"All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart." Proverbs 21:2
From time to time, I need to read Proverbs. I never have to read very long before God reveals something to my spirit that is good for me to know.
My friend from Cameroon, Donald, gave me a desktop Proverbs calendar that gives me a choice verse of wisdom each day. Today’s verse is Proverbs 21:2 "All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart." Wow! Isn’t that true. I can be so easily convinced in my own mind. I mean totally sure of what I think, no other way to see it. And then, find out I am completely wrong. Not easy to face and even difficult to admit sometimes. But, that is the way we human beings are. We believe and think what seems right to us; and we are confident, convinced, and convicted that we are accurate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and then much to our chagrin we can discover that somehow we misunderstood, or had bad information, or just misread the situation. We can even defend our wrongness after the fact, blame our mistakenness on someone else, back pedal, or explain away our errors. Why is that? What is up with us? How do we put ourselves in such embarrassing positions? Why do we do it again and again? As the proverbs says, “but God weighs the heart.“ What does He see when He does that? Pretty simple actually, but again, so hard to admit. At the heart of almost all of our issues... unforgiveness, pettiness, control and self-righteousness; and one real problem...PRIDE.
Nobody wants to admit it. Everybody has it or its vicious twin...FALSE HUMILITY. We are funny beings, us humans. We want to say that we are so honest, real and forthcoming and transparent but when push comes to shove, we can’t admit that we lost our keys or left the refrigerator door open or forgot to call. We find it hard to admit human error much less character faults. But, God knows us and how we are. One of my favorite little books from 40 years ago "To Believe in God” by Joseph Pintauro says, "to believe in God is to know that He sees you through and through and loves you still and all." That helps me. I mess up. I forget, I get distracted, I don’t follow through, and I fail my responsibilities. God knows I like to cover that up, deny that, try to sugarcoat that, and avoid admitting that. Just like Solomon reminds us in this Proverb “All a man’s ways seem right to him". Wow! How true about ones ways and how right we are, all the time. I have been known to say, "As often as I am right, I never grow tired of it.” Then on the other hand, equally as true, I am so glad that my gracious, merciful, forgiving God weighs my heart and love me anyway. I hope this touches somebody today to be more honest with themselves and more understanding of others.
Humanly yours,
Pastor Fred
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It reminds me of a repeated wrong in my own mind throughout the entire year of 2011. I misunderstood and misread a particular situation over and over and over again last year, so much so that when I discovered me err it was a devastating blow, but not just to my hopes - also to my inflated ego. (Ouch, what a painful admission!) I was so convinced that I had God's plan pegged, but was so wrong all along. It hurt. A lot. And yet, even under the crushing blows of mistaken purpose and plan, He was so sweet and gentle with me. How generous of Him considering the abundant overflow of pride involved on my part. Interestingly, even as I write this - I've quietly been asking God in my mind's side conversation - "God, was it really pride I had?" Oh, geez, I exhaust myself sometimes, so thank You Father in Heaven that you're never exhausted and can handle my mind's confusions.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Pastor Fred, for illuminating such a prevalent issue among us all.. May I seek out His humility more and more as I remember to ask Him to search my heart for impurities.