Proverbs 4:20-27 - My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape form your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.
There are a couple of takeaways from this passage. This whole chapter is really good and I’d encourage you to read it on your own. You can follow the link here for the whole chapter…Proverbs 4. The first several chapters of Proverbs, are Solomon’s instructions to his son to pursue wisdom and to follow God. If you read through Chronicles and Kings in the Bible, you’ll see that, sadly his didn’t follow his instruction and it went badly for him and all of Israel. That goes to show that sometimes, we can do all we can as a parent, but ultimately the choice is made by the individual what decisions they will make…but that’s another topic altogether.
First, we can see that Solomon (the writer of Proverbs), cares about his son and wants him to be wise and follow the Lord. He knows that if he will follow the instruction of God, he will have a more fruitful, happy, and productive life. For those of us that are parents, it is paramount that we continually point our children to the Lord. By our actions we show them just how important God is to us. We can talk about it and tell them to do the right things all day long, but if they don’t see us living it out, it simply won’t take root. The example can hold true whether you have children or not. We are to set the example with our lives to the younger generation and always point them to the amazing goodness that is Christ. They need to see and know that we live an believe the things that we tell them. Wisdom and the love of God are firm foundations to build life upon.
Second, we can take these things to our hearts as individuals. We can apply these teachings to our lives and pursue godliness, wisdom, and life. As I said previously, when we pursue these things personally, it makes teaching them easier, because the student, child, intern, whatever can see that we truly believe the things that we are teaching. In other words, we must always be sure as Christ followers to “practice what we preach”.
Pray that God would help you to share and impart the wisdom that He has given you to the next generation of leaders. I pray that God would help each of us to continue to seek to know Him more and to walk in the wisdom that he has provided for us in Scripture. May each of us relentlessly chase after wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment