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January 5 - December 31, 2019
Today we sacrifice the good of the group for the absolute freedom of the individual. The result is an increasing number of people who feel disconnected and lonely.
There is a kind of fear that is just the dread of punishment (Joshua 2:14). But there is also a standing in awe of someone (Joshua 4:24), with the resulting fear of doing anything to grieve or dishonor the person. It is in this second sense that we must understand the true “fear of the Lord,” for it increases the more we admire and praise him in wonder (1 Chronicles 16:25).
Either God’s Word will be the unquestioned arbiter of truth or something else will serve that function (public opinion, your own feelings, or human scientific reasoning). Either God and your relationship with him will be the thing you esteem most—and every single other thing will be evaluated in light of that—or your relationship to some other thing (such as money) will define reality.
There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD. (21:30)
Prayer: Lord, I pray mercy for my friends who are indeed leaving you out of their plans and lives. No one is wiser or more just than you, and I have no right to tell you your business. But you want me to tell you my desires—and I desire that you would open their eyes and hearts to your truth. Amen.
Salvation is not merely forgiveness and admission to heaven. It means life is healed, slowly but surely, in all its dimensions.
we reach so few of our goals, and the goals we do reach are not nearly as fulfilling as we thought. There seems to be no gain.
The author asks us to imagine trying to live only under the sun—with no God or eternity beyond this world. If this world is all there is, can we find meaning?
Lord, our society has rested its full hope for itself on unaided science and technology. But this will not be enough! Please preserve our social life and order with your help and grace, and let the knowledge of the Lord grow again in our country. Amen.
Often most of the painful emotions people experience during adversity are actually the shock and surprise that they are suffering at all. Even many Christians believe that God won’t let really bad things happen to them. But Jesus himself disproves that. If God allowed a perfect man to suffer terribly for a greater, wonderful good, why should we think that might not happen to us?
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
Modern people think feelings determine what we do and that it is hypocritical to act loving if they don’t feel loving. Proverbs, however, tells us that our actions shape our feelings.
So start doing the actions of love—take that path—and you will see your heart changing.
The best way to guard your heart for wisdom is worship, in which the mouth, the mind, the imagination, and even the body are all oriented to God.
Not trusting your heart prevents two opposite errors. On the one hand, our consciences can be too easy on us. “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent” (1 Corinthians 4:4). Follow God’s Word instead of your feelings. If the Scripture says it is wrong, it is. On the other hand, our hearts can be too hard on us. “If our hearts condemn us, . . . God is greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:20). Follow the gospel instead of
your feelings. You are loved for Christ’s sake, not because your heart and life are perfect. Without God’s word of grace to build us up (Acts 20:32), we will fall into false guilt or false innocence.
four typical God substitutes. The first is human approval. The fear of man
is a snare. If we look to human beings more than to God for our worth and value, we will be trapped by anxiety, by an overneed to please, by the inability to withdraw from exploitative relationships, by the inability to take criticism, and by a cowardice that makes us unable to confront others. Our feelings will be easily hurt and we will tend to overcommit out of a desire for acceptance.
The only thing that
casts out the fear of man is a deep love relationship with God (1 John 4:18).
A second form of inordinate desire is an inordinate love of physical pleasure and comfort.
The pleasure described here is the joy that comes from
the satisfaction of physi...
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if we become “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4), it leads to disaster—not only economic but also emotional and spiritual.
POWER. Another overdesire is the will to power.
Ambition and careerism can be driven by a desire for wealth as a means of gaining power. The overlove of power can also show itself in people who are opinionated, poor listeners, argumentative, highly partisan, unteachable, and afraid to admit when they have been in the wrong.
The greatest nightmare of the approval addict is rejection; of the power addict, humiliation; of the comfort addict, suffering; and of the control addict, uncertainty.
Though the sluggard refuses to plan (20:4), the opposite error is
to think you can control the future—and your whole life—through pla...
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Those who believe they can eliminate uncertainty boast about tomorrow, thinking they have planned for every contingency. People with an overneed for control have trouble sharing power, can’t delegate, and tend to manipulate people...
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This overconfidence in one’s ability to control life is always haunted by the nagging sin of worry (Matthew 6:19–34),
just as the desire for power is dogged by anger, the fear of man by cowardice, and the lover of pleasure by boredom.
ANXIETY. The Hebrew word translated as anxiety means the emotional distress caused when something vital to your life is threatened.92 The key to dealing with anxiety is to look at our heart attitude toward the thing threatened.
Lord, I have great friends and a great family, but only you are truly, always with me. The only way, then, that I can avoid terrible loneliness is to spend more and more time with you. Don’t let the world squeeze out my time with you. Amen.
HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE. Remember that the “heart” in the Bible is not the emotions but our trusts and attitudes.
Self-control in any situation is the critical ability to both recognize and choose the important thing over the urgent thing.
To honor, trust in, and please God is always the most important thing.
Anger is energy released to defend something you love. God is angry toward the evil that dishonors him and ruins that which he loves. But the problem with human anger is this—we tend to overlove the wrong things. It
Conflict (Hebrew madon) in Proverbs does not refer to principled disagreements or respectful arguments. It is something God hates (6:19) and at the heart of conflict is annoyance, a word that means contempt and disdain between people.
Everything said in conflict is to belittle rather than convince.
The solution is love (verse 12), and this doesn’t primarily mean feelings. Nor does it mean to refrain from correction if it is necessary (27:5,6). When 10:12 says that love covers wrongs, it does not mean “cover up.” Anger tries to expose and strip the other person, to make them look terrible. Love refuses to pay back and deliberately seeks to put the other person in the best light. It seeks to put their needs ahead of your own, all in the interest of helping the person change, if possible. Keep in mind that anger is energy released to defend something you love. When you are in a dispute,
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is “the proper intolerance of disruptive intrusion and is thereby a mark of love (as the opposite of indifference.)”101 Jealousy in its essence is a commitment to a relationship. It is stirred up when it moves us to maintain a threatened relationship or restore a broken one.
Sinful jealousy is not jealousy for but of someone. Envy is wanting someone else’s life.
Lord, I confess I envy other people’s bodies, bank accounts, relationships, and many other things. I keep this envy a secret, even from myself, because it is so embarrassing. But it robs me of joy and you of your rightful glory. Help me root it out of my heart. Amen.
Envy is wanting someone else’s life (May 6). But it is not just that. In envy we don’t just want other people’s lives; we resent and begrudge them their lives.
Envy is being unhappy at other people’s happiness. Envy weeps because of those who are rejoicing and rejoices if they are weeping. It is the exact opposite of the godly state of mind (Romans 12:5). And the best way to stop it is to look at Jesus, about whom it could be truly said, “In all their distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9).
Envy stems from two preoccupations. First, we are obsessed with what we deserve. Our hearts refuse to remember grace and instead think only of what we have earned.
Second, we are preoccupied with the present. The solution is to look up to the Lord (23:17b) and look ahead in hope (23:18). That is, we should realize that our true reward is based on God’s grace. Also we should remember that in the end, believers will not lack anything (Psalm 17:15).
First, pride makes us hate authority (verse 11) and so resist our parents, the first authority figures in our lives.
Next, it blinds us to our flaws (verse 12), distorting our relationship to ourselves, so we cannot change what is wrong with us (our
