My son, if you will receive my words
And treasure my commandments within you,
Make your ear attentive to wisdom,
incline your heart to understanding;
For if you cry for discernment,
lift your voice for understanding;
If you seek her as silver
and search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will discern the fear of the Lord
and discover the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:1-5, NASB)
Everyone has their favorite shot in golf, but is it the one you practice most?
Could be you like hitting the approach shot from 150 yards out, so you practice hitting your irons a lot. Or the pitch shot from the fairway when you are only 20-30 yards off the green and you need to roll the ball up to the pin. I have watched people arrive at the range with only their driver and hit it over and over and over again. Not exactly my cup of tea. For me, it is the flop shot: five to 30 yards off the green with a sand trap between the pin and me, needing to pop the ball high into the air and land it softly as close to the pin as possible with very little roll. Great risk but great reward. When done well, it can save par, turn a bad round into a good one, grab the momentum in match play, lift my spirits, and once more fool me into thinking, “I’ve got this. I can play this game.” I practice it a lot, reviewing the mechanics in the belief that they will become routine and will take some of the fright out of having to hit it during a round. Yes, it is my favorite shot, but it still scares me when I have to hit it, because it requires a tremendous amount of focus… and faith.
With all the demands on us during the holidays, this time of the year can be a tough time to dig deeply into God’s Word.So it is with today’s opening passage. The words communicate that if we want to begin to understand what life is all about (why we are here, how we are to live, what God is doing, why things happen the way they do, etc.), then we need to concentrate and focus our efforts on doing so. The writer of these proverbs, presumably Solomon, does not say this once. He says it several times from eight different angles. It is an aggressive concentration—receive, treasure, make your ear attentive, incline your heart, cry for, lift your voice for, seek her and search for—then, and only then, will we discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.
In short, God is not going to reveal his truths to casual observers. And, according to Hebrews 4:2, if we do not combine what we read with faith, it does us no good: “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”
With all the demands on us during the holidays, this time of the year can be a tough time to dig deeply into God’s Word. Today, though, let me encourage you to take a moment—could be a minute, could be 30—to focus on God himself and thank him for anything that pops into your mind. Read a psalm, a proverb, or a short passage. Concentrate on him. He likes it when we do that, and it will change your day.
—
Bob Kuecker
December 19, 2018
Copyright 2018 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.