Daily Devotionals
Daily Devotional: Proverbs 11:28-31
Prov 11:28-31
Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf. Whoever troubles his own household will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever wins souls is wise. If the righteous is repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner!
1 Peter 4:15-18
But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
The teaching of the Psalms and the Proverbs seems to say that if we serve God, we will have an easy life because all the bad things happen to the ungodly. This perception is not true of these books or the rest of the Bible. The fact is that David, whom God said was a man after his own heart, and the writer of most of the Psalms had more trouble in his life than you and I will ever know in ours. What we do see is that God was with him and carried him through all his trouble.
We tend to think that judgment is only for the afterlife but again this is not what the Bible teaches. God has punished the ungodly on earth all through the ages. In the Bible we often read of the explanation for these events, so we know for sure this is why they happened (such as the destruction of Sodom or the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira). There is no reason to think that God does not still do the same thing today toward the wicked, we just don’t have it explained to us.
The other side of this is that not every “bad” thing that happens to us is punishment from God. The wise man said that we all face “time and chance” in our daily lives. We may just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or in the right place at the right time. Job suffered because he was righteous and not because of his sin. Jesus suffered because of the sin of others. God used his bad brothers to get Joseph down to Egypt, to save his people 400 years later.
O Lord God, your mind is so far beyond my ability to understand. Without the shackles of time, you know and plan things that never enter my mind. I also know that you use for my good what seems to be disaster for me at the time. Increase my faith! Help me trust you in all things, even when I cannot see where life is going or when it seems to be crashing in all around me. Thank you for loving me and taking care of me. I come to you and praise you in the name of Jesus.
Robert
