to the table and give them a reason to put down their arms. Jesus never said, “Blessed are the peacewishers or the peacehopers or the peacedreamers.” But He did say, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9).

What is a peacemaker? Here’s a working definition: A peacemaker is someone who is actively working to reconcile men to God and to one another. He (or she) is a “minister of reconciliation” who has been given the “message of reconciliation” (see 2 Corinthians 5:18-21).

Please note that peacemaking is a spiral that begins close to home. It starts in your closest and most intimate relationships-between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. Then it moves out to your extended family-your close friends at church, on the job, and in the classroom. Only then does peacemaking move out to more remote relationships-in the village, the city, the state, the nation, and the world.

Peacemaking is not an easy business. It is costly, time-consuming, painful, and emotionally exhausting. Those who do it will often be misunderstood.

Our problem tends to be at the level of motivation. We know that peace is hard to make and even harder to keep. It’s usually easier to walk away from a problem. Why get involved in someone else’s difficulty? Or we try and are rebuffed or even attacked and criticized for our efforts. So we tend to despair and give up even before we get started.

But everyone can do something.

You’ve got a telephone. Make a call.

You’ve got paper. Write a letter.

You’ve got a kitchen. Make a meal.

You’ve got a billfold. Give some money.

You’ve got two hands. Put them to work for others.

You’ve got two feet. Go see a friend in pain.

You’ve got two ears. Listen to the cries of the wounded.

You’ve got two eyes. Lift them up to see the world as God sees it.

You’ve got two lips. Preach the gospel of peace.

There is so much war, so much strife, so much pain in the world. That means there is plenty of work for you to do. Every tiny step receives God’s blessing.

How do you get involved in the world? Be a peacemaker!

What will you be called? A child of God!

Prince of Peace, make me an instrument of Your peace so that others will know that I am a child of God. Amen.

Why is peacemaking not a popular occupation? Name three situations where you could make a difference as a peacemaker. What hinders you from getting involved?

Proverbs 12:25 AFFIRMATION Finding Something Good to Say

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. Proverbs 12:25

Proverbs has much to say about the importance of affirmation. “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life” (15:4a). “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life” (10:11a). “A man finds joy in giving an apt reply-and how good is a timely word!” (15:23). “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (16:24).

For many years, Henrietta Mears was director of Christian education at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. God gave her a wonderful insight into human nature. These are her words: “Whenever I meet a new person, I imagine them wearing a sign across their chest which reads, ‘My name is_. Please help me feel important.’” Helping people feel important is what affirmation is all about.

But where should we begin? I have three suggestions:

First, make sure you begin each day by saying an encouraging word to each member of your family. Have you ever had one of those “uh-huh” breakfasts? That’s what happens when you are too frazzled to talk intelligently to each other. So you grunt. “Would you like some coffee, sweetheart?” “Uh-huh.” “Don’t forget your lunch.” “Uh-huh.” “Where’s my geometry book?” “Uh-huh.” “Can I borrow a hundred dollars, Dad?” “Uh-huh.” “Would you like a dead rat with your scrambled eggs?” “Uh-huh.”

We’ve all had mornings like that. Just make sure it doesn’t become a habit. Take time to encourage each other before you go out the door.

Second, before you say a word of criticism, say a prayer for the person you are criticizing. This is simply a practical piece of advice. If we criticize without praying, we run the risk of speaking in anger and saying things we regret later. But if we pray first, the venom is drained out of our words. We may even lose our anger completely and decide that the criticism is unwarranted.

Third, when you feel the slightest urge to encourage someone, go ahead and do it. Make a simple resolution that every time you feel like encouraging someone this week, you will go ahead and do it. Just put aside your work, get up from your desk, pick up the phone, write a note, pat someone on the back, and say a good word to lift someone’s spirits. Try doing it for just one week. Who knows? It might become a permanent habit.

The story is told of a little second-grade boy who was trying out for a part in the school play. The day came for the auditions and his mother took him to school and waited for him to come out. She was nervous because she knew he couldn’t sing, couldn’t act, and couldn’t memorize very well. So she was surprised when he came out after forty-five minutes with a big smile on his face. “How did it go, honey?” “It was great, Mom. Guess what? I’ve been chosen to clap and cheer.”

In truth, that could be said about all of us. We have all been chosen by God to clap and cheer for our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. They need to hear it and we need to do it. Let the applause begin.

Father, make me a messenger of hope and encouragement to those I meet today. Amen.

Whom do you know who needs a word of encouragement right now?

Did you come from an encouraging family? How would you rate your own family in this area? What can you do to make things more positive?

PROVERBS 13

Proverbs 13:11 THRIFT How the Poor Become Rich

Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow. Proverbs 13:11

This verse might be labeled “How to make money the old-fashioned way.” Anything that comes too easily won’t be greatly valued. That’s one danger of giving a young person an inheritance too early in life (20:21). There is also a danger of running after some get-rich-quick scheme-the kind usually advertised in a late-night infomercial (28:20). But let a person toil and sweat to earn a paycheck and he will think twice before blowing it on some frivolous expenditure.

“Dishonest money dwindles away.” According to the Bible, there are three legitimate ways to get money. First, you can work for it (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Second, you can make money through wise investments (Luke 19:11-27). Third, you can receive a gift or an inheritance (2 Corinthians 12:14). There is no fourth category, such as gambling.

Gambling is not work, for the gambler hopes to make money without working at all. Gambling is not an investment, for the gambler creates an artificial risk, hoping to make easy money. Gambling is not a gift, for the money is won from the losers, not given as a gift.

Why, then, do people gamble? They gamble because they think that with just a little bit of luck, they will win. And it doesn’t matter whether the prize is ten dollars or ten thousand dollars, the motivating force is still the same. Gambling offers a shortcut, a way to get ahead quickly, a way to make some easy money.

Contrast that with the biblical principle of contentment. Consider Philippians 4:11 b-13:

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

That last verse is often lifted out of the immediate context and used as a kind of spiritual pep pill. But taken in connection with the preceding verses, the meaning is that the Christian can find contentment in every situation through the power of the indwelling Christ.

Please understand. Contentment does not mean passive acceptance of a bad situation. It does not mean that I shouldn’t try to better myself. Contentment is not the opposite of ambition. But contentment does mean that if I find myself in a difficult position, I will thank God for the opportunity to trust Him, I will use every legitimate means to improve the situation, but I will not fall into the trap of trying to take shortcuts in order to find an easy way out.

For those wishing to build their net worth, Solomon’s advice is simple but very effective: “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” This applies equally to savings or to investing. Take time, start small, work hard, learn the principles of investing, seek wise counsel, and most of all, don’t throw your money away, either through greed, gullibility, or gambling.

In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, the tortoise won because he just kept plodding along. Be a tortoise and watch your money grow.

Lord, make me a tortoise when I am tempted to be a hare. Amen.

Have you ever gambled with your own money? If so, what happened?

What practical steps could you take to develop a thriftier lifestyle?

By nature are you more like the tortoise or the hare?

DISCIPLINE Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him. Proverbs 13:24

Discipline your son, and he will give you peace; he will bring delight to your soul. Proverbs 29:17

Proverbs contains several verses that speak to the issue of corporal punishment. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him” (Pr 22:15). “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death” (Pr 23:13-14). “The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother” (Pr 29:15).

Several observations are in order. First, corporal punishment is a mark of parental love. And more particularly, a refusal to administer such punishment may actually demonstrate a shameful lack of concern. Second, corporal punishment wisely administered has eternal benefits. It saves a soul from death-doubtless physical death is mainly in view, but it also extends to the spiritual realm. Third, the “rod of discipline” stands for more than the act of spanking. It represents the entire process of leading a child to moral and spiritual maturity. Fourth, any discipline exercised in uncontrolled anger can only breed further rebellion (see Colossians 3:21). Fifth, corporal punishment by itself can do little good. It must be accompanied by a wise master plan of teaching God’s truth to your children. Sixth, parents who fail to discipline their children may end up disgraced and dishonored.

Certainly some parents go too far in the area of physical discipline. Some children have been scarred for life (literally and figuratively) by angry parents who took their frustrations out on unsuspecting boys and girls. It’s important to understand that nothing in the Bible supports any kind of physical abuse-no matter what reason is given.

Solomon offers a number of wise guidelines. Discipline must spring from love and must be carefully done. Discipline is administered with a rod, not with a bare hand. Corporal punishment is only one small part of training up a child (Proverbs 22:6)-but it is an important part.

My junior high PE teacher had a wooden paddle with a taped handle that could be administered to an offender’s rear end with incredible accuracy. The memory is vivid precisely because one day he caught me and a friend fooling around with some shuffleboard equipment. He didn’t get mad; he didn’t yell; he didn’t lose his temper. He simply said the two most dreaded words in the English language: “Bend over.” It was a mark of manhood not to cry, but the tears came squeezing out of my eyes nonetheless. The punishment had its intended effect. From that day till this, I’ve never messed with shuffle-board equipment again.

Let’s keep a biblical balance in this area. Corporal punishment is not only allowed but encouraged for disobedient children. But it must be done carefully and thoughtfully, not in anger but in complete self-control. Properly administered, a spanking can be just as loving as a kiss.

Lord, give me the wisdom to discipline my children in the right way at the right time for the right reasons. Amen.

How did your parents discipline you when you were growing up? Do they offer a good model to follow?

What guidelines are appropriate in administering corporal punishment?

PROVERBS 14

Proverbs 14:4 PERSPECTIVE No Milk Without Manure

Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. Proverbs 14:4

Every farmer understands this verse. If you want a clean stable, get rid of the oxen. But if you want cattle, you’ve got to put up with noise, trouble, clutter, and mess. Or as Dr. Ryrie succinctly puts it, “No milk without manure.”

Wise parents know what this is about it. Raising children can be a messy business. I speak as the father of three very active teenage sons. When people ask me what it’s like in our house, I usually reply with two words: “It’s loud.” Boys make noise. They also take up lots of space, eat lots of food, drape themselves over the chairs, camp out in front of the TV, and turn the trash can into a basketball goal. Every night they call their friends or their friends call them. When I ask how they are doing in school, it’s always, “Don’t worry, Dad. We’re doing fine.”

Recently Nicholas, our youngest son, spent hours putting together a model of a 1940 Ford Coupe. When he finished, there were bits of plastic, torn decals, and globs of glue spread across the basement floor. “Dad, look at the engine,” he said triumphantly. “It has fifteen different parts"-which he proceeded to point out to me one by one. As I study the model two months later, it sits in a place of honor on his desk, next to his portable calculator and under his Chicago Bulls banner, not far from the cage containing Sir John of Camelot, his pet hamster. There are plastic newspaper bags on the floor, left over from his weekly paper route. As I survey the scene, it seems to me that his room is a little messy. Not terrible, but it could use some straightening up. When I tell him that, he grins, rolls his eyes, and says, “Oh, Dad"-in a tone that tells me that I just don’t understand his world at all.

It’s true, I don’t. But I have learned to have some long-range perspective, to understand that raising children requires a mix of love, humor, patience, persistence, honesty, clear guidelines, and a healthy dose of prayer. Even then, we all know that boys and girls grow up into young adults with minds of their own.

If you want a perfectly clean house all the time, don’t have children. That should solve the problem. But if you have children, don’t be surprised by the noise, clatter, clutter, commotion, action, energy, laughter, and music that children bring with them. It is no accident that life begins with a slap on the bottom and a loud cry. That’s a harbinger of things to come.

Children are a heritage from the Lord. They are also a handful from the Lord. Your manger will never be quite the same again. But years from now you will have no regrets when the Lord brings in the harvest.

Lord, when I am frazzled, help me to see beyond the moment to better things yet to come. Amen.

In what areas of your life do you need long-range perspective right now? Why is that perspective especially important when raising children?

If you have children, what kind of “harvest” are you praying for in their lives?

Proverbs 14:17 SELF-CONTROL Learn This or Else!

A quick-tempered man does foolish things, and a crafty man is hated. Proverbs 14:17

The Bible offers many examples of men who failed because they lacked this essential element of self-control. But no one sticks in my mind like Samson, the undisputed heavyweight champion of ancient Israel. His story is found in Judges 13-16 (that’s in the “White Pages” section of your Bible, the part you don’t read very often). But we ought to read about Samson more often than we do, for his life is filled with lessons, examples, and applications.

In one sense, Samson is one of the best-known heroes in all the Bible. Generations of children have marveled at the story of Samson defeating the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Many teenagers know about Samson’s long hair and how Delilah tricked the secret of his strength from him. Most of us know that he had his eyes poked out, and that he died pushing the pillars of the Philistine temple apart, collapsing the building, taking with him to their death thousands of Philistines. If you go to church at all, you know Samson. His is a story both heroic and tragic.

When we read Samson’s story, we tend to think that his problems were all in the sexual area. But that ignores the deeper reality that time and again Samson made foolish decisions because his emotions got the best of him. Sometimes he lost his temper; other times he took unreasonable chances in order to get even; often he seemed irresistibly attracted to Philistine women.

First he is filled with lust and then he is filled with anger. Then he’s full of lust again, then anger again, and then lust and anger again. He’s riding an emotional roller coaster, from the peak to the valley and around a sharp corner, and then he does it all over again. One moment he’s worshiping God; the next, he’s flirting with the Philistine women. On one occasion he leads the army of Israel to a stunning military victory by the power of the Holy Spirit. Later he sleeps with a Philistine prostitute. Not long after that he meets Delilah, who tricks him into revealing the secret of his power, which leads to his imprisonment and death.

Samson never learned to control his emotions, and so they controlled him completely. Proverbs 16:32 could have been written about Samson: “Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.” In his day, Samson had taken more than one city. But he never learned to control his temper. He never learned how to rule his spirit. He never knew the first thing about self-control. In the end, his runaway emotions ran away with him.

The same thing can happen to any of us. Self-control is impossible without the Holy Spirit. You can have the Holy Spirit in control, or your emotions can take control. There is no third option and no middle ground.

There’s a little Samson in all of us. Learn this lesson well. Without the help of the Holy Spirit, we’re all doomed to follow in the same path of self-destruction.

Holy Spirit, I’m ready for You to take control of my life. Please fill me with Your power so that I might become a truly different person. Amen.

Why is self-control such a valuable character trait? What are the marks of a person without self-control?

In what areas of your life do you most need to develop this character quality?

Proverbs 14:30 ENVY The Green-Eyed Monster

A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. Proverbs 14:30

Envy rots the bones. The Hebrew literally means “envy makes the bones disintegrate.” Once again, Solomon is telling us that there is a strong connection between the spiritual and the physical. The attitude of the heart has a direct impact on your physical well-being or lack thereof. If your heart is at peace, it gives life to the body. Envy causes the bones of the body to disintegrate.

King Saul is Exhibit A of a man whose life was destroyed by envy. You’ll remember the little ditty that made Saul so angry when he realized that David had become more popular than he. As the women welcomed their returning heroes, they sang, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). When Saul heard that, his anger burned within him. Jealousy drove him to attempt to murder David. Envy ate away at his insides until it finally destroyed him and his whole family.

If you read 1 Samuel 10-26, you will discover some amazing things about Saul.

He was in many respects a gifted man.

He was tall and handsome.

He was a natural leader of men.

He was skillful in battle.

He was chosen by God to be the first king of Israel.

In many ways he had all the natural attributes for success-plus he had the power of the Holy Spirit in his life. Yet we remember him as a failure because of the way his life ended. There were many contributing factors, but in the end his anger destroyed his life. After it became clear that David would replace him as king, Saul’s heart was so blinded by rage that he could think of only one thing- killing David. So he hunted David as he would a wild animal, chasing him into the Judean desert, tracking him to a cave by the Dead Sea, a place called En Gedi. There David cut off a corner of Saul’s robe when he actually could have killed him. David meant it as a sign of mercy, but Saul continued to hunt him down. Even though Saul knew that David would be the next king, his hatred so consumed him that he tried to kill him anyway. In the end, Saul and his sons were killed by the Philistines on the slopes of Mount Gilboa. The Philistines cut off his head, put his armor in a pagan temple, and fastened his headless corpse to the wall of Beth Shan. It was an ignominious end for a man with the seeds of greatness in him. Saul had many flaws, but it was his envy that finally destroyed him.

There are people who suffer deeply, both physically and spiritually, because they will not forgive. Envy rots the bones. Anger rots the bones. Unforgiveness rots the bones. Bitterness rots the bones. Until you do something about your anger and bitterness, you’re going to be sick, for the Bible says it will happen that way-it will literally rot your bones.

The lesson is clear: Don’t let this happen to you!

Lord God, when I am tempted to envy, remind me that the only thing that matters is what You think of me. Amen.

Have you ever known anyone like Saul, whose life was destroyed by envy and jealousy?

Whom do you envy, if only just a tiny bit? Why? What does that teach you about yourself?

Proverbs 14:32 SECURITY Hope Beyond the Grave

When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge. Proverbs 14:32

Sometimes it is amazing how much you can learn from your children. Many years ago, when our oldest son was not quite four years old, my wife asked him how people get to heaven when they die. She thought he would say, “Jesus takes us there,” or some reasonable facsimile.

Joshua, however, had other ideas. He said, “When we die, there’s a ladder and we climb on it up to heaven.” A few days later, Marlene asked again, “Joshua, how do people get to heaven when they die?” He stopped to think about it for a while. Then he smiled real big, the way you do when you know you’ve figured out the answer to a tough question. “I know. When we die, God lets down a vacuum and sucks us up to heaven.” This answer sounded a little closer to the truth.

Several more days passed. We visited a shopping mall and Marlene asked once again, “Joshua, how do people get to heaven when they die?” This one is easy. “They ride up on an escalator.” End of quiz.

Actually, there’s something to be said for each answer. After all, the Bible speaks of Jacob’s ladder, and a vacuum does sound something like the rapture. But an escalator? Maybe he had been watching one of those commercials where the two angels escort a man up to the clouds and on to heaven.

Later, I asked Joshua again. This time he said, “I don’t know.” Then he gave the best answer of all, “Let me ask Mom.” So he did, and she just smiled at him.

There are many mysteries to the Christian faith, and one of them is how we get to heaven when we die. It’s just as well that we don’t know the answer. We probably couldn’t understand it anyway.

I tried one last question. “Joshua, who do you have to believe in to go to heaven?” That one was easy. “Jesus!”

In the end, it will not be what we know but who we know that makes the difference. If we know Jesus, we shall go to heaven. If we do not know Him, how we get there will make no difference because we won’t be making the trip

John Wesley, the father of Methodism, was fond of saying, “Our people die well.” He meant that Christians face death with a confidence the world cannot understand. Put simply, we aren’t afraid to die. While we may fear the circumstances of our death, we aren’t worried about what happens afterward. We know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

What does it all mean? The Bible says that we Christians sorrow, but not as those “who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Death will never be easy, but for those who believe in Jesus it is nothing to be feared. If Jesus has taken us this far, He will not abandon us when we need Him most.

Lord Jesus, thank You for taking the sting out of death and setting us free to live without fear. Amen.

How much longer do you expect to live?

Are you afraid to die? Are you ready to die? If you’re not ready to die, what do you need to do to be prepared when the moment comes?

PROVERBS 15

Proverbs 15:1 GENTLENESS Power Under Control

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Proverbs 15:1

I have a friend who learned this verse the hard way. Whenever she said something in a harsh tone, her mother made her write this verse fifty times on a sheet of paper. It must have worked, for many years later she has no trouble recalling the verse.

But putting them into practice is a challenge for all of us. Many an argument has started because someone spoke the truth in an angry tone. With that in mind, here is a simple three-word definition of gentleness: Power under control.

A survey of the New Testament shows how important this virtue is. Galatians 5:22-23 lists gentleness as one of the fruits of the Spirit. Colossians 3:12 includes it as part of the “clothing” of the Christian. James 1:19-21 tells us that meekness is the opposite of anger and moral filth. It is the basic attitude we are to have toward all people (Philippians 4:5), especially those who oppose us (2 Timothy 2:24-26). By a gentle and quiet spirit a Christian wife may win her unbelieving husband (1 Peter 3:1-6).

That leads me to suggest an expanded definition of gentleness. Gentleness is self-control displayed in a calm spirit based on an unshakable confidence in God. It is self-control based on God’s control. Thus, it is truly a supernatural virtue produced by the Holy Spirit.

Consider Jesus. He was the most powerful man who ever lived-and yet His power was always under His Father’s control. He got angry when he chased the money changers out of the temple-but He never lost His temper. He rebuked the Pharisees-but ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. He welcomed children and spoke to large crowds-but felt the touch of a woman whose fingers brushed the hem of His garment.

This Jesus was no effeminate sissy. He could raise the dead, cast out demons, and calm a stormy sea. Yet the Bible says that “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7, KJV). He didn’t debate Pilate, He didn’t curse Herod, and He didn’t fight the soldiers. As the old gospel song says, He could have called ten thousand angels, but He died alone for you and me.

That’s true gentleness. Ultimate power under God’s control. He was the Son of God who made others feel welcome around Him. When people came to Him, they felt rested, not harassed or pressured. No wonder the common people loved Him.

Gentleness is that quality which is best demonstrated when you are dealing with unreasonable people. It is seen when you are under the gun, up against a deadline, surrounded by problems, hip deep in alligators and no way to drain the swamp, and you feel yourself getting frustrated. If you don’t have it then, you just don’t have it at all.

The gentle man does not fight for his own rights, does not insist upon personal vindication, does not always have to correct others, does not repay in kind, does not return insult for insult, and does not use force and intimidation to get his way.

No one can consistently live this way apart from the grace of God. The good news is, God has plenty of grace, even for the worst moments of life. All you have to do is ask Him for it.

Lord Jesus, teach me the strength of gentleness and the wisdom of kindness. Amen.

Are you a gentle person? How would your friends answer that question? If you don’t know the answer, why not ask them yourself?

How do you personally balance gentleness with the need to be bold in the face of evil?

Proverbs 15:16-17 Thanksgiving 365

November 2012 – I am writing these words the day after Thanksgiving.

Yesterday Marlene and I traveled to Oxford, Mississippi to spend time with my brother Andy, his wife Betty, and their daughter Megan. My brother Alan and his wife Donna brought a fried turkey. Marlene had prepared several dishes for the grand celebration. We spent time eating, laughing, telling stories, eating some more, and some of us watched football.

When we got home in the evening, Josh and Leah did a video chat with us using FaceTime. As soon as we started, our two-year-old grandson Knox climbed up on the couch with a toy fire truck in one hand and a stuffed monkey in the other. When we asked him if he liked Thanksgiving, he thought for a second and then said, “Yes.” So we asked what he had to eat. Another pause, then “Bananas.” Anything else? I heard Leah whisper, “Muffins,” which Knox repeated. Anything else? Another pause, and then something that sounded like “chicken pot pie.”

So there you have Thanksgiving through the eyes of a two-year-old. Bananas, muffins, and something that sounded like chicken pot pie.

When I checked in on Facebook, I saw pictures of family gatherings from all across the country. There were good wishes, expressions of thanksgiving to God, and pictures of tables laden with food.

I saw this on one of those humorous ecards that pop up on Facebook from time to time:

Thanksgiving is all about getting your entire dysfunctional family under one roof and hoping the police don’t get called!

We chuckle because it is all too true. Adrian Rogers highlighted this problem this way:

“We buy things we do not need, with money we do not have, to impress people we do not like.”

You might call this the “other side” of Thanksgiving. Not every family gathering is a happy time. As I thought about that, I pondered the words of Proverbs 15:15,

“We buy things we do not need, with money we do not have, to impress people we do not like.”

“All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast."

I love that last phrase. “The cheerful heart has a continual feast." People with a cheerful heart have Thanksgiving 365 days a year. What is the secret? In Proverbs 15:16-17Solomon reveals two qualities that produce the cheerful heart that enjoys a continual feast. These attitudes of the heart are within the reach of all of us because they do not depend on income, position, reputation, education, the size of our bank account, or any sort of worldly attainment.

The least among us may have a “continual feast” wherever we go if we take these two verses to heart.

I. Fill Your Heart With Faith.

“Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil” (Pr 15:16)

Check out the first word: “Better.”

Some things are better than others. Solomon (who was the richest man in the world) does not mean to exalt poverty as if it is to be preferred to wealth. Most poor people would like to be wealthy if given the chance, and many of them work long hours to try and get ahead.

So this is not a proverb in praise of living on the edge of financial disaster.

But from the beginning of time, there have always been more poor than rich. It’s not as if the world’s resources are evenly distributed. And no matter how the politicians may try to redistribute the wealth, there will always be more poor people. This is less a statement about the way things ought to be than a statement about the way things are. No doubt this is what Jesus meant when he said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). Those words, which can seem callous, must be interpreted in the same light as our proverb. Jesus explains himself in the last part of that verse when he says, “But you will not always have me."

Some things matter more than other things.

If Jesus is among you, spend time with him while you can.

Then go and feed the poor.

Feed your spirit and then feed the hungry.

If Jesus is among you, spend time with him while you can.

The words of Solomon remind us that wealth is no panacea. Yes, it is true that money is the answer for everything (Ecclesiastes 10:19). Better to have some money than none at all. Yes, the rich have large houses, nice furnishings, excellent medical insurance, and protection against many troubles.

But death comes to the rich just as it does to the poor.

The rich get cancer and die.

The rich divorce.

The rich have problems with their children.

Wealth provides only a limited protection in this world. Wealth cannot compensate for the breakup of a marriage, for children in jail, or sudden death. I read about a wealthy man whose son died in a plane crash. Speaking of it later, he said, “Once you lose your son, you find out that there is no such thing as serious money. Life and death are serious, money is not.”

Wealth cannot compensate for the breakup of a marriage.

If we have to choose between wealth and the fear of the Lord, let us choose the latter. In point of fact, most of us don’t get the choice. The vast majority of the world will never be wealthy. But we can all fear the Lord.

Wealth is a Relative Term

There is another way to look at it. Wealth by definition is a relative term. As I write these words, I’m sitting in my office in my home. My wife and I live in a three-bedroom house with a large front yard and a fenced-in backyard so Dudley, our beloved basset hound, won’t run away. We have one car that is parked at the moment in our attached garage. I can hear music playing in the living room as Marlene prepares a meal in the kitchen. We have one TV, two laptop computers, two iPhones, one iPad, and one Nook ereader. Since we plan to move soon, most of our belongings are packed in the garage. Two years ago I gave away 40 boxes of books to a local pastor. Now I’m down to three or four boxes of books. We have a king-size bed, some furniture, and our clothes plus some personal items. When the time comes to move, we won’t need a huge truck. We moved here in a 26-foot rental truck back in 2005. I doubt we would need one that large now.

Life and death are serious, money is not.

After decades of accumulating things, we’ve been in a de-accumulation mode for a few years. I think most people go through something like that. You work and save and buy and invest and build and decorate and then you store the excess. But as life rolls on and the kids grow up and move away, you find that some of the things you couldn’t do without don’t seem to matter very much. While packing for our eventual move to Dallas, I find myself asking, “What do we have that we can do without?” I figure that if I haven’t touched a book in 20 years, I probably won’t touch it in the next 20 either so why take it with us?

I thought about that, and then my mind went to the trip Josh and I took to India in January. While we were in Mumbai, we passed by slums that defy all human imagination. There millions of men and women and boys and girls live in circumstances of such grinding poverty that it almost numbs the mind. My good friend Benny Mathews showed us places where people live in cardboard boxes under bridges. Not a few, but thousands and then millions, side by side. He said that ten men may share the same tiny space, sleeping in shifts while the others go to work.

The men and women who live like that hardly worry about what to take with them when they move. They own the clothes on their back and not much else. Compared to them, I am the wealthy man of verse 16.

It is “better” to live with a roof over your head and with money in the bank and with food on the table, but it is “better” yet to live with the fear of the Lord in your heart. One need not feel sorry for having more than someone else, but what a fool I am if I think that I somehow deserve what I have or that I am somehow “better” than someone who has less than I do.

I am the wealthy man of Pr 15:16.

What do I have that I did not receive?

It is all a gift from God.

That includes every meal, every drink of clean water, every bit of electricity that powers my computers, every book I read, every shirt I wear, and every bowl of soup put before me.

Solomon does not ask those who have more to feel guilty about what they have. After all, even in the slums some have more and some have less. Look around. Someone will always be ahead of you, someone will be behind you, and others will be right where you are.

But not everything is equal. Better to live in poverty and know the Lord than to be the richest man in the world and think you did it yourself. The rich man eventually discovers that his riches take wings and fly away. If he doesn’t discover it in this life, he discovers it when he dies because all that he worked so hard for, he leaves behind.

In that respect, we all come in and go out the same way. The lesson is clear. Most of us will never be truly rich in this world’s goods, but we can all be rich in faith and love and rich in the knowledge of our God.

We all come in and go out the same way.

J. I. Packer tells of an acquaintance whose career derailed because of his evangelical convictions. When asked if he harbored any ill feelings, he replied quite simply: “I’ve known God and they haven’t.” Packer goes on to note that most of us would not feel comfortable speaking in such straightforward terms. But the terms are entirely biblical. Knowing God does make a difference and is the defining characteristic of those who follow Jesus Christ. To know God deeply and intimately more than makes up for the things we lose because of our faith.

Writing 250 years ago, English pastor John Gill summarizes the blessings of the man who fears the Lord:

For such a man, though he has but little, which is the common portion of good men, yet he does not lack; be has enough, and is content; what he has he has with a blessing, and he enjoys it, and God in it, and has communion with him; and has also other bread to eat, the world knows nothing of: and particularly having the fear of God, the eye of God is upon him with pleasure; his heart is towards him, and sympathizes with him in all his troubles; his hand communicates unto him both temporal and spiritual meat, which is given to them that fear the Lord; his angels encamp about him, his power protects him; his secrets are with him, and inconceivable and inexpressible goodness is laid up for him.

Let this one sentence sink in: “What he has he has with a blessing, and he enjoys it, and God in it, and has communion with him.” Can the world offer anything better than that?

II. Fill Your Home With Love.

“Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred” (Pr 15:17).

Here are a few other translations of this verse:

“Better a meal of greens with love than a plump calf with hate” (CEB).

The Contemporary English Version offers us this beautiful reading:

“A simple meal with love is better than a feast where there is hatred.”

The ERV simplifies the meaning down to the bare essentials:

“It is better to eat a little where there is love than to eat a lot where there is hate.”

Finally we have this from Eugene Peterson (The Message):

“Better a bread crust shared in love than a slab of prime rib served in hate.”

All the versions come out at the same place. The most bountiful feast in the world may be ruined if the people at the table hate each other. Discord at the dinner table destroys a good meal, no matter how sumptuous the fare, whether it be prime rib or T-bone steaks or turkey and dressing with all the trimmings. Your cooking may equal what they offer on the Food Channel, but if your loved ones do not really love each other, what good is all that effort and all that time and all that money?

You might as well skip the meal altogether.

Some not-so-beautiful people have done amazingly dumb things too.

The word “vegetables” refers to the simple fare that a poor family might share. It might be spinach or collard greens or cabbage. This family is so poor that they are vegetarian by necessity, not by choice. When they come together, they share nothing but a handful of stewed greens. It is not extravagant, but it tastes good because it is served with love.

Solomon doesn’t mean to elevate poverty above wealth. He merely reminds us that money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. It certainly doesn’t guarantee a happy family or a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s a Wonderful Life

The point is, we know these things. We don’t need Solomon to tell us because deep down we know that faith and love matter far more than money or fame. That’s one reason why It’s a Wonderful Liferemains one of the most beloved Christmas movies of all time. When George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve, it takes the help of an angel named Clarence to help him see the difference his life has made. As it happens, three of the best lines in the movie come from the angel:

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

“You see George, you’ve really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to just throw it away?”

The third one isn’t a spoken line. It’s the inscription in a book left for George by the angel as the movie comes to its climax:

“Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.”

No man is a failure who has friends.

So if we know these things, why does Solomon have to remind us? Because we need reminding, that’s why. Because we all live under the spell of the big world with its flashing lights, alluring games, beautiful people, and all the promises of the “good life” on the other side of the street.

In recent days we’ve been asked to contemplate why powerful men will seemingly throw away all their common sense and after a lifetime of brilliant success have an affair that suddenly is splashed on TV, radio, and across the Internet. There really isn’t one particular answer to that question, except to note that going back as far as King David, powerful men have been tempted by beautiful women who were available to them, and that led to all sorts of foolishness and ultimately to the sort of behavior that those same men and women would have sworn they would never have done. That’s a long sentence written that way to emphasize what is left out, which is that these temptations apply not only to rich and beautiful people but to all the rest of us as well. Some not-so-beautiful people have done amazingly dumb things too. One can only hope that the finger pointing will lead us all to honest self-examination.

You don’t have to be a four-star general to blow up your life, your career, and your family.

We know these things are true.

This may sound like I’ve changed the subject, but really I haven’t because all of this is Solomon’s subject. Remember the operative word is “better.” It’s better to enjoy a simple meal where love abounds than to feast at the finest restaurant in Paris, drink the finest wines, and be surrounded by people you can’t stand. As the man on the midway says, “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” Thousands of people will read Solomon, nod in agreement, and then go out and blow up their own family by a round of foolish choices.

The point is, we know these things are true.

Thanksgiving is a Choice

But you don’t have to live this way. Choose today whom you will serve, the Bible says. “See, I have set before you today life and death. Choose life, that you may live.” That’s wonderful advice, first given by Moses to the children of Israel, but even after all that wandering in the desert, and after a whole generation died, they still made the same mistakes over and over again.

Lately I’ve been reading (and listening) to the psalms in my quiet time. When I came to Psalm 78 (which recounts the early history of Israel) I was struck by the emphasis on how Israel kept messing up and how God judged them and then forgave them, and then they would do it all over again.

You can read it for yourself. I’m not exaggerating at all. God ends up being the real hero of the story.

“How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland!

Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel” (vv. 40-41)

The people who knew what God had said either forgot or didn’t care or thought they had a better idea or just decided to do things their own way. It never worked out. Then you come to a wonderful verse like this:

“But he brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the wilderness” (v. 52).

That’s us. We’re God’s sheep. Every time you turn around, we’re going our own way (see Isaiah 53:6).

Left to ourselves, we’ll get lost, or we’ll wander back to Egypt, or we’ll start fighting each other, or we’ll end up as supper for the wolves. We’re unruly and we don’t like to be led and sometimes we’re just plain dumb.

But God leads his sheep all the way through the wilderness. By his grace, eventually we make it to safety and rest and shelter.

As long as you have God, you have what you need.

There is a “better” way to live, but it depends on us believing that our Shepherd knows what he is doing even when we think we have a better idea. If we have faith and if we have love, then we have what we need at this very moment. I love how Matthew Henry puts it:

“It is therefore far better, and more desirable, to have but a little of the world and to have it with a good conscience, to keep up communion with God, and enjoy him in it, and live by faith, than to have the greatest plenty and live without God in the world."

Matthew Henry and Solomon agree. Some things are better than other things. If you have a lot or if you have a little, as long as you have God, you have what you need. Better to have God than to live without him in the world.

I leave you with the song made famous by George Beverly Shea. It seems to perfectly capture the deeper meaning of our text.

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold;

I’d rather be His than have riches untold;

I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands;

I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand

Than to be the king of a vast domain

And be held in sin’s dread sway;

I’d rather have Jesus than anything

This world affords today.

Perhaps we should all say those words out loud and let them be our application of this truth.

I’d rather have Jesus.

How about you?

Proverbs 15:22 COUNSEL God’s Gift to Fools

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 15:22

This particular piece of advice is repeated several times in Proverbs. The wise man listens to advice from others (12:15), accepts instruction (19:20), and proactively seeks out wise counsel before embarking on a major project (20:18) because he understands that no plan can succeed without the Lord’s blessing (21:30). Finally, he takes great joy in listening to the advice of his friends (27:9).

I have a few friends in my life who are like that. Every time they speak, they speak wisdom and knowledge. Some of them are people I have known for twenty or thirty years. Some of them are people I don’t talk to very often. Some of them are people I may not talk to except once every ten years. But because they are people of wisdom and knowledge, I know that if I have not talked to them for ten years, I can go back to them and say, “What do you think about this?” Because their lips speak wisdom and knowledge, they can say, “I don’t think you should do this; I don’t think you should do that; have you thought about this?” Invariably, when I talk to people like that, my life is enriched because the lips of the righteous bring forth wisdom and knowledge. Blessed are you if you have a few people in your life who can speak wisdom and knowledge to you. You are doubly blessed if you have the ability to speak wisdom and knowledge to other people.

What is the difference between a wise man and a fool? The fool thinks he knows it all; the wise man knows he doesn’t. The fool refuses instruction because he’s got his whole plan laid out in his mind and he doesn’t want to be bothered with anyone else’s opinion. The wise man knows that his plans aren’t perfect, so he isn’t embarrassed to ask for advice.

Seeking counsel has many benefits. It gives us another set of eyes and ears; it buys us time to think of alternatives. We may uncover an entirely new perspective or possibly a new set of facts to consider. Certainly wise counselors will produce in us a new sense of humility.

After we have received wise counsel, evaluated our plans, and adjusted them accordingly, we may move forward with new confidence because our plans have been tested even before we put them in place.

No one knows everything. No one has all the knowledge. But God gave each of us a little piece of the big picture. The more pieces we put together in advance, the greater our chances for success.

So before you make a big decision, pick up the phone and call a few friends. Ask for help. Let them take a free shot at your new idea. If it’s a good one, it will stand the test. If it’s not, you can change it or forget about it. Either way, you come out ahead.

Father, thank You for friends who care enough to give wise advice. Please give me an open heart to graciously receive what they say. Amen.

Who gives you counsel when you face a big decision? Who comes to you for counsel?

What principles do you use to sift out the good from the bad? Have you ever ignored the advice of your friends on a major issue? What happened?

Proverbs 15:27 BRIBERY A Fast Train to Destruction

A greedy man brings trouble to his family, but he who hates bribes will live. Proverbs 15:27

Solomon had a lot to say about this subject, nearly all of it negative. For instance, an adulterer cannot bribe his way out of punishment (6:35). Bribery perverts the course of justice (17:23). A leader who seeks bribes destroys his own country (29:4). Bribery is a form of greed that eventually hurts a man and his family (15:27).

Two other verses must also be considered. “A bribe is a charm to the one who gives it; wherever he turns, he succeeds” (17:8). “A gift given in secret soothes anger, and a bribe concealed in the cloak pacifies great wrath” (21:14). Is Solomon contradicting himself? Not at all. These two verses simply state facts, not moral judgments. Bribery often works, which is why it happens so often. Many people have risen to high position by offering money or other favors in exchange for the help they need. In the second verse, the “gift given in secret” is not necessarily a bribe. It may simply be an attempt to turn away anger by the offering of a gift.

Why is bribery so destructive? Because it is based on a short-sighted view of the moral universe. When individuals feel they must take matters into their own hands, they are implicitly denying that God can take care of them. They break the rules because they doubt the goodness of God. For them, money (or power or position or some other reward) has become an idol that has displaced the Lord.

Proverbs 16:8 says, “Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice.” That is to say, it is better to do right and struggle than to do wrong and be rich. Better to follow the rules and go broke than to cheat and climb your way to what you think is the top of the ladder. It is better to struggle to make ends meet, knowing that you are righteous in the eyes of God, than to cheat other people to have it all.

Proverbs 15:16 adds: “Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.” Too many people have bought into the notion that money brings happiness. We think that if we only had another $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or $50,000 or $150,000, then, at last, we would be able to buy that thing we have been trying to buy, or we’d be able to move up to a newer house or better car or better part of the country. The Bible is not against wealth or prosperity, but it is very honest about it. Generally speaking, the people who have lots of money also have a lot of trouble.

It is precisely because men don’t believe that sentence that they turn to bribery. We cheat because we don’t trust God and because we have made worldly gain our goal in life.

Bribery is truly a fast train to destruction. Stay away from it. Don’t take bribes. Don’t offer bribes. Play by the rules. And let God take care of the results.

Lord, save me from the impatience of greed and the stupidity of breaking the rules to get ahead. Amen.

What is the essential difference between a sinful bribe and a legitimate gift?

How much money would it take to make you happy right now?

PROVERBS 16

Proverbs 16:3 SUCCESS It All Begins with God

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed. Proverbs 16:3

The word commit basically means “to roll.” It was used of rolling large rocks over the mouth of a cave (Joshua 10:18), of garments rolled in blood (Isaiah 9:5), of the sky rolled up as a scroll (Isaiah 34:4), and of an army marching through a breach in the city wall (Job 30:14). To commit in this context means to proactively roll all our plans, our dreams, and our hopes over to the Lord. When you commit something to the Lord you are saying, “Lord, either I can take care of this or You can, and You’re much better qualified to handle it, so I’m turning the whole thing over to You.”

To put the matter that way brings us face-to-face with the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). C. S. Lewis said that there are two kinds of people in the world, and only two kinds: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says in the end, “Thy will be done.” God has a will, and you have a will. To pray “Your will be done” is actually to pray “Lord, let my own will not be done if it in any way conflicts with Your will.” Those are easy words to say in theory, but difficult to apply to your cherished dreams and well-laid plans.

A friend of mine once came to me with a sobering message: “Ray, you’re holding on too tightly. You’ve got to let go.” When she said it, I mumbled something spiritual but I didn’t believe her. It took me a year or more to see the truth.

My friend was right. I didn’t want to let go. The thing I was holding on to meant everything to me. It was my baby, my dream, my future. I held on to it because I was deathly afraid to let go.

God eventually had to take it away from me. But, oh, it was painful. I fought and argued and wept. God paid no attention to my anger. He slowly and carefully pried my fingers away one by one. When He got down to the thumb, I fought Him with all my strength but to no avail. In the end He took back that which had always belonged to Him.

Does God have the right to be God in your life? You say, “Of course He does.” Yes, but have you told Him so? Or do you feel the need to fight with God about His plans for you? Former Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson recounts a prayer he often heard Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, pray: “Lord, I give you license to interfere in my life and plans at any time, in any way, at any cost.” What a great way to approach life. “Lord, You’re in charge. I’ve got my plans, my dreams, my personal agenda, but if You want to change things, go right ahead-and You don’t have to tell me in advance.”

That’s precisely what it means to “commit” your way to the Lord. When you give God the right to be God in your life, you will experience true success, the kind that only He can give.

Father, I give You the right to interfere with my own plans if that is necessary so that Your will might be done in my life. Amen.

What are your dreams, hopes, and plans for the future? Have you ever rolled them over onto the Lord?

Are you holding on to anything too tightly right now?

Proverbs 16:8 SIMPLICITY Learning to Live with Less

Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice. Proverbs 16:8

Most of us live on the opposite principle. We figure our contentment on the basis of how many of our needs are met. Unfortunately, it’s hard to reach a place where all our needs are constantly met. By that standard, it’s hard to ever really be content. If contentment is measured by how much of the world’s goods you possess, who can ever say, “I have enough"? Someone asked a multimillionaire when he was going to stop working. “When I make enough money,” he replied. “How much money is enough?” “Just one more dollar.”

That’s the way most of us figure contentment. In our hearts we think, I would be happy if only I had a new car or a new job or a new dress or a new husband or a new wife. Since life is hardly ever that simple, we stay frustrated when we ought to be happy.

No wonder we are never satisfied. Instead of being weaned from the world, we are wedded to it. Or maybe I should say, welded to it. In any case, our soul is anything but quiet; our countenance, anything but peaceful.

How does God go about weaning us from our dependence on the things of the world? I ran across a three-part answer from a Bible commentator writing over a century ago. First, God makes the things of the world bitter to us. Second, He removes one by one the things on which we depend. Third, He gives us something better. In the end, we find that we no longer need the things we used to think we couldn’t do without. And our walk with God is stronger than ever before.

Most of us have made a list of our blessings-especially at Thanksgiving. When we make that list, we normally emphasize our material blessings. That’s good and proper but it doesn’t exhaust the subject.

Here’s a simple suggestion. Make a list of the things which, through suffering and hardship, God has taken away from you in the last twelve months. And now your faith is stronger and deeper. And now your walk with God means more than it ever did before.

I want you to list those things you used to think you couldn’t live without but now you know you can. It could be a dream you had for your life that consumed all your energy, but God has taken it from you and you have found, “Yes, I can live without that.” It might be a relationship or a job or a prized possession. What have you learned that you can do without and still be happy?

As the song says, “Count your many blessings- name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.” The surprise is not just in the outward material blessings of the last year. It is also in the times of pain and suffering that seemed to be for no good purpose but turned out to be blessings in disguise. That, too, is the goodness and grace of God.

Lord, I thank You for the things I no longer have to have in order to be happy. Amen.

Make a list of things you have discovered you can now live without. What does that list teach you about the Lord? Yourself?

What things/relationships do you still think you must have in order to be happy?

Proverbs 16:9 How Can I Discover God's Will For My Life?

December 1997 – Have you ever wished you could sit down with God and have a good talk with him about your own life? Have you ever wished you could just look him in the eye say, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” All of us have moments when we want to hear God�s voice or receive some definite sign regarding a relationship, a business decision, a career choice, or a major expenditure.

Our decisions really do matter. We make our decisions and our decisions turn around and make us. We face so many questions:

* Should I get married? If the answer is yes, should I marry Joe or Jake or Susan or Sally?

* Should I go to college? If the answer is yes, should I go to Alabama or Penn State or UCLA?

* I’ve been offered a new job. It’s a good job. But I’ve got a good job. Should I take the new job? Or should I hold onto what I have?

* We have two children. We’re thinking about having a third. Should we have another one? Or should we think about adopting?

* Is God calling me to the mission field? How can I be sure? Three mission boards are interested in me. How do I know which one to choose?

I know from personal experience that many of our high school seniors are wrestling with the big question-"What do I do when I graduate next June?” Over the past few weeks I’ve written recommendation forms for various Christian colleges and state universities. That by the way is one of the favorite parts of my job. I enjoy talking with our students about their career choices and I am always glad to help them take that all-important next step.

Most of our seniors have already turned in their applications. Now it’s nail-biting time. Which colleges will accept me? Which ones will say no? What if three say yes, but my personal favorite says no? What if they say yes, but I can’t afford it? What do you do then? Is there any way to be 100% certain about God’s will when you are choosing a college?

I think it would be lot easier if you could simply open the door one evening and be greeted by a chorus of angels chanting, “Georgia Tech! Georgia Tech! Georgia Tech!” Or if you got a special delivery letter from heaven that said, “Dear Beth, go to Wheaton. Love, God.” That would make it easy. But it doesn’t often happen that way. Most of the time we research, study, narrow the options, talk it over with trusted friends, pray about it, wait on the Lord, turn in our applications, and then in the end, we make our choice and hope for the best.

It’s God’s Problem, Not Ours

That, I think, raises the central issue for most people regarding God’s will. We would like someone else to make the decision for us. If God would only tell us what he wanted in a given situation, we would do it. But most of the time we’re left with something less than 100% certainty.

I’m going to tell you right up front that I don’t believe there is any way for you to get 100% certainty before you sign on the dotted line. I think you can get 95% probability sometimes, but that’s about as good as most of us will ever do in the decisions of life.

That leads me to share an important principle with you. With all my heart I believe the following statement is true: God wants you to know his will more than you want to know it, therefore he takes personal responsibility to see that you discover it. Knowing God’s will is ultimately God’s problem, not yours. Let that last thought sink into your mind for a moment. You’ve probably never heard it put that way before.

Let me suggest what this really means:

He can put you exactly where he wants you to be.

He can arrange all the details years in advance.

He can open doors that seem shut tight.

He can remove any obstacle that stands in your way.

He can take your choices and fit them into his plan so that you end up at the right place at just the right time.

He can even take your mistakes and bring good out of them.

He can take tragedy and use it for your good and his glory.

All he needs-in fact the only thing he requires-is a willing heart. He just needs you to cooperate with him. This doesn’t mean that you won’t have to make decisions. But it does take the pressure off, because it means that you can trust God to take your decisions and use them to accomplish his will in your life.

Four Verses to Think About …

Recently I’ve been struck with the strong emphasis in the book of Proverbs on the sovereignty of God over our personal decisions. Let’s take a quick look at four verses that help us see how God works in, with, through, and sometimes in spite of our decisions to accomplish his will in us.

Proverbs 16:9- "In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” I’d like you to underline the word determines. It doesn’t say that God “directs” his steps (although that is true-see Proverbs 3:6), but rather that God determines his steps. It’s a very strong word that speaks of God’s control of every detail in the universe. Perhaps you’ve heard it said that “Man proposes, but God disposes.” You can make all your plans, in fact you can have your life mapped out step by step, but in the end, God determines every step you take.

Proverbs 16:33-"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Most of us don’t understand the concept of “casting lots.” In the Old Testament, the Jews often used this method to determine God’s will. It sometimes involved using different colored balls or rocks, mixing them together, and then seeing which one fell out of the bag first. In that sense casting lots is like rolling dice. It appears to be a random act of chance. But God is behind those colored stones. He determines which one falls out of the bag first. This means that there are no “accidents” in life, no “random” events, and no such thing as “luck.” Even seemingly meaningless things fit into his plan.

Proverbs 19:21-"Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” Let me give you a paraphrase of this verse: “You can make all the plans you like, but God gets the last word.” His purpose always prevails. Some translations say that God’s purpose shall stand. Most of our plans don’t stand. They are like the leaves that blow away in the autumn wind. But when God determines to do something, it’s gonna happen. You can write it down and take it to the bank. You can make all the speeches you want and announce your long-range plans, your ten-year goals, and your personal objectives, but just remember this. When you are finished, God always gets the last word.

Proverbs 20:24-"A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?” There is something hidden in the Hebrew text that you wouldn’t know simply from reading the English translation. The word translated “man’s” in the first phrase comes from the Hebrew word gibor, which refers to a mighty warrior, a ruler, or a potentate. Solomon means to say that even the steps of a mighty man are ordained by God. The word “anyone” in the second phrase comes from the Hebrew word adam, which is the generic word for mankind. The meaning is, “If God directs the steps of the mighty, how then can an ordinary man understand his own way?” The answer is, he can’t! That’s the whole point of the verse. We’re like a man stumbling around in the darkness, bumping into things, tripping over ourselves, trying to find our way forward. We can’t say for sure where we’ve come from, where we are right now, or where we’re going to be tomorrow. Only God can see the big picture of life.

The First Rule of the Spiritual Life: He’s God and we’re not!

Those four verses lead me directly to the first rule of the spiritual life. Understand this and you’ll be OK, forget this and you will walk in continual confusion. This is where all spiritual understanding must begin.

When we forget that rule, we think that we’re in control of our own life and that everything depends on us. So we obsess, we hyperventilate, we try to control everything and everyone around us, we worry over all our decisions, and we spend hours fussing over the minutiae of life.

“I’m going to be up all night anyway.”

What a relief to realize that God is God and you’re not. Now you can rip that big “G” off your sweatshirt. You don’t have to play God anymore and you don’t have to try to control everything around you. You can sleep well when you realize that God is God and you are not. Corrie Ten Boom was having trouble going to sleep one night because she was so worried about the affairs of her life. She tried praying but it didn’t help. Finally, the Lord said to her, “Go to sleep, Corrie. I’m going to be up all night anyway.”

Let me wrap up this message by sharing four simple principles that can help you as you seek to do God’s will.

Principle #1: Use all your intelligence to make wise decisions.

Sometimes people talk as if you shouldn’t use your brain at all but should wait for some mystical sign from God. I know the Bible says, “lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), but that doesn’t mean to throw your brain away either. It simply means that after doing all your research on a given decision, submit it to God and ask for his help. If you need to make a major decision, don’t wait for the angels to knock on your door. Use your head, study the situation, gather the facts, talk to your friends, seek godly counsel, and then submit it all to the Lord.

Principle #2: Since you can’t know the future, you’ll rarely have 100% certainty about most decisions.

I’ve already mentioned that this is perhaps our greatest stumbling block because we want 100% certainty, but in a fallen world that’s hard to come by. Many people believe they must be 100% certain of God’s will before they make a decision. I can understand their thinking. After all, if you are facing a life-changing decision–a potential marriage, a cross-country move, a new career, which college to attend, whether or not to begin chemotherapy–you’d like to know in advance beyond any doubt that you are doing what God wants you to do. All too often that leaves us paralyzed by an inability to make up our minds. Some decisions are so important they can’t be left to chance. As the popular saying goes, “When in doubt, don’t.” If you aren’t sure about the new job, don’t take it, don’t make the move, don’t say yes, don’t make any decision with less than total certainty.

But is that good advice? Is it realistic? Is that the way God normally works?

Did Noah know all about the flood? No, but he built the ark anyway.

Did Abraham have a road map? No, but he left Ur of the Chaldees anyway.

Did Moses understand what it meant to lead God’s people out of Egypt? No, but he said yes when the Lord called him.

Did Joshua know how the walls were going to come tumbling down? No, but he marched around Jericho anyway.

Did Gideon fully grasp God’s plan to defeat the Midianites? No, he doubted it from the beginning, but God delivered his people anyway.

Did young David have a clue of what was to come when Samuel said to Jesse, “This is the one"? No, but the Spirit of the Lord came upon him anyway.

Did Jehoshaphat know how God was going to defeat the Ammonites? No, but he put the singers at the front of the army and sent them out to battle anyway.

We could add a hundred other examples from the Bible! Did the three Hebrew children know how they would be delivered? Was Daniel totally sure the lions would welcome him dropping in on them? Did Peter know he could walk on water? Did Paul know what would happen when he finally got to Rome?

The answer is always no. The life of faith means living with uncertainty even in the midst of doing God’s will. That’s the whole point of Hebrews 11. Those great men and women didn't know the future, but they trusted God anyway, sometimes in the face of great personal suffering. And because they kept on believing when circumstances turned against them, they received a great reward.

Too many people want what God has never promised–100% certainty before they will act. So they wait and wait and they dilly and they dally and they stop and they hesitate and they ruminate. They refuse to go forward because they are waiting for 100% certainty. That leads me to this important observation: It is rarely God’s will to give you 100% certainty before you make an important decision.

Principle #3: God wants guidable people who will trust him with the details of life.

Guidable people look to God and not to themselves. That is, they understand that after they have done all they can, it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. Like young Samuel, they say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant heareth.” Like Isaiah they cry out, “Here am I, Lord, send me.” Like the Lord Jesus they pray, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Let me share a secret with you. Guidable people always receive guidance from God. Always. Why? Because God always speaks loud enough for a willing ear to hear.

Are you a guidable Christian? Or do you still feel like you have to be in the driver’s seat of life. Have you ever said, “Lord, let your will be done even if it means that my will is not done?”

Principle #4: When the time comes, make the best decision you can and leave the results with God.

This follows from everything else I’ve shared in this message. When the time to decide comes, when you’ve thought about it, prayed about it, talked it over, sought godly counsel, researched your options, looked at the circumstances, searched the Scriptures, and waited on the Lord, when you’ve done everything you know how to do and the moment of truth comes, take a deep breath, close your eyes if you need to, and then just go ahead and make the best decision you can make.

When you’ve done that, there’s one other thing to do-leave the results with God. Remember he’s God and you’re not. His purposes will stand.

I’ve already said that he wants you to know his will more than you want to know it. Knowing God’s will is his problem, not yours. If you truly want to do God’s will, you will do it.

My friend Robert Burdett gave me this quote from Jerry Sittser, “God has enough trouble getting us to do his will, without making it hard to find.” If you are willing to be guided by God, you will discover that he will lead you step by step by step. In the end you will be what he wants you to be, you will go where he wants you to go, and you will do what he wants you to do. This is God’s promise to guidable Christians who are willing to do his will.

Dan Hoeksema’s Daily Prayer

Just before Thanksgiving Marlene and I had lunch with Dan and Linda Hoeksema. Dan and Linda attended Calvary for many years but moved to Memphis several years ago where Dan has established an electrical contracting company. As we sat down to eat, the thought passed through my mind that Dan looked more relaxed than I had seen him in a long time. Before long, I discovered the reason for his calm demeanor. He told me that in July he was listening to Dr. Charles Stanley preach on his television program. At one point Dr. Stanley suggested a simple prayer to be prayed at the beginning of each new day. He challenged all his listeners to pray this prayer for 21 days straight. Dan said that he had tried it and that the prayer had made a profound difference in his life. At that point Linda chimed in to say that she had noticed a drastic difference in him as well. Before he started praying the prayer, he often came home tense over things that had happened to him during the day. But now he comes home relaxed and in a good mood. As I listened, I wondered to myself what kind of magic prayer could make that kind of difference. Then Dan said that for him the key is to pray the prayer the moment he wakes up-even before he gets out of bed. He even said that he had awakened that morning at 4:30 so he prayed the prayer and then went back to sleep.

The prayer itself is the essence of simplicity. It goes like this: “Heavenly Father, you are in charge of everything that is going to happen to me today–whether it be good or bad, positive or negative. Please make me thankful for everything that happens to me today. Amen.”

That’s simple, isn’t it? When Dan told me the story, he emphasized that this prayer is so powerful because it doesn’t change anything outside of me, but it does change everything inside of me. My circumstances don’t change, but my attitude does. And that’s why he looked so relaxed when we ate lunch.

Today is December 7. I know many of us feel enormous stress during this time of year, and the load only increases as we move closer to Christmas. I’d like to issue a 21-Day Challenge to each of you today. Take that simple prayer and pray it first thing in the morning for the next 21 days and see if something good doesn’t happen in your own life.

Will of God - How Can I Discover God's Will For My Life? - Sermon 3 of 4 from the Knowing God's Will series - For sermon 4 of 4 from Knowing God’s Will series see Matthew 6:10 The Hardest Prayer You Will Ever Pray

October 2007 – Have you ever wished you could have lunch with Jesus? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you got a phone call from heaven saying that the Lord Jesus Christ would like to meet you for lunch next Thursday? Suppose that happened. What would you talk to Jesus about? I imagine that your first impulse would be to fall on your face at his feet and worship him. But suppose the Lord of heaven said, “Rise, my child. Let’s share a meal together.” What would you say then? Most of us somewhere along the way would say something like this. “Lord Jesus, I love you and more than anything else, I want to please you. Lord, am I doing what you want me to do? Is there anything else you want to me to do becaus if there is, if you want to change my direction, please let me know.”

All of us have moments when we want to hear God’s voice or receive some definite sign regarding a relationship, a business decision, a career choice, or a major expenditure.

Our decisions really do matter. We make our decisions and our decisions turn around and make us. We face so many questions:

* Should I get married? If the answer is yes, should I marry Joe or Jake or Susan or Sally?

* Should I go to college? If the answer is yes, should I go to Alabama or Penn State or UCLA?

* I’ve been offered a new job. It’s a good job. But I’ve got a good job. Should I take the new job? Or should I hold onto what I have?

* We have two children. We’re thinking about having a third. Should we have another one? Or should we think about adopting?

* Is God calling me to the mission field? How can I be sure? Three mission boards are interested in me. How do I know which one to choose?

When I was a pastor, I would meet with high school seniors asking me to fill out recommendation forms for them. That by the way was one of the favorite parts of my job. I enjoyed talking with students about their career choices and I was always glad to help them take that all-important next step.

Once you’ve turned in your applications, it’s nail-biting time. Which colleges will accept me? Which ones will say no? What if three say yes, but my personal favorite says no? What if they say yes, but I can’t afford it? What do you do then? Is there any way to be 100% certain about God’s will when you are choosing a college?

It’s God’s Problem, Not Ours

Let me suggest what this really means:

He can put you exactly where he wants you to be.

He can arrange all the details years in advance.

He can open doors that seem shut tight.

He can remove any obstacle that stands in your way.

He can take your choices and fit them into his plan so that you end up at the right place at just the right time.

He can even take your mistakes and bring good out of them.

He can take tragedy and use it for your good and his glory.

Four Verses to Think About …

While reading through Proverbs, I was struck with the strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God over our personal decisions. Let’s take a quick look at four verses that help us see how God works in, with, through, and sometimes in spite of our decisions to accomplish his will in us.

Proverbs 16:9-“In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” I’d like you to underline the word determines. It doesn’t say that God “directs” his steps (although that is true-seeProverbs 3:6), but rather that God determines his steps. It’s a very strong word that speaks of God’s control of every detail in the universe. Perhaps you’ve heard it said that “Man proposes, but God disposes.” You can make all your plans, in fact you can have your life mapped out step by step, but in the end, God determines every step you take.

Proverbs 16:33-“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Most of us don’t understand the concept of “casting lots.” In the Old Testament, the Jews often used this method to determine God’s will. It sometimes involved using different colored balls or rocks, mixing them together, and then seeing which one fell out of the bag first. In that sense casting lots is like rolling dice. It appears to be a random act of chance. But God is behind those colored stones. He determines which one falls out of the bag first. This means that there are no “accidents” in life, no “random” events, and no such thing as “luck.” Even seemingly meaningless things fit into his plan. To paraphrase Forest Gump, ’Life is like a roll of the dice, but God is in charge of how the numbers come up.”

Proverbs 19:21-“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” Let me give you a paraphrase of this verse: “You can make all the plans you like, but God gets the last word.” His purpose always prevails. Some translations say that God’s purpose shall stand. Most of our plans don’t stand. They are like the leaves that blow away in the autumn wind. But when God determines to do something, it’s gonna happen. You can write it down and take it to the bank. You can make all the speeches you want and announce your long-range plans, your ten-year goals, and your personal objectives, but just remember this. When you are finished, God always gets the last word.

Proverbs 20:24-“A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way?” There is something hidden in the Hebrew text that you wouldn’t know simply from reading the English translation. The word translated “man’s” in the first phrase comes from the Hebrew word gibor, which refers to a mighty warrior, a ruler, or a potentate. Solomon means to say that even the steps of a mighty man are ordained by God. The word “anyone” in the second phrase comes from the Hebrew word adam, which is the generic word for mankind. The meaning is, “If God directs the steps of the mighty, how then can an ordinary man understand his own way?” The answer is, he can’t! That’s the whole point of the verse. We’re like a man stumbling around in the darkness, bumping into things, tripping over ourselves, trying to find our way forward. We can’t say for sure where we’ve come from, where we are right now, or where we’re going to be tomorrow. Only God can see the big picture of life.

The First Rule of the Spiritual Life: He’s God and we’re not!

Let me wrap up this message by sharing four simple principles that can help you as you seek to do God’s will.

Principle #1: Use all your intelligence to make wise decisions.

Principle #2: Since you can’t know the future, you’ll rarely have 100% certainty about most decisions.