Proverbs 19:8

People who cherish understanding will prosper.

You spend the most time on whatever you cherish. Take a good look at your daily/weekly schedule. What do you most cherish?

Proverbs 19:11

Sensible people control their temper; they earn respect by overlooking wrongs.

Kingdom vision allows you to overlook anything and become “unoffendable.”

Sensible people don’t take everything personally. They see beyond it to what is really going on, to what really matters in the situation. Small vision sees only how something affects you.

Grow up.

Expand your field of view.

Pray more deeply.

Of course, if you’re not living in the delight of our Father, drinking from the Living Water, you cannot really live unoffendably, because you still need approval from things and people that are not God to feel value and worth. You need everything to go your way.

God asks us, “Am I enough?”

If it is helpful, remind yourself daily, “I am who I AM says I am.”

Proverbs 19:18

Discipline your children while there is hope. Otherwise you will ruin their lives.

I’ve read in several studies that if you do not have the respect and discipline of your child by between ages six to eight, that you are most likely hosed.

For those parents with children younger than this range, I hope this is inspiration to focus on them, pray for them, love them with your sacrificial presence and delight.

Matthew 19:14

If you’re not going to come to God as a humble child, don’t even bother. It is wasted energy.

I believe we lack much in humility and reverence. Have we forgotten who God is? Have we too far advanced our own position to greatness beyond what has been bestowed upon us? In other words, do we attribute everything to the self instead of to God from whom all blessings flow?

We could use a good dose of humility before our Creator these days.  The kingdom is made up of people who know they are nothing without God. The kingdom is not made up of people dependent on self.

In his elegant book Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Paul Woodruff writes,

Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control–God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all.

Simply put, reverence is the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods.

For an excellent reset of your proper place before God, I cannot recommend highly enough A.W. Tozer’s beautiful work The Knowledge of the Holy. It is one of those books I read every year because of the great reminder that it is, and which is so desperately and continuously needed.

All praise and glory be to our great God, the Almighty, the King of creation; and to His Son who rules with Him-Jesus Christ; and to His Holy Spirit who empowers us all. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.