Episode Details

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I give you thanks for this new day of life, all praise to you for your preserving grace in my life. I thank you for your patience with me, and for the many ways in which you have protected and preserved me when I would have rushed headlong in to sin. Thank you that you have been such a good and kind God to me. Lord, as I embark upon these studies into your word – in to the Book of Proverbs – I pray O Lord, please give me wisdom, as you have said you will give wisdom unto all who ask. O Lord, I sense and feel my need in this, my profound lack of wisdom. My need is great, and so I pray, please give unto me wisdom through the ministry of your word in my soul. Lord God, that I may live wisely as my Lord did when he lived here as a man, that I may image him. Lord, hear my desperate prayer and answer, in Jesus’ name I pray, and for the sake of your great name, Amen.

Reading

Proverbs 1:1-7

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:

To know wisdom and instruction,to understand words of insight,to receive instruction in wise dealing,in righteousness, justice, and equity;to give prudence to the simple,knowledge and discretion to the youth—Let the wise hear and increase in learning,and the one who understands obtain guidance,to understand a proverb and a saying,the words of the wise and their riddles.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Meditation

Do you want to be an exceptional person? Not exceptional in a self-reliant sense, but exceptional in the grace and wisdom of God? At the end of your life, what do you want to look back at and see? Think, for a moment, about those who have gone before us. Would you rather be a Noah? Or one of the nameless number who died in the flood? Would you rather be a Caleb or a Gaddiel? I know what you’re thinking: “Who in the world was Gaddiel?” Gaddiel was one of the 10 spies that Moses sent in to scout out the promised land. He was one of the ten who came back and told the people of Israel not to obey God. Caleb, on other hand, along with Joshua, had called the people to obedience and to go in and take possession of the land. The sin of Gaddiel and the other nine spies resulted in disobedience on the part of Israel as a whole, and by extension a further 40 years of wandering in wilderness. So, who would you rather be? Caleb or Gaddiel?

In the grand scheme of history, each one of us has only a very small part to play. Even the most influential and greatest of people play only a tiny part. Thousands of people were converted under the preaching ministry of George Whitefield, but the span and influence of his life is but a tiny speck in the grand scheme of God’s plan in history. Nevertheless, our lives are not nothing, they are significant, for the Lord himself has made them to be so. Our labour unto the Lord is not in vain, and so we come back to our original question: When you look back on your life, what is it that you want to see? Do you wish to see a faithful investing of what God gave you? Or a wasteful squandering of the gifts you’ve had?

The means for living such a life is wisdom. Leave significance and all questions of earthly glory in the Lord’s hands, they are of no consequence. What will God say of you? Wisdom is a sure path to spiritual and physical maturity. It is a sure path to usefulness in the kingdom of God. You may not have the gifts of a Whitefield, it doesn’t matter. You may have been entrusted with very humble gifts and opportunities. That doesn’t matter either. What matters is whether or not you have been faithful with what you have been given. You will need wisdom to do that.

Be ye doers of the word…

Living a life of faithfulness will not ha