FaithTempo's Blog

Devotional: How to Deal

Proverbs 13:15, 16  

15 Good understanding gains favor,

But the way of the unfaithful is hard.

16 Every prudent man acts with knowledge,

But a fool lays open his folly. 

Footnotes from the Nelson Study Bible: 

Favor with God and other people-- a good reputation-- is highly desirable because it assures that you will not be alone in life.  It comes from good understanding.   

Independent Study Notes

 Verse 15:  Good understanding gives the ability to act and speak tactfully.  It makes you mindful of what you say and how you say it as well as what you do and how you do it.  The way of the unfaithful is hard:  Hard is synonymous with tactless and overbearing…harsh.  Too strong and “in your face” tactics are counterintuitive and counterproductive to the furtherance of the Kingdom.  It makes sense because the way of the unfaithful is completely out of the corridors of God’s will.  The unfaithful are ignorant of God’s will and don’t have the tools to function in wisdom, so it’s no wonder their way is hard.

 Verse 16:        Prudent - adjective; meaning--  

Wise in handling practical matters; exercising good judgment.  Marked by wisdom or judiciousness.    

 The only way to deal wisely with any situation is if you have knowledge of all sides of a situation.  If there are two sides, Proverbs cautions to listen to both sides because the knowledge you obtain from both sides will assist you in making a wise decision.  Even in daily personal decisions, a prudent person has regard for what he/she will say and do and will think things out before taking action of any kind.  “..a fool lays open his folly” because every time he opens his mouth, only confusion and idiocy (or foolishness) comes out because a fool stands for and thrives on foolishness and confusion. 

The ultimate point is for your fluency to mirror your congruency...that it may lead to the affluence of wisdom.  In other words, may the methodology of your use to decide what you speak and do equal what God wills consistently, so that in doing what God wills, you become affluent—that is, RICH—in wisdom.   

© July 2007

Once saved, always saved? Absolutely! Salvation is a gift and by it's very definition, a gift is free. Once you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are saved forever. The truth of the matter is that many people tend to confuse salvation with faith and works.

We sometimes tend to think of it in terms of perfection, which is unattainable because the only perfect human is Jesus. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to live the best saved life we can. It just means that we shouldn't tear ourselves down when we unintentionally fall short of His will. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.  Falling during the journey doesn't mean that we lose our soul's salvation.

How can we lose something that didn't cost us anything? Salvation is a gift that God offers to save you in this life and the next. God explained the benefits, made the offer and left it up to us to decide whether or not we would choose to accept Him.

A gift is accepted or rejected and once you've accepted the gift, in God's eyes, you've accepted it forever. We confuse 'being' saved with 'living' saved. Ideally, yes, you would accept the Gospel, be instantly washed clean and stay absolutely BLEEP and span for the rest of your life. Therein lies an unhealthy view of what it means to be a spiritual being on a very human journey- WE ARE NOT PERFECT and never will be. We fall down sometimes, we backslide sometimes; yes, we SIN sometimes, but that doesn't make us less saved. There are no degrees of 'saved.' Either you're saved or you're not. Falling short doesn't make us less God's sons or daughters. It just means that we need to learn to focus on building a one-on-one relationship with God and constantly ask Him for His wisdom, strength, perseverance and other spiritually empowering tools while simultaneously thanking Him for His constant grace and mercy.

So, I ask again: one saved, always saved? Heavens, YES. And thank God.

In a word, NO. 

None of us is sinless.  The ultimate goal is to DO BETTER when you KNOW BETTER. In this case, the goal is to SIN *LESS.*  

If God expects us to be perfect, what was Jesus for?  He gave His Son Jesus to save us from the PENALTY of sin. I've heard a lot of scriptures with the words "perfect" in them, but when you study the Word, you also have to dive deeper into word origins and the CONTEXT in which the word is used.

And perhaps the MOST important thing (before I go on) is that **no one** has the capacity or ability to live a sinless life -- if that were the case that would cancel grace & nullify mercy -- to boot it would actually cancel the *need* for Christ's crucifixion -- see 1 John 1:8.

And I can't say enough that not looking at the entirety of the text is like starting to watch to a movie in the middle. You can't get a full picture of what's happened before or what's going to happen because you didn't start at the beginning.

Let's take Matthew 5:48, for instance, which reads:

48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Firstly, in this CONTEXT, the word "perfect" doesn't literally mean perfect-- it REALLY means "mature" and it's from the Greek word "teleios."

The unit of thought from Matthew 5:48 actually starts with Verse 43:

"43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy."

Now that you know where the unit of thought begins, you can begin to under the CONTEXT in which Verse 48 is used:

Love.

Notice all of the verses following v43 that lead to v48 are discussing how to love people who don't show love to YOU and how to not worry about being wronged because God will deal with those use persecute you:

44 But I say unto you, LOVE your enemies, BLESS them that curse you, DO GOOD to them that hate you, and PRAY FOR THEM which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

NOW, v48, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Do you see what I mean? Looking JUST at that scripture says one thing, but looking at the ENTIRE CONTEXT says something else.

Matthew Chapter 5 is part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is addressing the Jews.

In v43, he repeats the Law: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt LOVE THY NEIGHBOR, and hate thine enemy.

In v44, Jesus advises of what one should ACTUALLY do: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;"

(See this also in Luke and similar passages all over Psalms from David).

v45 talks about God's LOVE and care. V46, he uses tax collectors analagously and in v47, he uses the Gentiles analgously (HE was speaking to the Jews) and asking them to make sense of getting something extra special out of loving only people who love you or being nice to (greeting) only those who are nice to you (greet you).

ALL of this leads up to v48, so Jesus is saying to be different and LOVE like God. Loving only those who love you is easy...loving those who don't is the challenge God is looking for us to live up to.

This is a fundamental difference of what it means to love completely-- without condition-- the way God loves US.

Devotional    

Psalms 27:11-14   

11  Teach me your way, O Lord,

 And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.

12  Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;   

      For false witnesses have risen against me, And such as breathe out violence.

13   I would have lost heart, unless I had believed

            That I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living.

    14  Wait on the Lord;

    Be of good courage,

          And he shall strengthen your heart;

          Wait, I say, on the Lord! 

Footnotes from the Nelson Study Bible:  

Enemies might dissuade the righteous from seeking the presence of the Lord.  But the psalmist wants to know God’s presence in this life—in the land of the living. 

 To wait on the Lord is to demonstrate confident expectation.  The Hebrew word for wait may also be translated hope.  To hope in God is to wait for His timing and His action (see also Psalms 40:1 & Isaiah 40:31). 

 Independent Study Notes: 

Verse 11:  David starts out by humbling himself to God in seeking God for His will.  “Smooth path” is synonymous with integrity, which sometimes is hard to maintain when dealing with our enemies or those who act as our adversaries. Ultimately, David is respectfully asking God to help him maintain his God-ness in the midst of adversity.  He doesn’t want to act in a manner that is not conducive to God’s will.  He wants to…needs to…be the better person—the one that God wants. David’s humility, sincerity and prudence remind me of the Proverbs passage from 7/16/07’s Devotional from Proverbs.   

Verse 12:  David is asking God to not allow his adversaries to gain anything through underhanded, ungodly tactics, including slandering his name (“false witnesses”), manipulation and conniving to destroy, even to the point of violent acts against him.  He is asking God for this divine protection because he sincerely wants to do and say what God would want and he knows that the enemy will try anything to destroy those whose heart’s desire is to do God’s will.

Verse 13:  David’s confirming his faith with this verse.  He knows that without relying on God and believing in (better translated inTO) that reliance, he might as well have perished long ago (“I would have lost heart”).  Wow. 

Where would we be if not for knowing that we serve a God that can and does  __________(fill in the blank)???  Wow. 

Here, David’s not only believing God for His word; he’s also believing that he’ll be “…in the land of the living” to see God’s word manifest in his life.

Verse 14:  David encourages himself.  He’s telling himself to hold on…”wait on the Lord.”  David provides a perfect example here of how we should learn to encourage ourselves…to give ourselves that pep talk and to consistently remind ourselves that God is our Source and REsource. 

David’s also preparing himself for the outcome of his current dilemma as well as for future challenges/distractions/deterrents as he tells himself to “Be of good courage,” meaning to continue to have the strength and courage in times of adversity, and furthers it by saying, “And he shall strengthen your heart” because he knows he can’t persevere without God.  This suggests that David knows that God may not come immediately (like David wants), but that God will come…and He will come in time enough to usher David out of whatever his wilderness is at the time. 

And the final line of the Verse 14 is David’s final admonishment to himself:

“Wait, I say, on the Lord.”  Wow.  He’s encouraging himself to the end and what’s more, he’s insisting to himself that whatever he’s going through, if he just waits patiently for God, his

"I’m going through, but I know God can_______ ." (fill in the blank).’ will eventually be a testimony of ‘I was going through when God  __________  (fill in the blank).’       

© July 2007, Faith Tempo