Today from Proverbs 24 we look at verse 10
"If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength!" Strength. What kind of strength? If it were physical strength, this proverb couldn't universally apply - some people are physically weak and can do little or nothing to change that. No, this proverb refers to strength of character. How do you stand when troubles come? How do you keep going when all seems lost? You dig deep into the character that was formed in you as you trusted God through previous times of trouble. Maybe it wasn't as traumatic or as devastating as the current situation, but staying in any challenge builds character. It's the school of life. God allows trials to test our faith. Walking away from, or taking the easy way out of a difficult situation keeps our strength of character 'small'. It never gets any exercise.
Life isn't easy, and it certainly isn't meant to always go our way. People who believe or act like that have little character. Nobody really wants to have such people of little character around when things get tough. On the other hand, those who have stayed the course and learned the lessons of life by going through life’s trials are good people to have around when you hit a wall. They can help give you perspective.
Let's move ahead one book to Ecclesiastes. There in chapter 7 verse 4 it says, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, the heart of the fools is in the house of pleasure." Little about life is learned in the house of pleasure. It is an aberration; a place designed to retreat from the reality of life. Go to a funeral and contemplate all that's going on there, and you have entered the true theater of life.
Are you in a time of trouble today? Look to the people around you who have been tempered in the trials of life and you will find encouragement. In the same chapter of Ecclesiastes in verse 8 it says, "The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride." Patience is a fruit of the Spirit. Let patience do its work, it is a tremendous character builder.
Since Nov 08
About Me
- Ken
- While mentor-ing a couple of young men late in the year 2001 , I told them that if they agreed to read a chapter of Proverbs each week-day as a part of their devotions, I would choose one verse from the chapter and share a meditation by email. They agreed. I continued to write the meditations at my desk in my home for the next two and a half years. They began to forward them to their friends and I received requests from those friends to be placed on the email list. My personal email bundle was to about eighty people. Many of those people forwarded them to friends all over the country – and some over the world. Only the Lord knows how extensive the writings traveled. I am not a professional writer, and each meditation was spun off in a relatively short period of time during my own personal devotions in the morning. In April of 2004 I assembled 366 of the meditations into a calendar year. As I now bring up the Proverb of the Day to send on to my friends, I am surprised at how fresh each of them is to my own heart – and often how they speak to me in a completely different way than when I first wrote them. . . . . Ken Sweers
2 comments:
Sorry, another comment from me. I've gone back to the start of your blogs and it is just amazing how the Lord brings such "words" into my life just when I need it. I had just written my blog on Faith and then ran into this one of yours. I hope you don't mind I linked your blog to my visited www places.
I am both humbled and flattered.
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