Reading your Bible for today December 13

December 13: Proverbs 11:23

KJV Key Verse: Proverbs 11:23
23 The desire of the righteous is only good: but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.

Devotion:

This may sound like quite different scenarios, but think about it for a bit. When you get mad with someone or something, you expect bad things to happen. You expect things to go wrong. You expect there to be some sort of fight, not necessarily between two people, but between two situations. And yet when you are feeling good, you want good things to happen. You probably even go out of your way to make sure that good comes from certain situations.

So why do we find phrases that are just common sense in the Bible? Why are they not teaching us about God? The answer is they are. When we see the physical evidence of what God is like (when Jesus came to us) we see the first part of our phrase. We see that He did everything for the good of mankind. His desire was only for good. His desire was to please His Father. His desire was to Glorify God. The best way He could do that was to make sure that everything happened for the good!

When we see the physical evidence of what man is like (we don't just have to look in the Bible, but anywhere) we see the second part of our phrase. We expect bad things to happen in our lives. We expect arguments. We expect fights. We expect wars. We expect evil. That is the life we are brought up in. As young children we are often not aware of the evil that is all around us, but as we grow, we become more apparent of that evil. The more aware we are of it, the more we expect it to play some part in our lives. We become slaves to the evil.

The only way out of this pit is to make sure we have God actively in our lives and we aim follow His desire, His will, His expectations and not our own. Our minds are full of the trappings of evil. There are times when we just cannot seem to make any sense of things and fall into its trap. But if we were to truly listen to The Holy Spirit, we would be able to avoid it in our lives and avoid the arguments we jump into!

Points to Ponder:
Do you like fighting?

Does any good come out of it?