Prudence: A Language Shift

"I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, And I find knowledge and discretion.PROVERBS 8:12 NASB

 I am struck today as I am often by the language shift in just a few hundred years.

Take the word prudence for instance. Culturally that was a strong and wise word until the 60s. I know this because it used to be what parents sometimes named their daughters back in my great grandparents day.

My parents generation associated that word it with "the establishment" and the free love movement shortened the word to "PRUDE" and turned it into something it was never meant to be.

 I was born after that and grew up on messages in the music that was defiant and angry, where those angry people protested war and checked out of responsibility.

Then the rise of birth control gave women the freedom of sex without the consequences of pregnancy. As a result the divorce rate soars. Suddenly the word prudent was seen as shackles to keep a woman in her place... barefoot and pregnant. Then they legalize abortion so it didn't hinder her ability to have choice. And suddenly we are not very far from the Aztec who threw their babies off the temples as human sacrifice.

I am also struck by the tension it creates for a translator who needs to speak to the heart of a passage to a generation of people who's social mores no longer recognize God's truth as absolute. The boundary stones of meaning have shifted so much in just my lifetime ... and I know that there is nothing special about this generation. Every generation slips this way.

Lord, I desperately need your wisdom -- the Holy Spirit to keep the truth clear from the semantics and cultural references I drag behind me as I read your word. I get a glimpse now and then of how our short life spans keep us from truly grasping and passing down your wisdom. It takes such careful thought to try to untangle what you say and the heart of your meaning when my worldly wisdom and emotional roots are completely knotted in my own experience.

Words matter. They define the container of our understanding and when they shift it breeds delusion. I worry for a generation of people who don't understand what Gods will is because the plain words are no longer plain.

Help me, Lord. I want to know you as you have revealed yourself in the Word. Help me let go of the cultural shackles and truly let Your Word define me. Amen.

The Innermost Parts

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, Searching all the innermost parts of his being.PROVERBS 20:27 NASB

To know in my head that the Lord searches my heart is one thing... but do I govern my heart in such a way that my life reflects this belief?  Do I ACT as though this is true?

When temptation comes, Lord, please give me the will to reject it and not allow it consent to stay. Give me clarity and strength to hold each thought captive!

He Who Separates Himself Seeks His Own Desire

He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom.A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.PROVERBS 18:1-2 NASB

This is how pride takes over and self delusion and self destruction begins. The word says that the enemy prowls around like a hungry lion.  Lions hunt herd animals by singling them out of the crowd; targeting those who are weak, hungry, lonely, tired... alone.  If we are isolated it's easier to wear us down, feed us lies, and convince us that no one else understands what we are going through.

It's why we are commanded to live our life in community, so that we can admonish and correct and love and support one another. It's why we are supposed to confess our sins to one another, so that we can live in the truth with one another instead of the complicated justifications we make to avoid our own sin and culpability.

I grieve for those who have withdrawn from fellowship with believers and now follow what is right in their own eyes. The reasons and the stories vary but ultimately, they don't want to be told that the thing they are doing, that is meeting their core needs, is wrong.  They don't want to give up this thing that God calls sin ...and they call precious.

The enemy encourages this by telling them they are smart, enlightened, empowered.  And by this time, many have burnt relational bridges behind them and used scorched-earth tactics to avoid the guilt and shame of their behavior.

I know and care about many who have fallen away some pick fights with me because they fear that I will preach at them or judge them.  I guess it's true, I judge that they have made some terrible choices.  Those decisions have consequences.  I will and I do preach the good news.  I have to. In my mind right now I am listing them by name, I do this every time I pray for them.  They are in my prayer list, and there are enough of them that they are their own line item for prayer, all grouped together and mentioned by name every time I pray for them. I haven't given up.

Why?

*Because their lack of belief doesn't make God un-true.
*Because HE knows them by name.
*Because HE loves them even more than me and he is faithful and just.
*Because if I take refuge in His judgments instead of my own, I must keep praying for them like one does CPR.  I cannot write them off and out of my life until death.
*Because He is the great physician, and they aren't dead until they are dead, I will continue to pray until He notes the time in His book of life.

What I haven't done is written them off.  I grieve for them.  Pray for me to have the right words to draw them back!

What about you?  If you have stuck with me on this journey I am on, I will assume that you too have a list of people that used to believe and now do not.  Let me encourage you to write their names down.  Pray for them regularly and often.  The bible says that there is no where we can go that He cannot reach.  The Prodigal Son found his way into a pig pen, at rock bottom and penniless .  King David committed murder by proxy to keep another woman through adultery.  Where are your friends and family that have fallen away?  Their story isn't finished yet.  HIStory, is still being written and there is still time. Because God can reach them even where they are.

I pray also for you, that you do not give up doing good.  Hold the hope for them for a while if they have lost their own.  Hope is a powerful thing, and one of the three that remain (1Cor. 13:13).  My prayer for you, dear friend, is that the Holy Spirit stoke your hope.  May the breath of God breathe new life into your hope and make it burn bright.

I pray it light the way home for those lost in the dark and alone.

Amen.

3 months ago