Proverbs 23:19
Listen, my son, and be wise, and direct your heart in The Way.
Listen. Pay attention. Consider what I am saying that you may comprehend exactly the words which I speak. Hear what I have to say, think on these things which I have said, and then act on what you have heard.
Be wise. Be men and women of God, obedient to His Wisdom, as were the three young Hebrew men who were captured in Daniel 1:17, 20. Be men and women of honor: don't just hear The Voice of God speak, but be obedient and do what He says to do.
Listen. His Voice is not always a thunderclap. He is the still small voice that whispers to your hearts. He is the calm in the storm. He is the gentle curvature of wing that encircles and comforts.
Be wise. Be wise in the ways of The Lord that you may live according to the wisdom of The Word. Make wise choices. Put God first: honor Him with our lives: choose what is right and do that Every Single Time.
Listen. Hear the words of my instructions as student to student, disciple to disciple. Take in the knowledge which I have gleaned from my walk with The Lord and what I have learned throughout my years.
In The New Testament, The Lord directs our attention to the flower-covered fields: Consider the lilies. What is there to consider in lilies? In Matthew and Luke the lily blooms for a day and is then gone. Yet God chooses to clothes them in beauty.
Consider this: In Hosea 14:5, Israel is compared to a lily whose growth comes from the dew. We need God to be the dew for us, too. We need Him to cause us to grow in the way He would have us to grow.
'I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like the lily and take root like the cedars of Lebanon.'
Without God as our Instructor, our Teacher, our God, we will get nowhere. Our days will be lived in futility. Our hearts will have gleaned nothing from The Word of God because we chose not to consider what He had to say.
Direct your hearts. Lead your hearts. Don't let your heart dictate your actions. Following your hearts is a fool's game. The heart is deceitful and cannot be trusted to make wise choices on its own. We need to guard our hearts-Proverbs 4:23.
Learn to rein in your hearts. We need to train our hearts in The Ways of The Lord. And that is only accomplished when we Listen to His instructions and Obey His directions.
Proverbs 28:26
He who trusts in himself is a fool, but one who walks in wisdom will be safe.
Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us that not only are we to trust in The Lord, but we are to do so with the understanding which He gives us and not in our own dense way, so to speak. Our minds tend to wander when left on their own. But when we are focused on the things of The Lord, the wandering becomes a thing of the past. Now we are motivated to 'stay the course'; to 'run with endurance the race set before us'.
We have made the decision to put God first in everything we do, and when a conscious decision to follow The Lord Jesus Christ is made, then He takes up residence in our hearts, and our hearts no longer wander. We are a 'new creation' and our new roots are settled in The Word of God.
Now God makes our paths straight. Does this mean that our lives are comfy now? Not hardly. When we put God first, He lays out the way we should go, whether we climb the mountain in front of us or tell it to get out of the way. Many an obstacle in The Way, has kept a person from being fully committed to Listening to and Obeying The Word of God.
It may look like a narrow path, but it is also the safest course of direction for living a life that glorifies God. I hope you remain committed to Listening, to Being Wise, to Directing your hearts in The Way. I know I am.
