Do The Right Thing

Wise sayings can look so cool on a pillow or wall art. Somehow that won’t actually change our life though. Application is required.

I’m spending 2025 in Proverbs and finding that how I’m told to live before the Lord and how I do live can be sometimes very different.

I am one that strives to live an examined life. My life and behavior will reveal what I truly believe and desire. It also shows to whom I belong so I pay close attention. But sometimes what my soul desires is at odds with what my flesh sees and wants.

Proverbs has a remedy for this. It forks the road showing two different ways and approaches to life. One way is wise and the other is folly. We have a choice every day to choose which path.

Proverbs tells us how to acquire wisdom for living a life of peace, joy and prosperity in the Lord. To do this, I need to actively pursue wisdom.

Wisdom is the skill of living life harmoniously both vertically and horizontally at the same time. That means my vertical life with God and my horizontal life with others on earth can be the battleground.

We are given a way to see the difference. Proverbs tells the story of two women. One is wisdom. The other is her opposite. Wisdom offers life and the other offers death.

This woman of death is portrayed as foolish and one who speaks sweet, enticing words to draw us off the path of righteousness. She does this by focusing on the here and now of the physical world. Her offering is that which smells amazing, tastes incredible, and offers sensuous, this feels so good right now, things of the world.

Folly argues that riches and experiences are their own reward and if they must be gotten through the world’s ways it’s okay for they are worth it. The Bible speaks much of God’s people selling their souls by playing the harlot with the world. We commit adultery with it and reap rot to ourselves. These ways are definitely not worth it.

In our day of internet connection, the offerings to be a part of the world from the seemingly innocent to the fully depraved are relentless and available. Whatever your flesh wants, the offering is there. And, soul death follows.

But, wisdom. We find her and we gain understanding. And that’s not all. She gives blessing, profit, gain that is precious, long life, riches and honor, pleasant ways, peace, access to the tree of life and happiness.

These are not the temporary feelings the world offers. Wisdom offers the joy of life eternal that starts right now with all of the benefits of daily life with Christ.

This Christ-energized life hates evil and stays on the path toward heaven. It stands in awe of God and sees evil for the filth that it is. Proverbs shows us the two paths and invites us to turn away from what will kill every part of us so that we can partake of what will bring true, eternal, life.

But, we don’t have to wait for heaven. We can live in the love of God right now. That love inspires and enables conformity to His truth and His ways. This is the very beginning of a life that glorifies God and inhabits joy.

The vertical relationship with God spills over into the horizontal life we must live on earth and makes it magnificent. It shows us the feast that God offers compared to the dumpster dive of the world.

Those that would have such wisdom require instruction to gain it. That is my goal for this year. I will sit at God’s feet and learn. I will let wisdom hold my life up to the light and look for the stain of the world. It’s there in all of us. But we can ask Christ to wash it clean in His blood.

As I spend the year in Proverbs I will write out what I learn. I will chart a course from the fork in the road forward and clear obstacles I find along the way. Want to come with me?

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