Daily Proverb - Proverbs, Chapter 9

"Let all who are simple come in here!"

"Leave your simple ways and you will live, walk in the way of understanding."

Have you fallen in love with wisdom yet?  If you have been following the calendar as a guide through Proverbs, by now you are starting to understand wisdom.  God is kind and has allowed us to have some of His wisdom.  Making us wise for daily living.  Giving us understanding, we do not have to continue as simple people without understanding.  God even reaches out and invites all who are simple to come to the house of wisdom.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding".  Does that verse (verse 10) sound familiar? It should because it is almost an exact quote of Proverbs 1:17.  It tells us how to begin getting wisdom.  The fear of the Lord is not what you might think of when you think of fear.  Fear can be good and fear can be bad.  An example of good fear is the fear of what might happen if you jump off the top of a 5 story building.  You should be absolutely terrified to do something so horrible.  An example of bad fear, would be the fear of  loving others.  Some people deal with this fear because of the hurt they felt after a relationship went bad.  Love is precious and we should not continue to live in fear of love.  When I learned how to ride a bike, I fell a few times while learning, for some reason I got back on.  I guess the fear of not having the ability to ride, when all the kids in town could ride motivated me into over-coming the fear that came from falling.

Please understand, the fear of the Lord is a good fear!  God is loving and compassionate.  He wants what is best for us and knows better than we do, what that is.  God is also merciful and tender, He is forgiving and wants you to tell Him about your failures.  Don't be confused and think of God as a big teddy bear that has no strength!  God has the ability to cause earthquakes and tornadoes.  He can make or break us and we need to understand and respect His power.  As a good father or mother corrects their children, so it is with God and those who are His.  He will allow you to suffer pain, if needed to teach you how to be wise.  But as not just a good parent, but a perfect Father, God knows what is best for you and desires that you have His best.

So, Proverbs is packed with wisdom and understanding but it all begins with the Fear of the Lord.  I hope today I have helped put some light on what this means.  Fear is often good for us and the Fear of the Lord is wonderful and gives us a new beginning, the beginning of wisdom!  The book of Proverbs is packed full of wisdom.