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January 1 - December 31, 2018
How can we pass our wisdom on to our children so they make it their own? There are three factors here. The first is words (4:3). We must open our mouths and instruct.
The second is a parent’s blameless life (20:7)—a word that means not perfect but consistent. Children are highly sensitive to perceived hypocrisy, which will undermine all efforts to pass on your wisdom.
The third and most important, you must cherish your children (4:3). The verse literally says, “I was the only one in the sight of my mother.” A child should feel they are the object of powerful, unconditional love from the parent. One researcher interviewed youth who had continued in their parents’ Christian faith as adults. The key factor was not church attendance or family devotions or strictness of discipline. The main thing they said was that they felt they could talk to their parents about anything and they would still love them.
according to Proverbs, there are three factors that determine the way a child grows up—the hearts they are born with (“nature”), the quality of the parenting they receive (“nurture”), and their own choices. The three interact in complex ways that no one can control, except God himself (cf. 21:1).
“Without the ties by which people are members of one another, life would be less painful but immeasurably poorer.”211 If we pull away, there is less grief but less joy.
in Jesus’ parable the two antithetical clauses become one—the companion of prostitutes becomes the son who brings joy to this father (Luke 15:22–24).
Lord, may I be neither envious nor disdainful, neither too overawed nor intimidated, by wealth.
Half of the times the Hebrew word for wealth is used in Proverbs, we are told to prize it. Strikingly, the other half of the times the word is used, we are told not to trust it (12:27, 13:7, 19:14, 29:3, cf. 19:4).
Christians know that, despite no fear of final condemnation (Romans 8:1), all things lie open to the eyes of “Him to whom we have to give an account” (Hebrews 4:13).
How striking is wisdom’s combination of assurance that only God is the ultimate source of abundance, along with the strong call for steely-eyed realism.
Lord, give me the wisdom to seek skillfulness, but not be taken with my own cleverness. Give me the discernment to perceive excellence, but not be enamored of pedigree and credentials.
Money has the power to make you think that ruthlessness is just normal. Where have you seen the power of money to make us ruthless?
Living life with money actually requires greater faith and dependence on God, not less.
Lord, I ask that you not grant me any financial success unless you bless me with character, a good conscience, and strong relationships. Amen.
When wealth becomes your identity, you come to feel that people are not just below you economically; they are below you.
If you make wealth your very identity, and something takes the money away, there is no “you” left. You are prosperous and successful or you are nothing. But for the wise, the fear of the Lord is their treasure (Isaiah 33:6).
Lord Jesus, what a revealer money is! If I look at what I spend money on most effortlessly, almost without thinking, I see the real functional joys and trusts of my heart. Let me behold your glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) until these other things lose their grip on my heart and desires. Amen.
The only true solution to the power of money over you is to see yourself rich in Christ. In him we are “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21; cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9).
We love God with our money when we treat it as his, not ours, and send it out to the things he loves.
Lord, to live as a rugged individualist is not your will for me, and it leaves me vulnerable. Change my heart and strengthen the church so we, your people, can truly be members of one another. Amen.
Our homes, clothing, and lifestyle should be modest within our circle and neighborhood so we can be as generous as possible. The Christian community should model to the world a society in which wealth and possessions are seen as tools for serving others and not as means of personal advancement and fulfillment.
By me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just; by me princes govern, and nobles—all who rule on earth. (8:15–16)
all leaders are effective only to the degree that they acknowledge at some point the givens of God’s wisdom—that they are not too wise in their own eyes, that they are relatively free from the power of money, that they know themselves and the times and seasons and how relationships work.
all leaders, whether they know it or not, exercise authority by the permission and power of God himself. Jesus told Pilate he had no power but that which was given to him by God (John 19:11), and he told him this even as Pilate was about to commit a great injustice. Even leaders without much wisdom or virtue, though they don’t know it, are ruling by God’s appointment and ultimately furthering God’s plan (Genesis 50:20; Acts 2:23; Romans 8:28).
Either naïveté or cynicism about people—habitually overtrusting or undertrusting motivations—will greatly hinder leadership effectiveness.
the best leaders are those who can paint a compelling picture of the future, who can say, “This is the world I want to see. Who’s with me?” Organizations can become calcified when they become selfish—no longer serving a vision, a cause outside themselves, but only maintaining their own power and turf. Good leaders not only are servants but make their organizations into servants as well.
Some leaders are good at “catalyzing” but not good at organizing.
organizing is a matter of . . . being organized. Disorganization is selfishness, a lack of sacrificial love in little things.
it is not ability but humility and dependence on him that matter most. As Aslan said to Prince Caspian: “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been proof that you were not.”
we should not be overly shocked and disillusioned when our leaders are revealed as having clay feet. Nor should we be blasé and shrug. If we are to trust God as our only true hope for social order and peace, we must avoid either adulatory naïveté or bitter cynicism about human leaders.
Christians respect and love their country, but never uncritically. Christians are slaves of God alone (1 Corinthians 7:22) and therefore of no human being (1 Corinthians 7:23), and this undermines the impulses of our heart toward racism and nationalism.
Steward-leaders can fall into two opposite errors. They can be too weak and unassertive (Matthew 25:14ff.). But they can also become oppressive, tyrannical, using their power over a helpless people and forgetting their servant status under the Lord, the owner of all things.
the unjust steward will be “cut . . . to pieces” (Luke 12:46). Jesus’ denunciation of an oppressive leader is every bit as devastating as his denunciation of a weak one. Jesus is no ideologue. He does not fear strong leadership on principle nor countenance tyrants or oppression.
Because of the peculiar stresses and sacrifices leaders make, they can be prone to self-pity, to engage in a secret affair or addiction, because they say to themselves, “After all I’ve done, I deserve this.” But they must not do this. After all, the rights of all the oppressed are on their shoulders.
Lord, when Daniel spoke to the king, he was genuinely distressed for him (Daniel 4:19), yet called him to repent and stop oppressing the poor (Daniel 4:27). How rare to see genuine love for an oppressor—and bold truth telling, all at once. Be pleased, Lord, to reproduce this in me. Amen.
On the one hand, don’t be intimidated yourself. Christians can call those in power to honor justice and truth as Daniel did (Daniel 4:27). On the other hand, never be in despair. There is a King of kings.
if a group of people in a city are truly living “righteously,” as Proverbs defines it, they will be such a benefit to the public good of the whole city that the entire populace will exult, feeling that their prosperity is a victory for everyone.
Lord, if I live a godly life I will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12) and yet I will also lead people to glorify God (Matthew 5:16; 1 Peter 2:12). I confess that neither of these things is happening to me! And so, Lord, make me more godly until I am both more offensive and attractive to the world. Amen.
According to the Bible, then, your neighbor comes into your presence with certain claims on you. Negatively, she has the right to not be assaulted, defrauded, or killed. Positively, she has the right to be treated with fairness and respect.
We take far more credit for our prosperity than we should. When we flatter ourselves that our assets are the result of our work, it leads us to believe any lack of such assets must be the result of laziness.
the well-off should not indulge self-justifying fantasies of the “happy” poor. There is always a misery and wretchedness (15:15) around poverty that all who love God will want to remove (Psalm 41:1).
Lord, if you had come to earth in order to save only those who did not bring their spiritual poverty upon themselves, you could have saved yourself a trip!
To quote Basil the Great (AD 329–79), “The bread which you keep belongs to the hungry; the coats in your closet, to the naked; those shoes . . . to the shoeless; the gold you have hidden . . . to the needy. Therefore, as often as you were able to help others, and refused, so often did you do them wrong.”229
Our social systems quarantine the poor. We protect ourselves from the impositions that their needs would bring upon us. We force them to live all together, so that the poor have no neighbors with the resources and connections to be kind to them. This, of course, only deepens poverty.
we should respect the poor as persons, expect to learn from them rather than thinking we can simply fix them like a mechanical object.
if we don’t create a society that defends the weak, there may be no one left to defend us.
Job not only clothed the naked but “broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth” (Job 29:17). The prophets denounced unfair wages (Jeremiah 22:13), corrupt business practices (Amos 8:2,6), legal systems weighted in favor of the rich and influential (Deuteronomy 24:17; Leviticus 19:15), and a system of lending capital that gouged the person of modest means (Leviticus 19:35–37, 25:37; Exodus 22:25–27). Daniel calls a pagan government to account for its lack of mercy to the poor (Daniel 4:27).
It says that righteousness exalts a nation. If we remember that the definition of righteousness is to disadvantage oneself to advantage the whole community, then we begin to see how it would be possible to evaluate the heart of a society. Daniel calls on a pagan king to act justly toward the poor and oppressed (Daniel 4:27; cf. Jonah 3:1–10), and the prophet Amos held pagan rulers accountable—not to a full Christian standard of faith but to a golden-rule standard of justice and fairness (Amos 1–2).
“man with dog closes a gap in the universe,”
“The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We . . . put ourselves where only God deserves to be”—in charge of our lives—while “God . . . puts himself where we deserve to be”—that is, being punished on the cross.
