⁷Don’t be wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

⁸This will be healing for your body,

and strengthening for your bones.

Proverbs 3:7-8 (CSB)

Have you ever met someone who was just hardheaded? I’m sure we’ve all met people like this, and at times we’ve been those people ourselves. Maybe you worked with them on something, and instead of collaborating with you, they disregarded all of your input because they were sure that they already knew it all. The result of this attitude is hurt for the one who was ignored and a damaged relationship.

But we shouldn’t think that this only happens in human relationships, or that we’re innocent compared to those stubborn people. On the contrary, we tend to have this attitude with God daily. I know I’m prone to it. Maybe we know what the Bible says, but we think our ideas are better. “I know that Your word says to honor You with my possessions,” we might think, “But I need to pay bills, I need to buy groceries, I need to buy a house, I need a better car, I need a retirement plan…so maybe I can honor you later, once I have more.” At this point, we’ve placed our own wisdom, our own ideas of how the world works and how we should act, ahead of the eternal wisdom of God. Bad idea.

So what should we do about our tendency to ignore God and follow our own ideas? Solomon tells us to fear the Lord, and turn from evil. But my thoughts aren’t really evil, right? We often try to do what’s best for our friends and family, and even what we think is best for God. But God isn’t interested in what we do as much as where our heart is. If we’re constantly worried about our life and our future, then we aren’t wholly trusting in God, which stems from sin.

God loves us, He knows the past, present, and future, and He knows what we need, but out of pride and anxiety, we favor our own thoughts and ideas over what He’s revealed to us in His word. But the solution is simple: turn from evil and turn to God. He has all the wisdom we need to navigate our earthly lives, and when we trust Him; He will take care of us.

After the instruction to fear the Lord and turn from evil, Solomon offers a promise: “This will be healing for your body, and strengthening for your bones”. It’s important to understand that this promise applied to the Israelites in the time before Jesus. They had land, and God promised to bless them if they followed Him. As believers under the New Covenant, we aren’t promised health and prosperity. On the contrary, Jesus said, “You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world” (John 16:33). Suffering isn’t presented as a possibility but an inevitability. So then, how does this verse apply to us?

This is essential to understanding the book of Proverbs: much like modern proverbs, the wisdom found in this book applies generally to life’s circumstances. This means that most of the time, you can apply these words of wisdom and they will hold true. However, there are exceptions. Take Job, for example. He “feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1), yet we all know that he wasn’t prosperous. In fact, Job is in the wisdom literature alongside Proverbs, teaching us wisdom in suffering.

Though the promise of health isn’t a sure thing, living according to godly wisdom almost always leads to better outcomes than following our own ideas. We see in our world today that ignoring God’s wisdom results in needless suffering. Certain kinds of heart disease, cancers, liver disease, STDs, overdoses, etc. result from living a lifestyle that’s contrary to God’s wisdom. Countless car accidents could be prevented each year if people didn’t drive under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. So, there are many ways that following God results in real physical benefits as well as spiritual ones.

In any case, the wisdom found in Proverbs is practical for daily life, and unless we find ourselves in a rare situation, we would do well to learn from it. We’ve learned over the past two days that God is the foundation of knowledge and wisdom, and today we see that an essential step to growing in wisdom is to let go of our worldly wisdom and turn to God.

Blessings,

Joleen