Proverbs 4

To be completely honest with you, I am getting a little bored with this continuing theme of holding onto wisdom, to be seeking it out always, and to steer clear of the ways of wicked people. Don't get me wrong, I think that the advice/guidance is dead-on and we should heed Solomon's advice. It's simply that it's getting a little repetitive. And I guess that this is simply a sign of vast wealth of patience :) What is Solomon and God stressing here?

Moral benefit from Wisdom (Proverbs 2)

• We will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:5)
• We will understand what is right and just and fair (Proverbs 2:9)
• Wisdom will save us from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse (Proverbs 2:12)
• Wisdom will save us also from the adulteress (Proverbs 2:16)

Other benefits from Wisdom (Proverbs 3)

• Wisdom will prolong our life many years and bring us prosperity (Proverbs 3:2)
• Wisdom will bring health to our body and nourishment to our bones (Proverbs 3:8)
• The wise inherit honor, while fools He holds up to shame. (Proverbs 3:35)

Wisdom is supreme (Proverbs 4)

• Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, ^[a] get understanding (Proverbs 4:7)

So now we know where we have been. And I suppose we also have a sense of where we are going: we will be discovering knowledge by wrestling with the riddles and sayings of the wise. So I am biting at the bit here. Let's get a move along the road of wisdom. I want to get it.

Lord I pray for your heavenly patience. I ask for your divine guidance along my walk. I pray that you will continue to place wise friends in my path and provide me with the ability to recognize their wisdom. In all ways, let me seek out the soulish substance of my reality so that your presence can come through in all things. Help me focus my sights on your goals and lead me to your pastures.

Peace,
Dustin

Proverbs 3

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.

If I trust the Lord with all my heart, then there is no more room for me to trust anyone or anything else. If in all my ways I acknowledge God's hand, then I can never be distracted from His all-invading presence. And there's the rub. In my own paradigm, I so often walk around as if God were not there or at least as if he were in another room. I don't think that I am alone here. How do we visualize God? I think that Michael Angelo's famous fresco from the Sistine Chapel captures our idea of God's presence quite succinctly: God seems to be coming from some far off place, maybe up above the clouds somewhere; and here we are earthbound with the slightest chance that we might actually reach out and be able to touch God. In fact, I often get my child-like impressions of Santa Clause mixed up with my impressions of God; both ideas are far removed from my daily life. But what does this proverb suggest: in all your ways acknowledge the Lord. Why? because God is intimately involved in all things! God's presence is everywhere. You can't tie Him down to some backwoods location in the heavens. And the rest of the passage continues in support of this idea: provided we seek out wisdom (i.e., God's will) our lives will be blessed, God will intimately interact in our lives for our betterment. Of course, if we turn our backs on God's will (which we can because of our own free-will) then God may choose to reduce His interactions with us; however, He is never far away, we can not ever banish God from his own house!

I pray for the wisdom of the Lord. I pray that I will rely on His wisdom as apposed to my own understanding. Lord grant me your favor; allow me to come to You without schemes and means but with a child-like heart open to Your knowledge and wisdom. Allow me to retain Your teachings and to discern Your wisdom from earthly understanding. God, I ask that I can see You more clearly, that I can come to a further understanding of Your nature. I ask for Your blessings in these things for no other reason than that I can find myself in the bosom of our creator; so that I can walk in the righteous flow of Your presence and power; that I may live in peace with Your will.

Peace
Dustin

Proverbs 2:12-22

And so begins the benefits of wisdom. We see again that with wisdom we can be shielded from those who do wicked deeds. This is a logical conclusion, since we must first find wisdom by fearing the Lord, which in turn should lead us to a right walk with God. If we are in a right walk with God, then it will not be possible to fall-in with evilness. So wisdom is a natural hedge against those who seek to do harm or act against God's will.

Let me provide a bit of a testimonial here. If you are a date checker, then you might notice that I consistently entered a posting every day last week, but then was silent for 5 days straight. Now, I don't plan on posting regularly on the weekend, and Monday I was out camping. But Tuesday and Wednesday I simply chose not to post which meant I also did not seek God's wisdom those days by reading and meditating on his word. So there I am, purposefully being disobedient and consciously turning my back on wisdom and guess what happens next. Well, Tuesday morning I receive an anonymous email inviting me to view Nichole Kidman's breasts. Now I have struggled my entire life with pornography and have only recently, through God's help and the strength of friends, been able to step away from its trappings. But, for whatever reasons, I decided to follow the link instead of immediately deleting the email: I chose to "leave the straight path and walk in dark ways". Why? because I had consciously chosen to turn my back on wisdom and hence the safety she provides was lifted. Now on Tuesday I felt ashamed that I had fallen into an old trap and sought out God's forgiveness which was provided immediately, thank you Jesus. But come Wednesday, do you think I was back to the grindstone seeking out God's wisdom? No. In fact I was back seeking out more pornography! Without my soul focused on God, without the security of wisdom, I was like a leaf in the wind blown around by my own physical desires and the ways of wicked men. I thank God that he woke me this morning with the infinite love and patience he has and reminded me of my commitment to study his word and to seek out his wisdom.

As I said, I don't think that the temptations nor my lapse of resolve was a punishment for being disobedient, but instead it was a natural consequence of being out of tune with the ways of wisdom. I was distracted from the straight path and quickly fell in with the crooked. There is truth in God's word and we live it every day. God is being honest with us when he says that He will save us from evil ways, that He will be our shield and our protector. But due to our free will we have to turn to him to allow for his protection.

Peace
Dustin

Proverbs 2:1-11

Fourth of July weekend. U.S. day of independence. What a great country to be alive in. Looking around at the rest of the world and watching how many countries have struggled with self-government, I am amazed at the wisdom our forefathers had in setting up the foundation of our government. It is clear from the language of our constitution that our foundational charter was written in the fear of the Lord and hence with wisdom. But these men did not attain wisdom by simply praying all day and going to church whenever it convened; they were well educated men, philosophers and scholars; their wisdom began with true reverence to God, and was constantly supported by their faith, but was obtained by being citizens of the the world.

Solomon says that if we turn our ear to wisdom, apply our heart to understanding, cry aloud for understanding, and search for understanding, then we will find the knowledge of God. I find this to be a beautiful circle. So often we try to remove God from our daily realm of activities: I might see God at church, but when I re-enter the workforce on Monday, God is no longer a member of my activities. It is so easy to build up divisions between where God resides and is useful and where he is antiquated and a hindrance. But in this circular verse, we are told that if we begin the road of acquiring wisdom (which begins with a solemn relationship with God) then we find that we end again within God's knowledge. And the illusion is that in the circle of acquiring wisdom, of seeking understanding, we ever left God.

I continue my prayer for understanding. I cry out to God, let me tap into your wealth of knowledge and insight. Help me to tear down the barriers I established that separate me from the infinite. I hear your promise in Solomon's poem: For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. It is only within and through you that I can obtain the wisdom and knowledge necessary to successfully relate to the world I live in. I pray that I can be a conduit to my neighbors of your awesome gifts; that you will allow me to be a witness of your vast wisdom in communication, business, spirituality, relationships, stewardship; in all activities of our daily lives. Let me be a full member of your house as well as man's house. Let me truly see that there is no separation; that man's house is your house: your kingdom is here not elsewhere.

Peace

Proverbs 1:20-33

You made your bed, now sleep in it. That seems to me to be about the crux of Proverbs 1:20-33. Wisdom is there, all around us, waiting for us to grab hold of her hand and let her lead the way. But, we so often ignore her and trudge through relying on our own merits or on the advise from those around us and then don't understand when it all explodes in our face.

Now, if we recall, wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, or in more contemporary terms, with devotion, faith, and reverence for our Father. At the end of this verse we are told that if we listen to wisdom (to God) "we will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm". What an awesome place to be! I want to be there. Now it doesn't say that we will not meet harm, but that we will live without fear of it. God's way might be easy (Mathew 11:30), but that doesn't mean we won't get bumper around, scratched and bruised, or even killed (no one gets out of here alive :). So if we have fear for the lord (i.e., due respect for our creator) then we will be without fear of the unknown because we know that we are tapped into God's infinite wisdom and are thus armed with all we need to deal with all that comes our way.

Let's focus some more on this fear of the Lord idea. I know that I spent a good deal of time thinking about what it is and made some headway. But what does it look like. Do we show fear of the Lord by: bending down on our knees in prayer, in singing songs of worship to him, in devotedly reading the bible, in contemplating his word, in discussing who and what Jesus is, by loving our neighbors, by following the other commandments, by evangelizing about the saving grace of God through the death and resurrection of his son? I suppose that the answer could be yes to all of the above. But as with all things spiritual, there is not a fixed formula for honestly demonstrating your reverence to God. When the action becomes old and mechanical, it surely is without devotion and emotion.

I am reading this book called the "Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. Now I am only a hundred pages or so in (it's a dense read), but the premise is very clear: the Christian world has applied Christ as a kind of get out of jail free card and expelled him from our daily lives - we only need Jesus to get into the gates of heaven. As Willard argues eloquently, this gospel of sin management robs us and God of the intimate daily relationship we both (God and me) desire. And it is this daily devoted relationship that is at the center of our fear of God, which in turn produces the wisdom that will set us free of fear: We will walk in the safety of our shepherd (Psalm 23).

Peace
Dustin

Brain Storming

So I am only three days into this blog and I am going to buck the trend already. I will continue to lay down my thoughts on the verses I am reading, but today I want to focus on the church that I am currently attending. For the majority of my adult years, I have been an anti-establishment man and that included church. It helped that I was also non-christian for most of that time, but even when I began my journey back into a relationship with Christ, I was wary of organized religion. So it wasn't until 3 years ago that I let my guard down and allowed myself to become a member of EVC a truly organized church with its bi-laws, and politics, and organization. And it has been an awesome experience. God has been faithful in demonstrating the spiritual needs that can be met by a church. He has also shown me that despite of of her faults (mainly being run by humans :) a church can play a powerful role in both the community as well as in an individual's heart.

Now it's 3 years later, I am getting ready to head off to Dallas, and I am watching all this human shit going down in my church home. And it hurts. Without going into details, human politics is rearing its head generating division and strife because folks are aligning behind one person's idea(s) or another. I can understand the passion a little bit, but I don't understand the amount it is pushing people. At least 2 of the topics are biblical in base: tithing and the expectation of our leaders, and missionary work and how to best support our missionaries. The third topic is more relevant to our times, but less biblical or spiritual in nature: should the church as a body align itself with a political/social stance or should it be neutral.

Folks are being hurt by this strife. People are leaving the church and some are even leaving Christ (or at least heading in that direction). And I bring this up here for two reasons. The first is posterity; I look forward to the future when the church has worked through these issues and this entry will be my only reminder of the strife within the church. I want to be able to look back and see what has come from this struggle. I hope and pray that God will use this time build the church up so that as a united body, she can truly be God's presence here in our community. Secondly, I add this entry as a written prayer. I know it is not of the poetic form we find in the Old Testament, but it is my petition to the creator: I don't know what is going on (as usual) but I don't like what I see, so God I ask that you will bring healing to your house, that the division and strife be removed instead of amplified.

Peace
Dustin

Proverbs 1:8-19

We see that Solomon's first piece of wisdom is to be careful regarding your friends. These are people who "lie in wait for someone's blood", who will fill their "house with plunder". On the face, this should be a fairly simple piece of advice to follow. I have made it through my young rebellious stage and behaving in a way so out of whack with social standards is no longer even slightly appealing.

But what if we read this passage more poetically. What is someone's blood? It is their life force. It caries nutrients throughout the body. With the loss of blood, the victim will become weak and lethargic. Solomon is saying that we need turn our backs on practices that victimize others, that might take from them resources they may need for their survival. This seems to fit well with the rest of the verse in which the miscreants sing of the plunder they will accumulate in their nasty behavior.

But it is more than possessions that we need for our survival. What of our personal integrity. When we slander an individual, we can cut them to the quick (which in itself is an analogy of bleeding). Gossip can turn the opinion of the community and potentially "waylay the harmless soul".

There is also the literal accumulation of another's wealth through underhanded means. We can steal via physical might. But, we can also plunder another man's possessions through mental trickery and deception. In our transactions with others, our tongue must be honest and forthright. Now we are getting into areas that are more difficult to control in our culture. To be successful in business, we might think that it is better to conceal some truths in a transaction. But this is a reaction out of FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). We delude ourselves by thinking that if the individual knew the truth they would not be interested in the deal (this could be the selling of real estate, dissemination of scientific results, representation of one's political platform, etc.) As Solomon asks later in the verse: "How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds!" You might catch one finch with your deception, but all the rest will see your scheme and you will be out of business. When we behave in a deceptive manner with our fellow men, we "waylay only ourselves".

This is the wisdom of Solomon: The easy rode to wealth and power via ill begotten means will only lead to our own destruction. But we say to this, what of all those people who have cheated their way to wealth, power, and fame (or infamy). Briefly I ask, do you know their state of mind? Are they happy? Or, do they lay in fear for someone to come and waylay them? I'm not saying that if you are always honest and open with your daily transaction, then you will not be attacked and waylaid by those who are not, see Job. Solomon doesn't say that either. We must diligently be on our guard for highway robbers and thieves in the night. But we can be sure, if we choose join ranks with those who deceive and steal, then our actions will bight us in the ass.

Peace