Proverbs 27
I would offer that the word love is not a verb, it is a noun. It is not a thing you do. It is the light that you are made of and what you were created to be.
Dealing With Feelings
1 Don’t brag about tomorrow, since you don’t know what the day will bring.
2 Let someone else praise you, not your own mouth- a stranger, not your own lips.
3 A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but the resentment caused by a fool is even heavier.
4 Anger is cruel, and wrath is like a flood, but jealousy is even more dangerous.
5 An open rebuke is better than hidden love!
6 Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.
7 A person who is full refuses honey, but even bitter food tastes sweet to the hungry.
8 A person who strays from home is like a bird that strays from its nest.
9 The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.
10 Never abandon a friend- either yours or your father’s. When disaster strikes, you won’t have to ask your brother for assistance. It’s better to go to a neighbor than to a brother who lives far away.
11 Be wise, my child, and make my heart glad. Then I will be able to answer my critics.
12 A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.
13 Get security from someone who guarantees a stranger’s debt. Get a deposit if he does it for foreigners.
14 A loud and cheerful greeting early in the morning will be taken as a curse!
15 A quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping on a rainy day. 16 Stopping her complaints is like trying to stop the wind or trying to hold something with greased hands.
17 As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
18 As workers who tend a fig tree are allowed to eat the fruit, so workers who protect their employer’s interests will be rewarded.
19 As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.
20 Just as Death and Destruction are never satisfied, so human desire is never satisfied.
21 Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a person is tested by being praised.
22 You cannot separate fools from their foolishness, even though you grind them like grain with mortar and pestle.
23 Know the state of your flocks, and put your heart into caring for your herds, 24 for riches don’t last forever, and the crown might not be passed to the next generation.
25 After the hay is harvested and the new crop appears and the mountain grasses are gathered in, 26 your sheep will provide wool for clothing, and your goats will provide the price of a field. 27 And you will have enough goats’ milk for yourself, your family, and your servant girls. (NLT)
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insights
Proverbs 27:4
Dealing with feelings is learned behavior. Learning is a process. This ballad walks us through the songwriters process of dealing with feelings in a very intimate way.
Proverbs 27:19
Dealing with feelings must be done on both a physical and spiritual level. Many thanks to Angie Reeves, for allowing me to quote from her sermon, Spiritual Anatomy 101
Our spiritual bodies consist of our eyes, the windows of the spirit, our tongue, which speaks the truth of who we are and what we believe, our hearts, where our truth, emotion, and passion reside, and our mind, which is the processing center of our spiritual bodies.
God’s heart speaks directly to our hearts and encourages us to action, but sometimes our hearts can be hard, and we can miss what God is telling us. Dealing with feelings that cause us to question if God is listening can close our hearts to hearing Him.
The mind receives input from the spiritual eyes and sends it to the heart to speak to God about what we feel about what we have seen, and then the heart hears from God, how God feels about the information. The heart then sends its feelings to the mind, for the body to decide what to do. The mind formulates a plan while listening to the heart, that is listening to God.
This only works correctly if we feed the mind good and true information, just as our physical bodies work better when we feed them good and nutritious food.
“Fill your minds and meditate on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, and gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard, and saw, and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into His most excellent harmonies.” Philippians 4:8, The Message Bible
Proverbs 27:21
Some of us are dealing with feelings of inadequacy; others quite the opposite. Some people are just full of themselves. It is when they are praised that their true colors shine forth as they toot their own horn and strive to make themselves the center of attention for as long as possible.
The problem with this kind of attitude is that it takes their focus off of the One responsible for the gifts and talents that made their praise worthy accomplishment possible in the first place.
When we accomplish great things, we must remember to give God, from whom all good things come, the glory.
lynnibug
