Give careful thought
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
If you have your Bibles please turn to
Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.
Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Let your eyes look straight ahead;
fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
This morning as we have the kid’s service upfront I wanted to take some time to talk about why the words we say matter so much. It matters what we say to other people but also equally important it matters what we say to ourselves as well. So in order to do that we are going to go to the book Proverbs. Most of proverbs was written by King Solomon but some of it was written by other people.
Who knows who King Solomon was ? Let us look at what he prayed to God for
Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
Solomon prayed for wisdom and the Lord gave him wisdom. He was considered one of the smartest people to ever live. So he gave us the book of Proverbs so that we can still learn from him today.
Proverbs was used by parents and teachers to that they could teach younger people and help you understand how to live a Godly life.
So the first thing we need to look at is guarding our heart.
Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
While it is our brain that does all the thinking, it is our heart that does all the acting. For example, how many of you guys have been angry?
Where you thinking very clearly when you are angry? Or did you just act, maybe lose your temper? This is why it is important to always guard our hearts because when the heart takes over we act. We do not always think things through. We need to be careful the kinds of activities we take part in or what we watch on our screens.
If you watch videos are the internet , are all of them good for us to watch? No of course not there is some content out there that we need to stay away from because it can mess with our hearts, it can lead us down a path that we do not want to be and away from God.
Now lets look at how we should talk
Proverbs 4:24 (NIV)
Keep your mouth free of perversity;
keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
This is very important. Words have meaning and I know that doesn’t sound very profound. But maybe you have parents who tell you not to say certain words right? Words that are not nice to each other.
But before we get to other people, how should we talk to ourselves? Like for example do you ever think that you are not good enough or maybe you aren’t smart enough? Would you ever tell someone else that? Maybe we tell ourselves that though right?
But what are the words that God uses for us? What does God say about us? He loves us right, He gave us Jesus right? He knows all about you and loves you. Not only that but He has made you for something in your life like we talked about last month.
So when we use bad words to talk about ourselves that is not coming from God. We need to have confidence in ourselves and in God. We shouldn’t call each ourselves anything other than children of God. We need to remind ourselves all the time that God loves and He loves us so much that He sent Jesus to save us.
So what about how we talk to other people? Do you think that matters? Does it matter what we say to other people ?
Of course it matters, especially if we are calling someone a bad name, what do you think that does to your own heart and the other person’s heart? We have to be very careful with the words we use and that is going to be different than what you hear out in the world. People do not think before they speak when they should definitely be thinking before they speak.
So let’s look at the next two proverbs
Proverbs 4:25–26 (NIV)
Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.
Even when you are a kid, there are many paths in life. So you need to give careful thought to the path you are on. So for example I know a lot of you play sports, is it ever ok to cheat in sports?
What about if the other team is cheating?
No it is never ok to cheat no matter what you are doing in life. Who knows what integrity means?
It means doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Because here is a secret that I want you to remember. This is why King Solomon tells us that we need to keep our eyes in front of us and give careful thought to our paths. When you start doing the wrong thing, it becomes easier and easier to do the wrong thing the next time. This is why God sent us to the Holy Spirit so that we can have help with knowing what the right thing to do is.
Let’s see what Jesus says about our path
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Jesus says here that gate is small and narrow is the road that leads to life. What He is saying is that the path of a Godly life is hard and will require to pay close attention to what you are doing. Jesus is saying the same thing we just talked about it is easy to bad choices but then it is difficult to move back to the Godly path. So we need to always have Jesus in front of us so that we can stay on the path with Him.
So as we close, I have one more lesson. We need to be careful who we listen to. What are some good examples of people we should listen to when we need help?
