Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Wisdom & Discipline

Tuesday, January 2, 2018
These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel.  Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise.  Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair.  These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young.  Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser.  Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles.  Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.  Proverbs 1:1-7(NLT)
What is understood as wisdom and discipline in our culture reveals how genuine wisdom and discipline are in short supply.  Wisdom is seen as the accumulation of facts and applications; discipline is perceived as the ability to love oneself and therefore step-up your game to the next level of excellence.  From a Biblical/Godly perspective, both pieces of that puzzle need to receive a restoration of original meaning.
Wisdom is more than providing an answer; it is considering whether your answer squares with the kind of answer God would give.  If something is true (or as Solomon phrased it, doing what is right, just, and fair), then your answer is wise.
Discipline is the opposite of loving self enough to ramp up your game; discipline is a matter of learning to love God enough to match your will with His will, which is found in His Word.  That’s why Solomon wrote that the foundation of true knowledge (wisdom and the discipline to do right) is when you reverence God, your Creator.
So, by learning to reverence God the puzzle of life begins to make sense.  And in the end that is what everyone is really trying to figure out; we need a sense of purpose for breathing in and out every day.
It’s January again – a new year.  So, naturally our minds turn to that better diet and exercise thing we told everyone was going to happen this time.  (Sorry, but this is probably going to hurt). 

What is the purpose for a better diet and all that exercise? 

Is it really health…so you can live longer? 
Is it really better stewardship of your earthly body so you can please God with how wonderfully you use His creation?
Or is it really to get back that smoking-hot body so when you wear that slinky dress that’s been hanging in the closet forever, or you go to the gym and work-out, all the eyes will be on what a smoking-hot body looks like?
Genuine wisdom figures out that drawing attention to oneself, whether it is by developing a smoking-hot body, sporting a granite-like six-pack of abdominal muscles, or a new expensive sports car, or a golf swing to die-for, is a form of lust, and has the effect of creating lust in others.  If you trace that thinking through both the Old and New Testaments you’ll find no place where lust is ever considered a Godly quality.  In fact, lust is just the opposite; it is the launch-pad for spiritual death:
Your desire grows inside you until it results in sin. Then the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death.  James 1:15(ERV)
The key, then, when you recognize that wrong desire, or lust on the inside of your heart and mind is to put wisdom to work …you commit yourself to thinking of that lust in the same way God thinks about it…sin is something that will bring forth death. 
I have a beautiful example of that, and I see it in the mirror each day; it’s the result of the radiation treatments on my throat.  There was cancer there…the doctor said the killer needed to be killed with strong medicine.  The killing of the killer left a freckle the size of a softball on my neck.  It reminds me that cancer was not my friend…ever.

For You Today

Sure, your life is a riddle; certainly you want to figure it out.  Start with the foundation of true knowledge – reverence God and watch Jesus go to work on that puzzle!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Images: Courtesy of Pixabay.com & Pixabay.com

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