Wisdom's Benefits Package

What's the difference between having a minimum wage job and having a successful career? While both can help you handle your financial responsibilities; only one of these offers benefits package that secures both your present and your future. While the job is great, the career offers protection for you and your loved ones through insurance and opportunities to is well worth the sacrifice (education) that it took to secure it.

What's the difference between a believer who has accepted Christ as Savior and a believer who has made Christ Lord by utilizing the wisdom He freely gives (James 1:5)? While both have escaped the flames of eternal seperation from God; only one of these believers is granted with a benefits package that secures both their future and their present.

Proverbs 2:1-22 lists all that is offered in the BENEFITS PACKAGE:

*Vision/Eye Insurance: "He promises to ENHANCE our perception of our life, ourself, our situations and others. We can see ourselves from His viewpoint." Imagine WHO we will become when we stop seeing ourselves based on our faults.

*General Coverage: "He promises to keep us from paths that will destroy us. To protect us from relationships that will deter us." We are prone to ANYTHING so don't ever think "I won't do that". Our flesh by default wants to offend God in every way. His wisdom keeps us sane.

*Medical Coverage: "He promises to change our thinking by shaping our thoughts."

*Life Insurange: "He promises to protect our emotions and evil desires"

*Personal Days/Vacations: "He promises to guide my responses to situations and challenges"

All this just for opening ourselves up to HIS wisdom rather than ignoring it, choosing to rely on our own understanding,and/or accepting the world's viewpoint. Sounds like winner!

Lingering Fragrance

Have you ever been hugged (notice I didn't say that YOU hugged) by an older woman at your church? You know how they go to grabbing you and squeezing you tight as they make that "i'm so proud of you" sound in your ear and hug you longer than you expected? Every church has 'em and if you've stayed around long enough to get to know just one of those ladies, you know EXACTLY who i'm talking about. You ever been attacked (notice I didn't say "taken a whiff") by their strong fragrance of perfume? That one fragrance that seems to arrest your attention and cause you to think they must be working as a model for their fragrance counter at Macy's? Ever notice how that fragrance tends to hang around long after the fellowship has ended? Well I was being discipled back in college by a young woman who would weekly talk about this project she was believing God for. It was called the "Faith House". The vision she claimed God had given her was that she would rent or buy this house and have the ladies she mentored and/or other women who went to my school live in it at a reduced cost so that she could pour into their lives on a more consistent basis and thus maximize her singleness. Well she was, at the time, 29 y/o and I thought to myself, "This lady is delusional if she thinks someone is going to just GIVE her a house and by the way, why isn't she more focused on getting married and starting a family b/c I know that's what she desires?" Well a year later, someone in fact, DID just GIVE her a house (totally paid off) and I saw the fruit of our weekly prayers, answered! And for the next couple of years women were blessed to live at an incredible rate and their lives were changed due to it. Not only that, but a year after graduating (when she was about 32y/o) a godly man FOUND HER serving faithfully in his church back in Houston, and married her. Her faith, which was modeled to me, on a consistent basis, lingered in my life like that strong fragrance. It arrested me while in her presence, during our weekly discipleship time and even when I would depart after our time was over and was left to my thoughts back at my apartment. But now, some 10 years later, that strong fragrance of faith still lingeres in my mind and heart and challenges me to trust the God who has no boundaries! 2 Corinthians 2:14 encourages us to be this "sweet fragrance of the knowledge of Him in EVERY PLACE, as He leads us in triumph in Christ".