Today’s passage: Proverbs 2
Helpful thoughts:
- If you treasure the word of God, you will incline your ear to it. If you incline your ear to it, you will understand the fear of the Lord and grow in knowledge.
- With greater knowledge and fear come greater delight in God’s word. What a wonderful cycle.
- When we are not delighting in God and His word, we are delighting in something.
- The immoral seductive woman of Proverbs 2:16-19 could be applied as a contrast to the woman “Wisdom” who cried out in 1:20-33. The immoral woman seduces with her words and leads victims down paths toward death.
- There is a battle being waged for your mind and heart. Who you hear shapes how you think, act and feel.
- Understanding righteousness, justice and equity bring deliverance from evil. This is a rescue mission!
Questions to consider:
- Where are all the places you hear words, ideas, philosophies, etc. (Think people, television, radio, internet, family, and more)? How do you think you are doing at looking at the world through the lens of Scripture as opposed to looking at the world and Scripture through a lens from the world? How would you know you are rightly evaluating your progress in this?
- Is pleasure only for evil things? What role does pleasure and delight play in both evil desires and righteous desires? What shapes or changes our desires so that we would take pleasure in God and in what is good?
- We may think sometimes that the battle against sin starts when temptation comes. What does this chapter have to say about that? When does the battle against sin and for righteousness begin? If we regularly wait to try to battle against sin after the temptation has already come, will we be ready to face it victoriously?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for your kindness in giving us your word! In our sinful state we all choose sin, we all fall short of your glory. So we also thank you for the grace you showed us in sending Christ to die in our place, for our sin. Thank you for putting his righteousness to our account. And thank you for giving us new life and freedom from our bondage to sin, so that we might read your word and truly delight in its truth. Lord, please help us and guide us in the truth, that we would see its wonder and beauty, that it would draw us to praise and to delight in you more than we would delight in the seductive, prideful, and deathly pleasures of this world. May we walk in victory as we eagerly pursue you in love, reverence, and adoration.