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Proverbs 2:12-16  Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.  Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, …

As I read this advice from King Solomon to his son, and reflected on the powerful influence of our contemporary culture on our lifestyle through the all-pervading media (printed, electronic, and social), I thought of Paul’s impassioned plea to the church in Rome: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:1-2).

Eugene Petersen in ‘The Message’ has: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your every-day, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.  Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.  Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.  Instead, fix your attention on God.  You’ll be changed from the inside out.  Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.  Unlike the cultures around you, always dragging you down to its own level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

Solomon tells us that the one thing that will save us from making foolish mistakes in our lives (to which our ‘fallen’ nature is so readily inclined!) is ‘wisdom’, which he says, repeatedly, begins with “the fear of the LORD” (1:7; 4:7; 9:10).

Let us not allow the fact that Jesus has enabled and empowered us to know our awe-inspiring God as our wonderful Friend and Saviour, keep us from exercising the good, old-fashioned, ‘fear’ of the Lord!

– Bruce Christian