Proverbs 19:1-29

Every person wants to be happy.  We go to great lengths and spare no expense to amuse ourselves and find comfort in hopes that these things will make us happy.  However, the final result is far from what we had hoped.  Frivolity and luxury do not make us happy; instead, they make us feel guilty and greedy.  In our minds it seems that selfishness would be the best way to find satisfaction for ourselves but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Self-promotion always leads to strife and conflict with other people.  The true source of peace and joy is found in sacrificial service to others and devotion to God.  Proverbs is written to help us live our lives well, if we are going to do that we must pursue joy in the way that God intended.

THE WAY WE USE OUR RESOURCES: All of us enjoy having abundant resources and it is our natural tendency to believe that having more of them will bring us more happiness.  This, however, is not the case.  Anytime we make wealth a priority in our lives it only promotes dissatisfaction, frustration and anxiety.  The amount of money we possess has nothing to do with the amount of joy we experience.  We must learn to look at and use our resources according to God’s perspective if we want to experience joy in our lives.  Solomon teaches us that integrity and wisdom are much more important that wealth.  When we use dishonesty to gain wealth we will only accumulate sorrow and when our desire for wealth is greater than our desire for wisdom we will find ourselves on the path to ruin.  We must learn to use our resources with great generosity to help others and not just promote ourselves.  However, it is important to understand the difference between generosity and bribery.  We must not think that we can buy friendship.  Our goal must be to use our resources with wisdom to help meet the needs of others without thinking that we can buy love or joy.  


THE WAY WE VIEW OUR RELATIONSHIPS: We are relational beings so a great portion of our satisfaction in live comes from the way we relate with God and one another.  Anger will destroy relationships so a wise person will exercise patience and forgiveness.  We are all under authority, so how we relate with those God has placed over us will determine a great deal about how we live our lives.  We are all born into a family so our relationships with our children and spouse will either contribute to or take away from our fulfillment in life.  Diligence in our service to one another, obedience to our authority and generosity towards the poor is how God would have us relate with one another.  Our children will lose all hope of being able to live well if we do not discipline them.  They will become angry, unteachable and experience great anguish throughout their lives.  The most important relationship we have is with the Lord.  We will find great joy in recognizing His sovereign rule in our lives, abiding in and sharing His love and living in reverent fear of Him.  When we abandon our relationship with God we will find ourselves being lazy, foolish and violent.  God wants us to respect and learn from those He has placed over us so that we can live at peace with those around us which will produce great joy within us.

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