Proverbs 17:3

"The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold,
but the Lord tests the heart.” NRSV

Crucibles and furnaces, when used with silver and gold, aren’t used to test whether or not these elements are what they proclaim to be. Rather, crucibles and furnaces are used to extract the impurities that have become infused within the elements.

Impurities in precious metals permeate the elements. It becomes impossible to actually see the impurities; the elements appear pure until subjected to the purifying process. For example, 10k gold is only 41.7% gold. (Only 200k gold is pure gold.) And yet, 10k gold jewelry is impossible to discern with the naked eye from 18k gold (which is 75% gold).

The fact that these two things are put together in this verse:

• purifying precious metals, and
• the Lord testing our hearts

tells us that this proverb is talking about the same thing. When the Lord “tests” our hearts, He isn’t doing it to determine whether or not we are His, but rather to remove the impurities of lust, pride, ego, anger, unforgiveness, selfishness, and other habitual sins that still remain. He is testing us because He loves us and wants us to be as true to Him as we can be.

His testing is a blessing, not a punishment.

What is it we want from the Lord? Most of us, when we are brutally honest, will admit that we want the things that appear to make this life easier. We want money and luxury and power and the admiration of those around us. But thankfully God’s plans for us are much broader than that. He knows that the things of this world are temporary, like paper houses. He wants to give us that which will serve us over the long haul of eternity, a pure heart and a soul that longs after Him. Only those things can we take on life’s final journey. Only those things last.

When He allows us to be faced with trials and hardships and even pain, He is putting us through the crucible to remove the impurities of sin. He wants to purify out those things which come between us and Him. He wants us to focus on those things which are truly important.

As parents, we need to take that same tack toward our children. When we “help” them by removing or lessening life’s consequences, we may be actually hindering God’s lessons in their lives. They don’t need us to make the way easier for them; they need us to pray for them and walk beside them as they walk the path God has prepared. He’s not concerned about whether or not the way is hard; He’s concerned about whether or not they will develop the strength to persevere.

The way of the Christian is hard. The Lord Jesus Himself told us that it is the hard road: “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14 NRSV). As people, our natural tendency is to want God to make the road easy for us. It can’t be. We need the crucible to remove the impurities.

Oh, dear ones, let us be among the few who find the narrow gate, the hard one, that we might rejoice with God in eternity!

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 17:1

“Better is a dry morsel with quiet
than a house full of feasting with strife.” NRSV

Abraham Maslow is a psychologist who developed what he calls the “Hierarchy of Needs.” The basic premise is that one cannot focus on higher-level needs until the lower level needs are met. One of the lowest level needs is safety.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the past half-century about emotional abuse. And while I think that, as a people, we need to toughen up a bit (well, actually a lot), there is truth that, in order to withstand emotional assault in other places, we need to have at least one place that is safe. This proverb asserts that the one place of safety needs to be home. And I agree.

Home should be the one place where we can count on those around us. It used to be that loyalty to family was paramount. If you couldn’t count on your friends, on your coworkers, on your neighbors, you could count on your family. Sadly enough, that’s often no longer true. We live in a society where the people most likely to hurt us are those with whom we live.

Why is that? Why are we so untrustworthy with those who depend upon us the most? I think it’s because we have swallowed the lie that “a house of feasting” is worth the price . . . the destruction of relationships. We are so enamored with commercials that we believe what they say, lock, stock, and barrel.

I was married once before. My first husband was an alcoholic. He was also a very talented man who thought everyone hated him. And so, he just wouldn’t come home. He’d go to bars or liquor stores, buy alcohol (and other things), and simply not come home. One day in a very honest state, he told me that he wanted to be like the men on the beer commercials, the men who would surrounded by people who loved them and who thought they were just wonderful.

He was convinced that he could find love and acceptance among the other losers in the bar rather than to come home and receive the love and acceptance that his family was waiting to give him.

As Christians, do we look outside of our families for emotional safety? There are sometimes reasons why we do that: an unfaithful spouse, an abusive parent, a neglectful child. But rather than continuing to look outward, why don’t we work on developing a healthy family? It takes not only the work of those others, but ours as well. It takes prayer and patience and forgiveness. None of us is perfect (by a long shot), but we can work on having a house of quiet, even if we only have a dry morsel, rather than looking for that house full of feasting with strife.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 16:33

Proverbs16:33

“The lot is cast into the lap,
but the decision is the Lord’s alone.” NRSV

Do you know what’s going to happen today? I don’t. We can plan and hope and dream, but the fact is that no moment even truly exists for us except this one moment. Who knows what will happen next? Only the Lord.

There is nothing wrong with planning for the future, as long as our plans don’t hinder our becoming what God has planned.

“Then Jesus told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.’” (Luke 12:16-21 NRSV).

In this time of uncertain economy, it is a natural tendency to begin to close oneself in, to become tighter with our money, to become more worried and concerned, to allow the uncertainties overwhelm us. I think that Jesus chose to talk about a “rich” man in this parable because we often see money as being the protection for the future. If we have enough money, the future will be fine.

The fact is, we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. The Lord might call any one of us Home tonight and all of us concerns would have been for naught because they wouldn’t now matter. Rather, what is important is making sure that we stay to the task, that we carefully analyze our hearts and our behaviors so that we are continuing—even in times of great stress—to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

Paul talked about the Macedonian church that gave even though they were extremely poor (2 Corinthians 8). They gave even beyond what they could “afford” to give: “they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means” (v. 3). In these times when each of us is wondering whether we will be able to keep our homes, whether or not we will be able to keep our cars or go on our vacations or pay for our children’s schooling, we need to be even more conscious about giving to others. Our faith—our true trust in God to supply our daily needs—is demonstrated by our willingness to provide for those around us who are also in need: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:15-17 NRSV).

Do we truly believe that “the decision is the Lord’s alone?” In other words, do we truly believe that He is in charge, that He is able to provide, that He will take care of us? Then, in times such as these, we should become even more generous, even more giving, even more interested in the concerns of others and how we can help.

My dear ones, He is fully able to provide for us! We need, in great love, to provide for each other.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 13:19

Proverbs 13:19

“A desire realized is sweet to the soul,
but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools.” NRSV

Do you ever fight with the Lord? I do. And yes, I know how foolish that is, but often my heart is foolish, rather than wise. There are some things I cling to so tightly even knowing that they aren’t good for me. But oh, how sweet sin tastes . . . for the moment.

It’s so interesting that the writer of Proverbs places desire and evil in juxtaposition like he does in this passage. All of us know that moment of wonder, of excitement when we finally get that thing we’ve so desired. I think about Christmas as a child. Our parents always let us choose one “big” gift which would be left unwrapped on the fireplace hearth by “Santa.” That gift was the one thing we really wanted that year. Of course, because we were rather poor, our “big” gifts wouldn’t compare to what children often get these days, but to my sister and I, the gifts were unparalleled. I still remember one, a certain baby day (it was the last doll I would receive as a child). I loved that doll for many years and what a joy it was to find it sitting on the hearth under my stocking.

“A desire realized is sweet to the soul.” There is an almost physical response when we finally get that thing, achieve that goal. As Christians, however, the focus of our desires needs to change. Our desire should be toward God, not toward things of this world which have such a fleeting value.

The problem with desires of this world is that the joy in achieving them fades, often very quickly. The object of our desire ages, fades, even disappears. (To this day, I have no idea what happened to that “special” doll.) And so, the writer of this passage couples desire with evil. If we, as Christians, desire evil then we won’t want to turn away from it. We want what we want when we want it. We are reluctant to even consider the possibility that we should release that desire. Yes, even when what we want is evil. And refusing to turn away from evil makes us fools.

Yup! That’s the crux of it.

The psalmist also wrote about this topic: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4 NRSV). This verse has often been used wrongly, to say that God wants us to have the lusts of our flesh, the earthly desires of our heart. Wrong. God wants us to want HIM above all other things. And when our delight, our desire, is in Him, then He gives us that desire by giving us Himself in the form of His Spirit. “From there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29).

When we are fools, our desires turn to things of the flesh, seeking the temporary high that we get from having things of this world (possessions, fame, power, money, control). When we are wise, our desires turn toward things of the Spirit, seeking God and the wisdom that comes from obedience to Him. We need to have enough courage and see ourselves for who we truly are. Are we fools or are we brave enough to trust the Lord and become wise?

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 13:7

Some pretend to be rich, yet have nothing;
others pretend to be poor, yet have great wealth. NRSV

All of us are prejudiced. Even those of us who pride ourselves on our open-mindedness are prejudice. That is to say, there are people we’d rather not be around. And we usually label them somehow so as to make them different than us and then we separate ourselves. Even if the ones we choose to ignore are the people we consider to be closed-minded and biased. (That’s always amazed me, that the people who consider themselves to be tolerant are usually not tolerant of people who they think are not tolerant.)

Proverbs talks about those who are rich yet pretend to be poor and those who are poor and pretend to be rich. For me, the idea is the pretense. Why do we pretend? (And we all do at one time or another.) We pretend in order to align ourselves with a certain group with whom we feel we can’t claim true membership. “Oh, I’m really that way!” And yet, we feel that we might be rejected. So we fudge (a soft way of describing a lie.)

In America, many of us are pretenders to wealth because we live in so much debt. To be honest, perhaps our very country is the same way. We live outside our means and we justify it by saying, “Well, my kids really need those things” or “My family can’t do without that.” But it’s a pretense because we really can’t pay for it.

On the other hand, there are those of us who have money and yet refuse to share it. We are saving for our retirement or for that big purchase or for a rainy day . . . while down the street another Christian family is living in dire need. And we ignore them.

Matthew Henry has a wonderful take on this verse:

“The world is a great cheat, not only the things of the world, but the men of the world. All men are liars. Here is an instance in two sore evils under the sun:- 1. Some that are really poor would be thought to be rich and are thought to be so; they trade and spend as if they were rich, make a great bustle and a great show as if they had hidden treasures, when perhaps, if all their debts were paid, they are not worth a groat. . . . Those that thus live above what they have choose to be subject to their own pride rather than to God’s providence, and it will end accordingly. 2. Some that are really rich would be thought to be poor, and are thought to be so, because they sordidly and meanly live below what God has given them, and choose rather to bury it than to use it, Eccl. 6:1, 2. In this there is an ingratitude to God, injustice to the family and neighbourhood, and uncharitableness to the poor.”

The heart of the true believer is generous because at the heart of generosity is the belief that God will always provide for us. Do we believe that? Paul talks about the Macedonian churches who lived in great poverty and yet begged to be allowed to give to the believers in Jerusalem:

“We want you to know, brothers and sisters,about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means” (2 Corinthians 8:1 NRSV).

And if we are truly generous with our money, then we will also be generous with our friendship. We will not longer restrict it to people whom we think deserve it. We will welcome both the poor and the rich into our churches, into our homes, and into our lives. We won’t choose with whom we will be friends (and with whom we will not be friends), but rather will see every opportunity as one to share the love of God and this good news of salvation with that person. After all, isn’t that what being a Christian is really all about?

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 13:2-3

“From the fruit of their words good persons eat good things,
but the desire of the treacherous is for wrongdoing.
Those who guard their mouths preserve their lives;
those who open wide their lips come to ruin.” NRSV

“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23a NRSV)

Being a Christian isn’t something that happens by magic. What I mean by this is that when we are born again, we don’t just magically <> lose all our faults and become instantly “good.” In fact, choosing between whether or not we sin or we obey God isn’t something that our Father imposes upon us. He asks us to obey and then tells us what that obeying looks like. As Christians, we are taught–by our mentors, by our pastors, and by the Holy Spirit Himself–what our behavior and choices should be. And then, it’s up to us to make those choices . . . or to choose other ways, sinful ways.

I think that, deep inside, we do believe that if we are not exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit that it’s somehow the Spirit’s fault and not ours. That He has somehow decided not to exhibit that fruit within us at this time, but might later on. (I can hear some of you gasping now! “That’s not true. I can’t imagine the Spirit not exhibiting the fruit.” And yet, if we are honest, that’s how we live.) The fact is that either the fruit is ours to choose or for some reason the Spirit is withholding it from us. And if it is ours to choose (which scripture is clear is the truth), then it is we who choose whether or not to exhibit it. In other words, the power to be loving, to be joyful, to be at peace, to be patient, to be kind is already within us living within the Spirit Who lives within us. We merely need to choose to access it, to allow it to live through our actions and choices.

All this is to say that, as believers, we need to choose to be self-controlled, to be self-disciplined. What does it mean to be self-controlled, to be self-disciplined? It means that, instead of waiting for some outside force to control us (“God’s magic pill”), we choose to control, to discipline ourselves. We choose to learn to monitor our own actions and to say “no” to ourselves.

We don’t do that very well.

We are an extremely self-indulgent people. If it is within our power to say “yes” to ourselves, we do it. Our society is permeated with the idea that we deserve it, that we should reward ourselves, that we should take time out for ourselves. And this idea has entrenched itself even within the teachings of the Church. Time for ourselves, time to get away, time to reward ourselves.

Reward ourselves for what? There’s nothing in scripture that talks about rewarding ourselves. Our reward is the dear presence of the Spirit Himself in our lives; our reward is the promise of heaven. Other than that, we should be focused on obedience, on service, on self-sacrifice.

So what does all of this have to do with the scripture in Proverbs? “From the fruit of their words . . . “ What are the fruit of our words? Are we self-controlled enough to speak only those things which are good for those around us? Or when we speak are we toxic? More than toxic, I think many of us try to be manipulative. “If I say this, then that person will change (and not hurt me again).” Or we speak in order to bring them as much hurt as they brought us.

What is the fruit of our words? If we choose to be obedient to the Spirit, then the fruit will be loving, peaceable, kind, gentle, and ultimately, self-controlled. But if we choose to sin, then the result will be hurtful. It will harm those around us and ultimately us.

It isn’t our place to try to change others nor to bring vengeance upon them for what they have done to us. That is the Lord’s responsibility and He does it well. Even if we don’t see them changing as we think they should change, our trust should be in the Lord and in how He is working (for He always is).

“Those who guard their mouths preserve their lives.” James, in his epistle, cautions us–over and over again–to guard our lips: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless” (James 1:26 NRSV). What we say is often far more powerful than what we do, for, contrary to the childhood saying, words do hurt. They linger in the air and they hurt, sometimes for a long time. If we are truly Christians, if we truly trust the Lord, we will limit what we say and trust God instead to change those who have hurt us.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

Proverbs 12:25-26, 28

Proverbs 12:25-26, 28

“Anxiety weighs down the human heart,
but a good word cheers it up.
The righteous gives good advice to friends,
but the way of the wicked leads astray.
In the path of righteousness there is life,
in walking its path there is no death.”

Have you ever participated in a gripe session? or a gossip session? Bad words build upon bad words, and usually we compete for who has the “baddest” of them all. There’s always a tendency, in trying to sympathize or empathize, to share our experience that was just a little worse, just a little more painful, just a little more hopeless.

Why is that? Why do we try to one up each other in how miserable life is when, as Christians, we have the ultimate hope? And how does sharing a horrible experience that we had encourage the person who is going through their own difficult experience?

The righteous give good advice. And what is good advice? Seen in contrast here is “the way of the wicked.” In other words, the opposite of “good advice” isn’t “bad advice,” but is rather sin. Good advice, then, is the word that turns our friend toward God; bad advice is what turns them into themselves, turns them to self-pity, to depression, to a sense of hopelessness.

There is never hopelessness with God!

“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 NRSV).

All things! Not just some things . . . or the things that seem good . . . or the things we can control, but all things! Our Father is working all things together for our good! If that is the case, then the advice that we give to our troubled, hurting friend is to turn to the Lord for He will make it work for our good!

Trouble, adversity, horrible circumstances . . . they all seem like they lead to death, if not physical death, then death of a dream, death of possibilities, death of hope. And yet, there is never death in the life of the believer. Even physical death–which we must face unless we are taken in the rapture–is only a doorway to heaven, to an eternity of joy with our Father. “In the path of righteousness there is life, in walking its path there is no death.” Is this what we communicate to our hurting friends?

I think that we are too taken with the Hollywood mentality that says that the problems with this life can be solved to a happily-ever-after conclusion in thirty minutes (including commercials). In fact, the problems with this life were already solved to a happily-ever-after conclusion but that solution is in heaven, not here. In other words, we should expect the circumstances in this life to be awful. This world is weighed down with sin and its effects. There is no way that a good solution can come from living here. But our Father takes these horrible circumstances, makes them work for our good, and ultimately has prepared an eternal, permanent home for us where sin can no longer have effect. The good advice that we should always give is to trust the Lord, to look to His provision, and to know that even in the darkness He is working to make provision for us.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).