Jan 3- Today from Proverbs 3 we look at verses 31 & 32
"Do not envy a violent man or choose any of his ways, for the Lord detests a perverse man and takes the upright into His confidence."
I have had my current devotional Bible for many years now, and have read through the Proverbs dozens of times in it. So, as you can well imagine I have all kinds of underlines, stars, comments and even question marks in the margins. Years ago I had penned this comment to the end of verse 32, "WOW!". Every time I read this verse, I still think, WOW! Why? Doesn't it amaze you that the sovereign, eternal Creator of the entire universe would take a mortal, imperfect and sometimes undependable man into His confidence? It does me. So my next thought is, what kind of man would God take into His confidence?
An upright man. What does an upright man look like? Well, we can be sure he's not violent, for that is the contrast in this thought. There is also another key word - "perverse". In the Hebrew it literally means 'turn aside'. Perverse means to turn away from what is right or good. It's a conscious effort. God did not create man to be violent. The 'upright' man is the man who is moving in a right direction, toward the purposes for which God created Him. A perverse man is one who has turned aside from those purposes. Violence is a result of that perverseness. When a man begins to act in a self-serving manner, he increasingly displays emotional and even physical force to get his own way. This is perverse. We were created to serve God by loving one another.
I want to be an upright man. I am astounded that God would even consider confiding in me. If He considers it, I want to benefit from it. The best way I know how to be upright is to seek to know Him, and to understand His will for my life. I can do this by constantly studying His word. By spending time with Him in prayer. By confessing and repenting of areas of disobedience I discover through these disciplines. By seeking His grace through the power of His Holy Spirit to enable me to live in the manner for which He created me. Granted, there are times when I slip, when I am undependable - but by His grace I am growing. His mercies are new each day. He is faithful. What a joy to know that in spite of my failures, He still confides in me. I sure love Him!
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:
Reminds me of Proverbs 1:23 Ken:
"If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you."
Good insight. God loves - but he seems to be choosy about who He's going to confide in.
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