Gary Gleans

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.  A...

Life is full of choices.  We make choices all day everyday about how we are going to live our lives and the path that we are going to follow.  There is a path that leads to destruction and a path that leads to great blessing.  There are wise choices and there are foolish choices.  Discernment is a key for us to be able to choose the right path, make the wise choices and find the path of blessing that God intends for us experience.  There are some characteristics that mark the wise choices and others that describe the foolish ones. WISE COMMUNICATION WITH OTHERS: All wisdom does not rest within ourselves.  We desperately need the insight that others can give us in order to make wise choices in our lives.  Isolation will usually end up causing us to falter along the way because we lack sound judgment.  The foolish will talk before he thinks but the wise will always give great consideration to his words.  Our words represent great danger as...

Strife seems to be a constant companion in most relationships today.  We see strife in our homes, schools, churches, places of works and our neighborhoods.  People just seem to have a hard time getting along with one another.  A simple explanation for this reality is that men are, by nature, sinful so selfishness comes very naturally to all of us.  When we are focused on ourselves we will do most anything to promote our own agenda and usually end up hurting the people around us in the process.  The ironic thing is that selfishness almost always leads us into misery instead of satisfaction or joy.  In order to avoid strife in our relationships and promote an abiding sense of joy we must learn to values these two qualities. RESPECT: No amount of wealth can replace a peaceful home.  When we learn to respect the people around us, no matter if we are a servant or a son, we will be given respect as well as privileges that come along with that position....

There is a way that things ought to be.  God has made this world to function in a certain way and things will always work better when we allow them to operate according to that plan.  Like on a good sports team, every member has a role to play on the team and it will always function best when each member of the team fulfills that particular role.  Things start to go downhill very quickly when one person stops doing his job in order to compete with the job that has been given to someone else.  All will work out better when we recognize our role and do it to the very best of our ability as intended by God. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD: We must all recognize that God is the sovereign of the universe.  He is in control of everything and everything exists for His glory and according to His purpose.  We can and should make plans but must be aware of the fact that God is the one who determines if and how those plans will come about.  We all think that our way ...

There are certain things that we must do if we want to demonstrate wisdom in our lives.  There are also other things that we must work to avoid doing.  Wisdom will always have an impact on the way that we think, how we respond to situations in life and especially what our actions will be.  God cares very deeply about all of these things and has given us very valuable instructions as to how we can walk in wisdom. WATCH OUR LANGUAGE: Our words provide a very good window into our hearts.  We can see clearly what is in a man’s heart by what comes out of his mouth.  Our language or words have a great impact on those who are around us and will demonstrate whether or not we are wise.  If we are wise we will answer with soft words instead of harsh words.  When someone is burning with anger we can use our words to throw a bucket of water on the situation or to throw a bucket of gasoline on the fire of anger.  Wise men will use language that is full of...

Balance is one of the most important and most difficult virtues to achieve in our lives.  We tend to swing from one extreme to another in our lives and have a hard time coming to balance and looking at things from a reasonable perspective.  The problem is that we all consider our point of view to be the reasonable one so we can easily push that out to an extreme because we are all convinced that we are correct.  In the previous chapters we have looked at a contrast between wisdom and wickedness.  This chapter draws up a contrast between wisdom and foolishness.  Like all of these chapters, it is very difficult to find any sort of an outline that is complete, but there are a couple of repetitive themes that appear so we will use them as our focal point. HOW TO LIVE IN PRUDENCE: Prudence is simply another word for wisdom.  Wisdom is contrasted to both wickedness and foolishness in Proverbs.  This chapter seems to emphasize the area of foolishness....

Hope is one of the most precious gifts that we can have.  Hope lives in the present with an eye on the future that anticipates goodness from the hand of God.  When we lose hope we take a defeatist attitude towards the future that makes us miserable in the present.  Not everyone who has hope sees that hope fulfilled but even in the case of false hope the person tends to be happier in the present than he who has no hope.  I guess false hope is better than no hope in that sense.  The danger of false hope is that it can satisfy us to the point that we do not seek for true hope. The hopeless continue to search and may eventually find true hope.  The difference between true and false hope is the source of hope.  False hope springs from one’s own imagination or optimism while true hope springs from the secure source of the Word of God.  God’s wisdom should fill our hearts with true hope no matter what our current circumstances might be. HOPE OF RICH...