Daytime Friends and Nighttime Lovers

 Read Proverbs 5

Anyone remember Kenny Rogers?

Daytime friends and nighttime lovers

Hoping no one else discovers

Where they go, what they do

In their secret hideaway

Solomon spoke of not getting snared by the adulteress.  It’s a trap and it can lead to death.  This would be a good spot for an analogy for the wild animal that chews its leg off because it is caught in a trap.  Get out of there.  Save what you can of yourself, even if you hop around on three legs for the rest of your life.

Better yet, don’t go in the area where the traps are set. 

Do you know how armies decide where to put minefields?  Like them or hate them, minefields are a part of modern combat and they are placed where you expect your enemy to travel.

How can you do that?  Look at the terrain.  Where are the rivers?  Where are the mountains?  Where are the areas that slow down your enemy?

Now what’s left?  Terrain that might be easier to traverse.  That’s where the minefields go.  The path that looks easy just might be mined.

It is so much easier to navigate a minefield before you get into it.  You have more options.  Once you are in a minefield every step is perilous.

But we are not talking about things that go boom.  What can it hurt now and then?  We are all human. It’s ok if nobody finds out, right?

For your ways are in full view of the Lord,

    and he examines all your paths.

The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them;

    the cords of their sins hold them fast.

For lack of discipline they will die,

    led astray by their own great folly.

Long ago and not too far away, I delivered newspapers in Altus for a few weeks because that area did not have a manager and they were missing a few carriers.  So I am driving around Altus at zero dark thirty and there are people leaving houses at 3 am and 4 am and there is no Marine base anywhere close by to make these work hours for anyone.

Where are people going at zero dark thirty?

Daytime friends and nighttime lovers

Hoping no one else discovers

In our folly, we forget that nothing is hidden from God.  This applies to more than nighttime excursions.

God sees the heart.  Nothing is hidden from God.  Your ways are in full view of the Lord.

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can never fool God. You can only fool yourself and cheat yourself out to the blessings of remaining in the harmonious union with the wife of your youth.

Now Solomon directs this counsel at men, but it applies to both genders.

There is God’s way and there is everything else and if you decide to venture into the everything else, don’t think it goes unnoticed by God. 

I have used this term many times over the past decades and use it now:  Front End Analysis.  Good decisions on the front end of any process make for easier problem solving later on.

Rushing into anything sets us up for catastrophe.

There is God’s way and there is everything else.  Here’s the tip of the day.  The front-end analysis has already been done for God’s way and the return on investment is continued blessing and favor.

Choose God’s way to begin with and you don’t have to chew off a leg to get out of a trap.

Amen.

How I Hated Discipline

 Read Proverbs 5

The one-liner goes like this.  I’m so broke that I can’t even pay attention.  Solomon directs us to do just that. 

Pay attention.

Listen well.

Do not forget.

Accept my words.

Store up my commands.

Pay attention.

Most of us realize that our thoughts tend to drift.  We have to refocus time and again.  We have to remind ourselves to stay on task, to pay attention.

I have been saying that there is God’s way and there is everything else for a while, but Solomon liked to precede his wisdom with a direction to pay attention.  This is important.  Ignore wisdom at your own peril

Going back to the first chapter, we picked up on the mode of operations as far as wisdom goes.  If you revere God so highly that the fear of anything in the world pales in comparison, you have begun a journey that leads to knowledge that leads to wisdom that embraces the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

We have discussed that Trust in the Lord is wisdom and that wisdom leads to more trust.  It is a self-perpetuating cycle.  Trust in the Lord-Wisdom-Trust-Wisdom.

We want to get on and stay on this cycle.  Trust in the Lord-Wisdom-Trust-Wisdom.

The world cannot understand this and rejects this in favor of its own mantra that it attempts to pass off as wisdom. All wisdom comes from God.  Wisdom was present at the creation of the world.  Wisdom was woven into the fabric of the universe.

We are directed to Get Wisdom and Seek Understanding.

We discussed how we are all made with purpose.  How pitiful it would be to be made in God’s image and not know his purpose for us—to just drift through life.  Sometimes that purpose coincides with what we do for a living.  Sometimes it has little relationship to our income or our livelihoods, but we all have purpose.

There may be very specific things that God has purposed for each of us, but there are some things he has purposed to all who call upon the name of the Lord.  These should sound familiar.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I will walk in the light as he is in the light.

I will be known as a follower of Christ Jesus by my love.

I will take the words of my Master and put them into practice.

I will live as if tomorrow is not promised but eternity is.  My choices matter and I chose to seek the Lord in all that I do.

We will never live a day in our lives without purpose, so we continue to get wisdom and seek instruction and live this life to the full desiring to bring glory to God in all that we do.

But some don’t.

I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but Solomon saw fit to put a dramatic warning on living in the everything else.  He starts with the adulterous woman who is ever so seductive at first but bitter in the end.  What seems so attractive at first will drain the life out of your life.

There is God’s way and there is everything else and sometimes the everything else looks ever so inviting, but it is a trap, one that can lead to death.  It will surely drain the life out of you.

Not all traps are set by women.  Folly and laziness and pride and arrogance all set traps for the one who will dare to veer from the path set by God.  We will get to these in time but for this time let us look at the dramatic response of the one who has succumbed to living in the everything else.

While the beginning of these wayward journeys was enticing to our flesh and to our corrupt hearts, staying the course of wickedness and foolishness come to this inevitable end.

At the end of your life you will groan,

    when your flesh and body are spent.

You will say, “How I hated discipline!

    How my heart spurned correction!

I would not obey my teachers

    or turn my ear to my instructors.

And I was soon in serious trouble

    in the assembly of God’s people.”

What’s worse than hitting rock bottom because of your own decisions?

Recognizing that it did not have to be that way.  It absolutely did not have to come to this.

Realizing that you ignored warning after warning after warning but your own understanding minimized the warnings into nothing and you continued on your path that led to destruction.

Solomon was not writing to the pagans.  He was writing to those who knew there was one true God and who claimed to be God’s people.  He was writing to those who should have been trusting in God with all of their hearts and not succumbing to their own understanding as they veered from the path God set for them.

In hindsight, the wayward son will cry out, “How I hated discipline!”  He will cry out, “I should have taken the vaccine!”  I am not talking about the vaccine that has caused so much controversy today, but the vaccine of wisdom and trust in the Lord.

And you won’t get this from the CDC, that vaccine is approved for both adults and children.

The one who would not return to God’s way will acknowledge that God does discipline those whom he loves but I would have none of it.  The more God rebuked me, the more I hardened my heart against him. The more that God loved me, the more I rejected him.

For about four decades now, I have tried to introduce a simple concept into many decisions.  I have been very successful at boring people to tears when I talk about something called front-end analysis.

What?  Front-end analysis involves heavy investment on the front end of a process.  It looks at consequences and sequels for multiple choices or courses of action before the decisions are made.

People today don’t want to do that.  I just want a new computer or a new car or a new storage building.  I don’t want to do a needs analysis. Those are boring. I don’t want to think this through.

I just want what looks good.

Solomon takes us through some consequences and sequels to our choices.  Doing things God’s way brings us to blessing.  Ignoring God’s way and choosing what I call the everything else leads us on a path of destruction.

But Solomon puts the one on this wayward path in the first person and gives him the perspective of hindsight.  “I would not obey my teachers.  I would not listen to instruction.”

In hindsight, the one on the verge of destruction will see clearly the root cause: “How I hated disciple.”

We learned in the first chapter of Proverbs that those seeking God love disciple and instruction for fools despise wisdom and instruction and discipline.

We love sending kids to church camp.  We pray that they grow closer to God for we have seen so many go the way of destruction.  We know that God is a merciful God and desires none to perish, but how far down the road to destruction can someone go before they give up seeking God? How long can long can someone stay on the path that leads to destruction before they abandon all hope?

 

We are not allowed to give up on anyone.  Like God, our hearts must desire that none perish but if we are serious about this, we don’t wait until someone is a good way down the path that leads to destruction.

We who have received and embraced God’s wisdom call people to come home as soon as we see them off course. We who desire to practice wisdom choose to work on the front end of the process. It’s where we get the best return on investment—the cost is low and the returns are high.

Our hearts break at the words of regret and hopelessness spoken in hindsight, “How I hated disciple.  How my heart spurned correction.”

We who seek God’s wisdom seek to call others back to God’s way sooner than later.

But, but, but I’m not qualified.

But, but, but I don’t want to meddle.

But, but, but I don’t want to judge.

But, but, but that’s just not my way.

But it is wisdom’s way.  There is God’s way and there is everything else.  Wisdom tells us to call those who have abandoned God’s way home, sooner than later.

Love and wisdom call us to call home those who have nothing but regret and remorse ahead of them.  Wisdom says to stick your neck out and invite those who are lost to come home.

Wisdom tells us what to do.  Love compels us to do it.  Empathy longs for people not to hit rock bottom but to come to the Lord now.

We who seek wisdom are advised to work on the front end of the process and call others to do the same.

We who seek to live God’s way are charged to call others to join us before they venture too far into the everything else.

Love and wisdom call us to bring the lost home.

Amen.

Proverbs 4 - Body Alignment

 Read Proverbs 4

It’s Proverbs.  It’s chapter 4.  It’s wisdom again and not for the last time.

Once again Solomon and Lady Wisdom offer to guide us in God’s way and keep us on course.  That’s the thing.  We might walk in God’s way one day and wake up and wander down the wrong path the next.

Staying the course, pressing on towards the goal, and hitting the target set for us by wisdom take daily effort.  It’s not something we do once and everything falls into place thereafter.

Let’s start with guard your hearts.  Keep God’s words in your heart.  Internalize them.  I know that you already know two key scriptures from Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord…

Trust in the Lord…

These are yours and yours to keep.  So keep them and others in your hearts and in your minds.  Make them part of who you are.  Keep wisdom close to your heart so that it never leaves you.

Let’s look at our speech.  Words matter.  This is more than don’t use cuss words or God’s name in vain.  This is don’t speak discouragement when encouragement is required.  Don’t speak as a person with no hope when we are people of hope.

Understand and believe that with God all things are possible.  That family that has never responded to the call to repent and believe the good news, might just make that commitment today.

The people who always complain about everything, might just start to see the blessings all around them.

Consider the difference between waking up to, “guess I’ve gotta read my verse” and “the best part of waking up is another helping of God’s word.”

Our thoughts matter.  Our words matter.  Every thought that is not taken captive and made obedient to Christ is subject to escaping as perverse or wicked language.

How do you work on this?  How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  The answer is the same.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

So that’s guarding our hearts and taking care with our words.  Let’s consider our eyes.  Where is our focus?  What’s in our sights?

We know to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.  We can’t really see him seated at the right hand of the Father so we keep our focus on what he taught us.

Once upon a time, I went to evasive driving school.  It was a fun week of driving fast, driving faster, learning how to steal a car, ram a car, and just useful things that every growing boy needs to know.

One of the drills we did was called swerve to avoid. Orange cones were put down the middle of the track.  You approached them head-on at about sixty miles per hour.  At the last minute, the instructor who was seated in the passenger seat would say right or left.

You braked a little and then swerved to the prescribed direction and then back through the cones on the right and then on the left.

If you looked at the cones, you hit the cones.  You had to focus on the space between. As soon as you were on target between the cones, you had to acquire the next space between and make the car go there.  By this time, you a doing about 35 mph, but that’s still fast enough that if you look at the cones, you hit the cones.

Focus was key.  Focus is key. 

Now we come to the feet.  Really?  Yes. Each step counts. 

I can look at a golfer and tell you where his shot is going, excepting shots from a trap or bunker where stances vary.

Look at their feet.  Lay a club down at their feet so it just touches the toes.  Where it points is the likely path of the ball to be hit.

Our heart, our speech, our eyes, and even our feet are given instructions.  Stay the course.  Press on towards the goal.  In this morning’s context, the goal is wisdom.

Now let’s put them all together.  In marksmanship, if you want to hit the target you need focus—sight alignment and sight picture.  You need to block out distractions—your heart and mind must be given to the present task of hitting the target.

And, your body must be perfectly aligned.  In the prone position—that’s lying flat on the ground, you need to sight in on your target and then close your eyes.  Then a moment later open your eyes.  If you are not still on the target, then your body is not properly aligned.  Your body will shift the focus of your eyes.

You have to adjust and do this drill again until the sight picture is the same after you open your eyes as it was before you closed them.

In qualifying with the service rifle, I had to shoot 10 rounds in 60 seconds.  That doesn’t sound too hard, unless you actually want to hit the target.  Throw out all the Hollywood scenes of spraying the area with a hundred bullets in a few seconds.  That’s Hollywood and nowhere near reality.

It’s different if you want to hit your target, but I didn’t want to hit the target.  I wanted to hit the bullseye of the target, so in this rapid-fire drill, I would get into the prone position, sight in, then close my eyes and open them to make sure that my body was properly aligned.  If it was, I began firing.

Halfway through, I had to change magazines.  That took my eye off of the target momentarily so I had to repeat my body alignment drill to make sure that my body was properly aligned.  When it was, I continued firing.

Remember, I wanted to do more than hit the target. I wanted all 10 rounds in the bullseye. To do that, my entire body had to be aligned.

Do you know what it’s called when you miss the target?  Transgression.  Today, we use that word and sin as synonyms.  To miss the mark is to sin.

If you want to hit dead center, your heart, mind, eyes, speech, and body need to be in synch.

If you don’t want to miss—to swerve—left or right, then everything that you are needs to focus on hitting dead center in the target.

If you want to please God then live by his wisdom.  Wisdom is not a casual affair.  It requires focus—heart, mind, body, soul—to hit dead center.

Amen.

 

Proverbs 4 - Get Wisdom

 Read Proverbs 4

Two years of counseling inmate addicts brought me through this conversation on multiple occasions.

What are you going to do when you get out?

I’m not going to hang around old friends that will cause me to use drugs again.

That’s a great textbook answer, but please answer my question. What are you going to do when you get out?

I’m not going back to the old hood.  There’s trouble waiting for me there.

That’s all true.  Now answer the question that I put to you. What are you going to do when you get out?

I am not going to complain about how unfair the world is.

That should help, but what are you going to do when you get out?

My inmate clients had frustrated and perplexed looks by this point but did not comprehend my question. What are you going to do when you get out?

The reformatory system taught what not to do.  It pointed out land mines.  It posted warning signs.  It gave out laundry lists of things that might trip you up, but it was not equipped to give an inmate purpose.

What does purpose have to do with anything about the Proverbs? Is there a connection between wisdom and purpose?

From PoMo Poverty by Tom Spence

The Germans have a unique word:  Gestalt. 

It is a word that is used to say the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

It describes an integral relationship among all elements.

It’s more than integrity.

It is integrity plus synergy with a fully intertwined taxonomy.

OK, let’s just go with the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

 

How can something be more than the sum of its component parts?

In the world of life experience, purpose is often the cohesive, the organizing principle, and the multiplier.

 

A life expended with purpose is a life lived to its potential, what might seem beyond its potential.

Purpose gets you out of bed in the morning.

Purpose causes you to say, Good Morning, Lord, instead of Good Lord, it’s morning.

Purpose gets you to school

Purpose gets you to work.

Purpose gets you talking with God.

Purpose gets you up the hill.

Purpose lets the insult roll off while focus is maintained.

Purpose adjusts the sails when the wind changes.

Purpose cooks Ramen when the paycheck isn’t enough for the water bill.

Purpose crosses the minefield to save a friend.

Purpose gives insight into our Heavenly Father.

Purpose gives us insight into ourselves.

Purpose unlocks our gifts and talents.

Purpose gives us permission to say no to things we don’t need to do.

Purpose brings us to abundance—not in stuff or money—but in life.

Purpose purges poverty.

 

Those who live without purpose endure a cruel type of poverty.

This form of poverty just passes the time.

This form of poverty sees only immediate needs.

Character atrophies in those living in the poverty of purpose.

Commitment is foreign to anyone without purpose.

The power to effect desired change is irrelevant if there is no desire.

Fear rules.

Language sours.

Money is elusive.

There is no Sabbath to take in a life without purpose.

 

People without purpose are often deluded into thinking they have purpose or a plan or at least a general approach to life.  What we most often find is that they have an exact set of circumstances that they are looking for before they will pursue anything.

What circumstances?

Something that pays a lot, requires little, and doesn’t require any commitment.

 

People without purpose are often deluded into thinking that they can do anything that comes along.  Sure, they can be a manager, or salesperson, or inventory specialist.  They won’t show up to apply because that would shatter the delusion. 

 

People without purpose gravitate to infomercials.  Something priced at $29.95 in which you get 2, not 1, of the save-your-life item offers allure.  When you have no purpose, anything that glitters must be gold.

People with purpose enjoy a good conversation but can’t pause for long.

People without purpose love to talk all day but are terrible conversationalists.

People with purpose love to engage others who will challenge their thinking.

People without purpose avoid thinking.

People without purpose avoid life.

People without purpose feel cheated out of something.

They have cheated themselves out of life.

People of purpose arrive at the job site thinking, what can I accomplish?

People without purpose arrive reluctantly at their job wondering when the day will end.

People of purpose are amazed at how fast the day passes.

People without purpose are tortured by the never-ending day.

 

People with purpose seize the day.

People living in the poverty of purpose dread the day.

 

It is a pitiful sight to see a human void of purpose.

There is no life in the eyes.

There is no spring in the step.

There is no confidence in the voice.

There is no firmness in the handshake.

There is no place to go to find peace.

There is no hope to carry this miserable person to a better place.

 

What a burden to carry—to exist without reason.

What a burden to believe that you have no purpose.

 

What a burden to be blind to the truth.

God made us all with purpose.

Living without purpose is not natural.

Living without purpose is to reject God.

 

Purpose is part of life.

Purpose is integral to abundant life.

Purpose pervades life and gives no purchase to poverty.

 

Yet I deal with people every week who make life decisions in an instant, and postpone simple decisions for months or years.

I meet with people that come seeking money to pay a bill with no idea of what they will do to pay the bill next month, much less what they want to do with their lives.

My skin crawls when people come to me and say, well I guess we’ll get married.  It was as if they were choosing between Ziploc bag sizes.  Yeah, OK, that one will work.

I have mixed thoughts when some people without purpose come and tell me that they are leaving town.  Something happened at the school.  We can’t stay here.  No teacher is going to correct my child.

I get blank stares when I ask, why is your child in school?

People literally cannot answer this question.  Maybe if they said: so she can get an education, or so he can learn something, or something along the lines of so they can better themselves; then an honest discussion might be possible.

Maybe when people can see that life is greater than the sum of everything that’s happened to them, a true conversation is possible.

But when there is no purpose—or the parents do not comprehend the purpose and just go along with the crowd—discussions about staying the course, learning discipline, and reinforcing the rules set by the teacher are bad subtitles on a foreign film.

I said that I had mixed thoughts about people without purpose leaving town.  Among the other thoughts are which of my contemporaries should I warn as the people void of purpose head their way.

 

Purpose is part of life.

Purpose is integral to abundant life.

Purpose pervades life and gives no purchase to poverty.

And yet so many will have nothing to do with purpose in their lives.

 

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.

 William Shedd

 

Why is Tom talking purpose?  I thought we were in the Proverbs.  I thought we were talking wisdom.

So, I will ask you, what are you going to do with your life?

Wisdom tells us to receive the godly counsel of our parents and of God’s word.

Wisdom tells us not only that there is God’s way and there is everything else but it tells us to stay on the path that God has set for us.

Get wisdom.  Seek instruction. Stay the course.

Those committed to wickedness will not be persuaded by the new you.  You should not expect their support.  Stay the course of wisdom. Proclaim the good news but stay the course.  Press on towards the goal.

Guard your heart!

Don’t let wickedness gain a foothold in your heart or your mind.  Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ Jesus.

So what are you going to do with your life?

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I will walk in the light as he is in the light.

I will be known as a follower of Christ Jesus by my love.

I will take the words of my Master and put them into practice.

I will live as if tomorrow is not promised but eternity is.  My choices matter and I chose to seek the Lord in all that I do.

That means that I will have an intimate relationship with this lady named wisdom.  I will embrace her. I will take her counsel so I stay on the right path and am protected from those who would pull me from it.

I will live my life so that my choices bring glory to God.  God has equipped me with wisdom if I will just receive it and he has placed his own Holy Spirit within me if I will just listen to and obey his Spirit.

I will keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and not swerve to the right or the left.

What am I going to do with my life?

I am going to live like never before, seeking God and seeking to bring glory to God in all that I do and knowing that wisdom has offered to equip me for this task.

There is God’s way and there is everything else and I chose to live God’s way.

Amen.

Trusting God is Wisdom

 Read Proverbs 3

I begin our journey into chapter 3 by going to Deuteronomy 6.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Solomon and Lady Wisdom both speak here in this chapter.  They speak not of their own accord but of God’s.  The commands are simple and should have sounded familiar.  These proverbs were in accord with what God had spoken five centuries earlier.

·       Keep my commands in your heart

·       Let love and faithfulness adorn your neck so you never leave them

·       Internalize love and faithfulness—write them on your heart

In so doing, you will:

·       Prolong your years

·       Live in peace and prosperity

·       Win God’s favor and a good name in his eyes

These are more conditional promises of God’s wisdom.  Keep my commands.  Live long and prosper.

But now we come to the best-known proverb within this group. Trust in the Lord…

So are we still talking about wisdom or have we moved on to trust?  Yes.

If you revere God so highly that the fear of anything in the world pales in comparison, you have begun a journey that leads to knowledge that leads to wisdom that embraces the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Wisdom leads you to trust in God.  Trust in God leads you to wisdom.  Trust is wisdom, at least when that trust is placed in the Lord.

So, why is this hard to realize?  We comprehend that the God of creation wove wisdom into the fabric of the universe at the moment of creation.  Wisdom is part of the divine design, so why is it so hard to get in sync with wisdom?

Consider the second part of the 5^th verse—lean not on your own understanding.  Why not just leave it at trust God with everything you have?

We must understand that we can understand our own understanding.  Understanding God and his wisdom are beyond us at times.  We can wrap our minds around our own understanding.

We easily define our paradigm, our efforts to navigate this world, our blueprint for living based mostly upon our own understanding.  Trusting in the Lord with everything we have is in constant conflict with our own human nature and our own understanding.

And you can’t straddle this fence without getting a splinter in your butt.  We must follow God’s way or we surrender to the everything else.  If we chose the latter, we should not question why we are not blessed.

God longs to bless us.  He waits patiently for us to walk in his way so that we may receive bountiful blessings.

Let’s try it this way.  God through his Spirit that lives within you has instructed you to plant tomatoes this year.  You want to plant okra.

You buy one discount tomato plant and hastily stick it in the ground in a spot that never produces anything.  You buy the top-of-the-line okra seed and plant half a dozen rows in your best soil.

You pray every day that God will bless your garden with a good crop.

Weeks go by and your okra finally starts putting on some pods.  They are just too small to pick.  You will check them again in the morning.  When morning comes the pods are a foot and a half long and the fiber in the plant has hardened so much that you can barely cut them off the stalk and surely, they are not edible.

Meanwhile, you continue to harvest tomatoes off the one plant in the sorry soil.  You harvest and it keeps producing more fruit.  Those are some good-tasting tomatoes.

God told you to plant tomatoes but you wanted okra. Your own understanding was that you wanted okra.

There is God’s way and there is everything else.

God says trust me and I will bless you.

The proverb says to trust in the Lord with all of your heart—with everything you have and don’t hold back anything.  The coupling to this part of the proverb is to lean not on your own understanding.

The conditional part is now that you have chosen trust over your own understanding, is to acknowledge God in everything that you do and he will keep you on the path best designed for you.

God wants to bless you in your obedience!  Obedience is not punishment but the path to blessing.

God wants to bless you in your trust.  Trust may bring you through trials and trouble but trust is not trouble itself.  It leads to the path marked with blessings.

Distrust, lack of obedience, and rebellion don’t have the same promise.

What do you call a blessing in your disobedience?  What do you call a blessing in your rebellion?

A rebuke!  A reprimand!  A call to turn away from your path of rebellion and return to God.

There is God’s way and there is everything else.

When you trust God’s way, the best blessing that you receive is wisdom.  Trusting God is wisdom and you will be blessed with even more wisdom for God loves to be very generous with his wisdom for those who seek him.

You know how we finish this morning’s message.  Trust in the Lord…

Amen.

The Lord disciplines those he loves

 Read Proverbs 3

We all know Proverbs 3:5-6, but for now we focus on two verses that come shortly thereafter—verses 11 and 12.

 

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,

    and do not resent his rebuke,

because the Lord disciplines those he loves,

    as a father the son he delights in.

 

 This is going to be an age and gender check.  Few of you remember the sound of your dad’s belt popping out of its loops accompanied by the words, “This is going to hurt me more than it does you.”

If you were ever in that situation, your thoughts were—and I know this because I can read minds even decades later—your thoughts were, “I’m not believing that part.”

As a modern-day parent, the methods may have changed but there is still a hurt or some empathy that you feel when you discipline your child.  You don’t really want to ground him.  You don’t want to hold back allowance from her.  You want to bless your children, but sometimes the best blessing is discipline.

The counsel of the proverbs is to the one receiving discipline.  Do not despise discipline or reprimand.  Why?  Because God disciplines those whom he loves.

God disciplines those he loves.  Discipline—correction—is a sign of love.  If you don’t care about someone, you will not invest the effort, the heartache, or commit to the anguish that often comes from wrestling with the rebellion of your offspring.

Only love prompts a parent to give up self-gratification for the benefit of their son or daughter when that child does not yet have the wisdom to appreciate it.

The uncaring parent just lets their child do what he or she wants to do without any parental consequence.  The counsel to bring a child up in the way he should go inherently includes parental discipline.

If God disciplines those whom he loves—and he does—then we as parents should discipline our children because we love them.

Remember though that this counsel is targeted at the sons and daughters.  Receive the discipline of your parents.  Don’t ignore it.  Don’t reject it.  Don’t despise it.

Too often we equate discipline with punishment.  Sometimes, it is hard to tell the two apart, but when we focus only on negative actions for transgressions, we miss much of what discipline is all about.

The one who practices discipline gets up an hour early and runs 5 miles before school.

The disciplined student carves our 3 hours in the evening for reading and study even though mindlessly scrolling through his or her phone may be enticing.

The disciplined child takes 10 percent of his or her allowance and sets it aside for the tithe.

The disciplined child stands to greet an adult.

The disciplined child learns the memory verse without prompting or scolding from a parent.

The disciplined child eats the healthy food and dismisses the unhealthy. 

The disciplined child waits patiently and does not interrupt.

The disciplined child chooses his or her words wisely. There is no sass, back-talk, or profane language.

Discipline goes far beyond punishment, but when consequences are necessary, discipline is received as a sign of love.

Somebody cares about you and cares enough to help you get back on the right track.

 

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,

    and do not resent his rebuke,

because the Lord disciplines those he loves,

    as a father the son he delights in.

Amen.

 

Best of Both Worlds

 

Read Proverbs 2

We are a people who are thankful for mercy and grace and living in the favor of God for we can say in the first person, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We love atonement.  We celebrate the sacrifice of the Unblemished Lamb that we know to be Christ Jesus.  We enjoy being made right with God by the blood of Jesus.

Why?  Because God did what we could not do.  We sinned.  He sacrificed.  We are forgiven.

But what if we could live without sin?  What if we could be blameless?

Then there is a promise. 

He holds success in store for the upright,

    he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,

 for he guards the course of the just

    and protects the way of his faithful ones.

If you could totally resist your sinful nature, then God offers you success.  He is your protector.  Things would be looking good for you.

But we all fall short at some point.  We are thankful that it is not game over at that point.  He is faithful and just to forgive.  He restores us and puts us back in our race of faith and once again we get a shot at living blamelessly.

And we trip and fall and sin again, but it is not game over.  God’s promises are always true.  We fail.  He is faithful.  We enjoy mercy—forgiveness where we didn’t deserve it.  We enjoy grace—blessings and favor where we don’t deserve it.

We enjoy these things because of the blood of Jesus, but God’s promises did not pass away.  There is still benefit from living God’s way. 

It might be profit in this world.  It might be protection from evildoers.  It might just be peace that we are seeking God and his kingdom and his righteousness and his wisdom above all else.

It might just be the assurance that we are doing the best that we can to please God.

It seems that we have the best of both worlds.  There is promise for living God’s way and forgiveness when we miss the mark and genuinely confess.

It might always seem like a struggle to live God’s way, but we must grow an appetite for his way and his wisdom, for there will be a sorting in God’s time.

Thus you will walk in the ways of the good

    and keep to the paths of the righteous.

 For the upright will live in the land,

    and the blameless will remain in it;

 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,

    and the unfaithful will be torn from it.

There is no promise that there will be no troubles or trials.  In fact, we know that both will come our way.  What we are promised is that staying the course is worth it, even if we must confess time and time again because we have missed the mark.

We should always seek to be blameless before the Lord.

We seek God, his ways, his wisdom, his kingdom, and his righteousness.  Those constitute our goals.  We may have a few errant tries along the way but the target remains the same and God’s promises are always true and forever.

Amen.