Bible Reading #173 - Be Prudent

Be Prudent

Wise Words

Proverbs 14

I pray blessings on you as you read.

(v. 8) "The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception." (v. 15) "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps." (v. 18) "The simple inherit folly, but the prudent are crowned with knowledge."

Daily Bible Reading with DragoNate #142

Lips, Mouth and Tongue

Wise Words 2

Proverbs 18

I pray blessings on you as you read.

(v. 4) "The words of a person's mouth are like deep waters. The fountain of wisdom is an overflowing stream." (v. 6-7) "By talking, a fool gets into an argument, and his mouth invites a beating. A fool's mouth is his ruin. His lips are a trap to his soul." (v. 13) "He Who answers before listening--that is his folly and his shame." (v. 20-21) "From the fruit of his mouth a man's stomach is filled; with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied. The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit."

My Thoughts

So this is what stood out to me most while reading Proverbs 18: that we have to be careful with our words. It is definitely true that the tongue has the power of life and death. You see it all the time. Enemies speak death, friends speak life. That saying that words can never hurt you is false. It is so very false.

Every year it seems there's another teenager who commits suicide. The reasons are all different for each scenario, but still similar. It has to do with some kind of bullying or abuse. A huge part of either (or both in some cases, unfortunately) is verbal.

Have you ever heard that it takes seven positive things said to a person to counteract one negative thing said to them? I don't know how 'set in stone' that is, but I do know that when someone is told that they are worthless or stupid or ugly or any number of other things, it's not going to take one positive opposite to fix it. The more negative things said to a person, the longer it will take for them to recover from it and the harder it will be.

Everyone says things they don't mean because they are jealous or angry or something else. I have before, and I felt horrible for saying those things, especially when the person found out about it. I wanted to do everything I could to fix it. Thankfully, more often than not, people do understand and forgive.

For those of us who follow Christ, we should be extra careful about what we say. It doesn't even matter to who you say it, really, because if it isn't something nice, it shouldn't be said at all. You can talk about how you feel about someone, but you don't have to call them names in doing so.

Our words should bring life to others. And strength and courage and hope and joy and peace and truth. If our words hurt other people, then we need to seriously think about what we are saying and how we say it and all that. As God's people, there is no way that others should be hurt by what we say to them. If someone is convicted by what we say, that's different because they are hearing the truth and don't want to admit it. God will work in them after.

Don't let your tongue speak death. It has the power to do so and it is very easy for it to. Control it and use it to speak life.

Prayer Time

Now you talk to God about what you read, and you can even read this chapter of the Bible for yourself before you do.

Let me know your thoughts on this reading as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read, I pray that what you have read blesses and inspires you! Godbless!

Daily Bible Reading with DragoNate #127

Correction

Wise Words 1

Proverbs 15

I pray blessings on you as you read.

(v. 5) "A fool spurn's his father's discipline, but whoever heeds correction shows prudence." (v. 10) "Stern discipline awaits him who leaves the path; he who hates correction will die." (v. 32) "He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding."

My Thoughts

Hey everyone, so first I want to say that I am feeling better than before. If you saw my last post earlier today, then you will know what I am talking about. If you didn't, then you can read it here. I was honestly going to delete that post, but I thought that that might seem really horrible and possibly send the wrong message, you know? I'm not ashamed of it, and I still do feel somewhat the same, but I had a great night, which definitely came from God, so I feel better.

So, on to today's Bible reading, which is extremely late. Proverbs is hard to look at say "This is Proverbs 15 says to me." because each chapter of Proverbs has a bunch of different (mostly) things in it that don't necessarily go directly together, so I thought I'd take a few that were similar from one chapter and do a post on that.

Proverbs 15 has three verses that really stood out to me at this particular time. They all have to do with heeding correction. It is definitely important for us to do so. Remember when I talked about this with Moses' father in law? It was kinda similar at least. That was in Bible reading #115. That was more specifically on advice, but it is still very similar to this.

None of us are perfect and we all make mistakes. Everyone is really good at something and really weak at something, sometimes multiples either way. If someone sees you struggling with something or doing something wrong or inefficiently and they come up to help you, don't take offense to it. Again, obviously, your reaction is going to differ depending on the person's manner, and I talked about this quite a bit in #115.

If someone comes to you and says "Hey, I see you struggling with this. I think you could improve by doing this." then it's probably fine. As I said in the other post, we should always at least listen to what the person has to say before we disregard them. The same goes for when you go up to someone.

Tell the person that this is what you see, this is what you noticed, I would do this, see if that helps. It works better if you have experience with that particular thing so that you can give testimony of your own experiences. That's what I always do.

It is also important for us to seek out correction. None of us are perfect and we can always improve on something. So if you are really wanting to improve on something, seek out someone who has experience with it and ask them for advice, tips and to correct you. You may be considered a 'master' with something, in which case, that's fine, other people may come to you for advice! Just don't ever lie to yourself that you are perfect with it. Think back to how you got to that point. It didn't just magically happen, you had to work at it, even if it came quickly, you still made mistakes and worked to correct them.

It's important for us to admit that we are not perfect and that sometimes we need help or advice or correction.

Prayer Time

Now you talk to God about what you read, and you can even read this chapter of the Bible for yourself before you do.

Let me know your thoughts on this reading as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read, I pray that what you have read blesses and inspires you! Godbless!