LOVE FIRST

 

(My Child), if you accept my words and store up my commands with in you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying you heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and it you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, THEN you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

For God gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

He holds the victory in store for the uptight, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of this faithful ones.  THEN you will understand what is right and just and fair – every good path.

For wisdom will enter you heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.  Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.

Wisdom will save you from the ways of (the wicked), from (those) whose words are perverse, who leave the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their way.  Proverbs 2:1-15

From whom will we be protected?  The devil, you say?  Well yes, we are protected from Satan and his minions by the very presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  We cannot be controlled by them, only tempted, because “greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.”  God will forever win that one.  So who are we being protected from?  Evil people:  People who have our very worst interests at heart. People who would have us rejoin them on the “other side.”  People who lie to us to our faces and smile while doing it.

So what do they look like?  We are told that they look like us.  Satan appears as a shinning light, a smiling face, a warm hand reaching out, a stranger, a neighbor, a store clerk, a movie star, a preacher, a teacher, a news caster, even a child.  We will not necessarily recognize them on sight, though we often think we do.  We have a serious tendency to “type cast” evil as looking disrespectful and even dark and ugly.  Not so, says the Bible, evil looks beautiful.  That is why it is so tempting.

Ah, but all those people who get arrested are so obviously evil looking in their mug shots.  How many really bad pictures have we seen of ourselves that cause us to carefully pick just the right one for face book?  How many driver’s license or passport pictures would put us in jail if that is what was used to judge us?  I don’t know about you, but the last time we had directory pictures taken for church, the first three shots scared me to death!  The one you see now is the fourth one, taken after I totally dismissed the other three.  :)

I remember one sweet girl who used to be a regular customer where I was working.  Many would have deemed her evil because of the way she dressed and presented herself.  She was Goth, whatever that is. She had the black hair, the black lipstick and eye shadow, and the black clothes and lots of piercings.  She seldom smiled because smiles just aren’t Goth.  But she was always polite and patient.  And she came very close to smiling several times.  Then one day she looked different.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew something had changed.  I told her she was looking especially nice that day… and she broke out in a huge smile and said, “I am on my way to the first day of my first job.”  What a change from the sulky young teen to the now employed young lady.  My heart soared for her.

No, we can’t tell by just looking.  But we can tell by listening and observing through the eyes of wisdom that God uses to protect us when we are so familiar with the Word of God, that evil cannot fool us.  We recognize evil when we HEAR IT, or read it, or are exposed to it in action and deed.  That is what the wisdom of God does for us when we study and fill our minds with it and let it penetrate our hearts.  Just sayin’… LOVE FIRST, ask questions later

This started as a personal exercise in hearing the Word.  I hope God has blessed you, too. May we keep our eye out for true evil and resist it, but may we also love unconditionally, without jumping to conclusions about what we see.