Proverbs 6:14 with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord;
I think I was cleaning around the house, Wendy was at work. She was working as a nurse and often had night shifts. Somehow I knocked over a small glass ornament, it was a swan. It was something Wendy had brought with her when we got married. Anyway, now it was broken. I looked at it closely to see if it might be possible to glue it back together, but the damage was too great and the place where it was broken was the thinnest part of the neck.
I put it out in the bin and decided not to mention it to Wendy as my clumsiness was sometimes a source of concern for me.
Days turned into weeks and the memory of the dying swam faded away. I thought that I had gotten away with it. Until one fateful Saturday afternoon, when I heard the words I had been dreading.
“Hey Allan, have you seen that swan we have, its the last thing I have from my Granny, and I hope nothing has happened to it”.
Oh, the panic that gripped my heart. How could I do this to my wife, and worse I had thrown it out and it was long gone. I had not remembered its true value.
With a suitable look of concern on my face, I offered to help look for it, asking when Wendy had last seen it. [I know, right! – but hey, don’t judge me!].
So it was last seen in the bedroom, and I casually mentioned, while looking under the bed for a swan that I knew was most likely a hundred miles away by now, that Rachel, our youngest daughter had been playing in the room a lot. Rachel was around three or four years old so could not vouch for herself.
Dear reader – I know what you are thinking right now – oh the shame!
After three days of no sleep and inner turmoil, I recognised I need to come clean. Which I did. Wendy laughed at me as I told her how I had not slept for three nights now.
Oh, the damage we do to our hearts when we wander from God’s best for us. The lesson, that to be fair I already knew well, was re-learned.
KNOWLEDGE
So now we have moved from the last verse, where the signs were all outwards, the eyes, the feet, and the hand, to here where we see the inward condition that creates these outward signs.
The perverted heart.
The word “perverted” has a tone of confusion and diversion about it. This heart has continually chosen wrongly, and is in place of confusion, easily led astray and corrupted. Just in the way that in the very beginning the serpent led Eve astray [Gen 3;1 – Now the serpent was more CRAFTY than any other…..].
Well, we know the story, the fall of creation.
It’s the same for us today. For all, we are creating with our lives. It will rise or fall on the condition of our hearts.
We can reverse engineer our thinking here, asking what is our life sowing? Into our family, into ourselves, into our occupation. Etc.
It brings us back to Proverbs 4:23 again and again.
UNDERSTANDING
Let’s pick one word from this verse to look closer at and see if that can help us gain a deeper insight into how God would love us to live?
“Continually” in Hebrew is pronounced as ” ‘et”, and this word appears 283 times in the Old Testament. In the ESV it is translated into English words such as evening; time; season; afternoon; age; when; and, whenever.
In this verse fourteen, we see the idea of “continually” or at least for a lengthy season.
WISDOM – what current thinking, if challenged, would produce growth?
STRENGTHS THOUGHT: Intellection, respectful analytical thinking sown in peace and hope lifts others out of their struggles. True debate build true relationships. Invitations to understanding your thinking processes builds trust and brings stability.
Allan’s Unauthorised Version – [with confusion at the seat of all thoughts and emotions, the plans and plots are wicked for season after season, thrusting out dissensions, quarrels, and strife.]
PRAYER: Father, thank you for today. Help me to have order and peace in my inner man today, to know your guidance and your ways. Thank you!
I so love feedback – please do scroll down and use a few moments to encourage me?