Thursday, September
20, 2018
O God, I beg two favors from you; let me have them before I die. First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name. Proverbs 30:7-9(NLT)
Proverbs is my go-back-to-place
when it comes to measuring my life’s progress and resetting the compass. In the process of setting (or re-setting) the
moral compass these three verses are huge.
The writer begins with a prayer
for God’s help. When you need to press
the re-set button, it pays to do it right.
Enlisting God as your accountability partner means going right to the
best source – the one Who can be trusted, and who won’t miss anything when it
comes to helping you do right. God also
won’t gossip about what He’s heard!
The two requests this
proverb-writer begs of God are truth and restraint. Above all this writer understands the value
of telling the truth in all things. Solomon
may have been the writer, or simply the publisher of Proverbs 30, but he would
recognize the value of truth. His
father, David, set in motion a world of problems for the whole tribe that
followed him with his lack of integrity sinning with Bathsheba, and the coverup
that followed. A lack of truth brings
much pain.
In this prayer Solomon asks for
the blessing of a life filled with neither too much, nor too little. Too much leads to arrogance, while too little
brings coveting into play; both are painfully tied to greed or necessity and
rob the soul of genuine peace.
This part of the prayer is much like
the Lord taught his disciples to pray:
… And don’t let us yield to temptation. Luke 11:4b(NLT)
Resetting the compass means figuring
out what’s important and setting our sights on that as true North.
Don’t lie, and don’t steal are two
very prominent commandments of God’s original ten. They ought to figure prominently in resetting
the compass for each of us.
There have been times in my life when,
in deep, soul-searching prayer, I have discovered areas of untruth and lack of
integrity. I have had to do some
apologizing to people, and some begging, just like this Proverb-writer, for God
to come with me to the altar, and to re-set my moral compass to His north. In times like that I have found what Isaiah
found:
I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom dressed for his wedding or a bride with her jewels. Isaiah 61:10(NLT)
For You Today
Genuine integrity brings much joy, when there is nothing held back
in your relationship with either God or your fellow humans.
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