Reading your Bible for Today January 16

January 16: Proverbs 18:3-5

KJV Key Verse: Proverbs 18:4
4 The words of a man's mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook.

Devotion:
A while ago in church our Pastor said something which scared me but made total sense “many people perceive Christians as being judgemental!” There is a fine line between being judgemental and keeping our lives clean. God would have us to go out into all the world to take the gospel, but He knows we are weak and He wants us to be protected from certain things in our lives. One of those things is people who can only be described as being wicked. I am talking about people who flout the law at every opportunity, jeer at anything serious or grave and have no set goals in their lives.

God does not say we should show them up and put them down! He simply wants us to be protected from them. He wants us to be able to get on with our own lives without being hampered by such wickedness. When we allow wickedness into our lives, we are also allowing contempt and with that comes deep shame followed by being told off by all sorts of people. We, by ourselves, are not able to withstand wickedness in our lives; we are drawn in by the temptations and turn off the warning bells screaming to us saying that things are wrong...

On the other hand, the words from a wise person’s mouth allow us to strengthen ourselves and avoid such inner conflict in our lives. It is amazing the beauty and splendour we can find in the shallow water near coral reefs, but in the deep waters of the oceans we find even more amazing things which we hardly get to hear about. Coral reefs can be destroyed when the water subsides. Deep waters will never see the air, nor be polluted by things above the water level. We need to be in safe deep waters.

We need to be more like Jesus and hate the sin and not the sinner! We know how easily we are tempted, so why should we condemn anyone else for being tempted by those sins? They need help the same as we do. But it does not mean that we need to let them tempt us in our lives.

Points to Ponder:
Do you follow those around you into things or ways you know are wrong?

God wants to strengthen us. We need to listen.